From a distance, the colors shimmer like a crazy quilt of neighborhoods seen from the air, scarlet and blue and yellow, as though the houses were painted as bright as tropical birds …
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Expeditions for a sunny afternoon
The eggs come from a farm stand smaller than a chicken coop, and I almost missed it. The sign caught me as I was bowling south down Route 7 — shagbark hickory syrup …
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Color prints fill the senses from Japan to France
Mary Cassatt brings an Intaglio color print into Hue and Cry, the Clark Art Institute’s newest winter show, inspired by Japanese artists and woodblock-prints.
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Japanese prints probe a contemporary world
Saitō Kiyoshi’s Autumn in Nanzen-Ji (1971) is not a classical inkbrush painting, and it’s not a Kandinsky — but Oliver Ruhl thinks it may be kin to both.
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Japanese artists warm up the weekend (November 10 newsletter)
Kiyoshi Saito is walking through a street lined with machiya, tall, lean wooden houses. Afternoon light slants down an alley-way, and he can see someone in silhouette walking from the shadow into the sun …
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ArtWeek Berkshires is here in full colors (Sept 15 newsletter)
Murals and wood-fired ceramics, Japanese Shiburi tie-dyed cloth, graphic novels and living walls — the county is filling up this week with events and shows and painters out in the open, in ArtWeek Berkshires.
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Nikolai Astrup revives the spirit of Norway
It’s summer solstice, and the bonfires are lit. People from up the valley are piling tall cones of green branches. The flames churn golden and flow downhill over a glacial outcrop and coil like a dragon around the embers.
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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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Coral fountains and pearl pools: Berkshire museums turn outdoors
Stone blocks stand in rough steps, the color of quartz and clam shells … Art OMI has installed new work this summer, as museums are adapting their gardens and grounds, virtual content and outdoor artwork.
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