My work is about an intimate connection to place, community and the Divine. I create vibrant paintings and fiber artworks probing the boundaries between realism and abstraction, the self and the environment. Each work reveals inner and outer landscapes simultaneously as if presenting reality strained through poetry. Using a variety of layers and materials, I give form to the multidimensional worlds we inhabit. As a social practice artist, I seek to challenge culturally-ingrained patterns of inhabiting public space. My creative work begins on a street corner, along a river or on a park bench. I set up my easel or begin knitting a half-mile rope. People stop to talk and…
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Freedom and Transfiguration: As Earth Without Water (Book Recommendation)
Ultimately, Carl’s novel is a journey of hope. Despite characters’ woundedness, art-making still frees and transfigures: draws out the parched soul, leads it to water. In the end, Carl suggests, it is the water from which the soul drinks that matters; for some, art-making is simply the path that leads there.
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“What’s In a Flower?”
⎺Original Poetry from Tom Noe
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On History, Culture, and the Conflict in Ukraine
The world faces significant and immediate questions of what should be done, when, and by whom to address the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Beneath these questions are weighty realities of the history, culture, and religion of the region. This Notæ features several articles from the past month that take a deeper look at what's behind the current conflict.
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March 25th: A Feast of Feasts
Many Christians celebrate the Annunciation of the Lord on this day, and for years that was my only association with it. As it turns out, some combination of historical circumstances, fate, and tradition has placed a great deal of weight on this date, and the reason the Annunciation has been celebrated then is no mere coincidence but a participation in an older tradition preceding even the birth of Christ.
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Working on Beauty: Listening to Robert Johnson and Arnold Schoenberg
I would hate to relegate beautiful things to the realm of merely pleasurable things. Therefore I think it is important to regularly pursue experiences of the beautiful that do not initially appear to be pleasurable at all.
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Featured Artist: Matthew Paul Cleary
I first approached abstraction through sculpture—specifically the materials they were created from. What metaphorical weight do particular materials hold? How can these materials convey a message or a story to the viewer?
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Who Are the Rus?
Editorial Quick Take Three days before he launched the Russian invasion on Ukraine on February 24, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech that might have sounded to some like a bit of a rambling history lesson, reaching before the Bolsheviks all the way to the present time, with the aim of justifying the war waged on Ukraine here and now in 2022. In it he said, among other things: “Since time immemorial, the people living in the southwest of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. This was the case before the 17th century, when a portion of this territory rejoined the Russian state, and after.” …
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On Exile, Desire and Happiness
Recent articles of note from around the world wide web.
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O Solomon, I Have Vanquished Thee!
Once a church becomes politicized or commercialized, can it ever reestablish itself as a sacred place?
