An artist is kneeling with his hands in the earth. Kang Seung Lee has come to Namsan Park in Seoul, and somewhere along the mountain paths and Joseon gardens and 14th-century houses, he is remembering a writer and a filmmaker together.
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Artists seek kinship in hard times in ‘Close to You’
Two men are dancing in the kitchen. They are barefoot, eyes closed, two black men holding each other at home, in a quiet lighted room. Los Angeles photographer Clifford Prince King offers an image of refuge and care in Close to You at Mass MoCA.
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Glenn Kaino invokes protest in light and shadow
Los Angeles musician Deon Jones is singing U2’s Bloody Sunday in a ring of light. A protest in Derry, Northern Ireland, comes together with a protest Selma, Alabama, as international artist Glenn Kaino brings his new work to Mass MoCA.
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Starships and salamanders are on the move (March 31 newsletter)
Standing water spills over at the edge of the marsh, and the peepers are loud — high, rising, calling all around us. It feels too early to believe in spring yet, but the frogs are awake.
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April opens with a poem a day
Imagine a poem by Hafiz, the Sufi mystic poet, out loud in a rounded room with tall windows overlooking the mountains. The ridges are a light-imbued silver grey.
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A local woman invents a new kind of poem
This time of year, I met a woman in a stand of laurel bushes. It turns out by the time she was my age, she’d invented a new form of free-verse.
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Pesach: Going out into a changed world (March 24 newsletter)
On a spring morning a few days before Passover, I remembered sharing seders with old friends. Pesach celebrates a time when everything changes, they told me. Everything is new, and you can’t see ahead.
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Passover brings renewal and a call to action
He remembers the smell of lemon-scented furniture polish. It was the day in spring when his family would open all the windows and rub down the wood. Family was coming for the holiday.
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Turn Park Art Space welcomes the equinox with light
At the top of the hill, cocoons pulse with light. Natalie Tyer has formed organic shapes as translucent as moth wings at Turn Park, and the glimmer intensifies as someone comes close.
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Outdoor sculpture recalls Russian artists in spring (March 17 newsletter)
Don Quixote is sitting in a frozen field by a bare rock face, staring into the center of a daisy. I wonder what he dreams at the end of winter …
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Farms offer maple syrup in sap houses — and online
Syrup and sugared nuts and fudge-like cream … the sap is boiling, and maple growers are expanding in the Berkshires with web shops. You can stop in for a quart or order one from home.
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Can we stretch out for a moment in the sun? (March 10 newsletter)
The sun is coming out today for an hour or two. Where should we go for a walk? It’s one of those unexpected early spring days that jumps ahead for a flicker, like that afternoon in mud time in the Robert Frost poem …
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Weaver and fiber artist grows and teaches her art
Sculptor, weaver and fiber artist Andrea Myklebust has come a long way from urban centers and metro lines to a farmyard where she cares for the goats and sheep who grow the wool she will weave by hand.
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