Two women are talking together, their voices are confident and clear and touched with laughter. The elder woman repeats the word for blue heron in Apsáalooke. I have come to Wendy Red Star’s exhibit many times now, and this is the first time I have heard her language aloud — I have to thank Shaun Leonardo.
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Here comes the sun (June 5 newsletter)
Take a deep breath everyone. We’re standing on the edge of summer. In another week or two we’ll have sculpture shows opening and outdoor plays in the theaters. Already, live concerts are starting up in the grass.
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Mindy Lam infuses spring into wearable art
The flowers tangle together like meadow grass in the morning, glinting with dew, and a small bright frog is climbing up the stems. Jewelry artist and fashion designer Mindy Lam opens the summer at Berkshire Botanical Garden.
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Hilltop Orchards transforms in spring
From the top of the hill here, the mountains show on the horizon in receding waves, and in the high meadow the trees stretch away in long rows against the sky. They are all in bloom.
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Why is a rhinoceros like a writing desk? (May 14 newsletter)
The rhinoceros is arresting — 600 pounds of bronze standing four-square at the door. French artists and writers seem fascinated by rhinos half a century ago, and François-Xavier Lalanne cast this one into a life-sized sculpture.
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Les Lalanne cast humor in bronze
Copper and bronze shapes appear around corners, like the veined rippling cup of a giant cabbage leaf … Sculptors Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne are known around the world for their whimsical organic lifeforms.
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Flights of Fancy bring sparkling color to the garden
Growing up on a farm in Hong Kong, Mindy Lam saw the bright flashing colors of birds, and moths as large as her two hands. She would wade in the river, looking for shrimp and minnows and dragonflies. So it means a great deal to her now, as an internationally known jewelry artist living near Washington D.C., to bring her creations to the Berkshire Botanical Garden.
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Feel the earth under our feet again (April 21 newsletter)
‘You have a moth on your neck,’ she said. We were sitting outdoors on either side of the fire, on a lawn that stretched into fields. Somewhere farther up the hill, land conservancy trails waltz with the brook.
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Kang Seung Lee honors kin in spirit (April 7 newsletter)
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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