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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Walking up to the Dome Trail
It’s a hot, bright day up here on the back roads — late spring spilling into summer. I’ve climbed up Henderson Road until the land flattens out, and everywhere I walk I can hear the sound of a brook close by.
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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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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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Young farmers celebrate the land
They are awake in the dark, washing last week’s milk bottles. They are kneeling in the birthing pen, holding a newborn kid goat. They are setting out seedlings in trays and tuning up the 1940s tractor.
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Chasing wildflowers on the Dome and Agawon Trail (April 14 newsletter)
It’s the first time I’ve ever taken my shoes off in the woods to get a better grip. It’s the first time in New England I’ve ever wound up on a trail so steep I can imagine sliding straight off the mountain. …
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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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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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