Art Meditations

How many of us have felt that we’re only earning our money—really working—if we’re suffering? Even if you’ve never felt that way personally, how many of us think that’s what America wants us to believe? That if we’re not suffering, our work is not valuable, won’t be paid for, and we’re f*qed. We all know

I’ve been pretty quiet since Memorial Day because I have very strong feelings about what white folks should and should not be doing in the Black Lives Matter movement at this stage. My point of view is carefully honed from the last three decades I’ve spent learning about what marginalized people in the States go

I’m the tail end of generation X and have explained that experience to millennials like this:when I was applying for college, I had to mail away for catalogues and write essays out on paper and mail ‘em in, and wait for paper letters of acceptance. My first week of school, my parents had moved to

2019 street art saw animals everywhere. And it was not just the usual suspects like Sonny Sundancer, Marthalicia and Mr Prvrt anymore. No, it’s everywhere. And I think there are some very good reasons why… I’ve had cancer twice. The first time, I knew my life was messed up (there’s a book about it; you

Twenty years ago, I set out to become a teacher of the literatures that have given me the most—meaning, clarity, purpose. I said I wanted to ensure that these important voices were heard and learned from. A year ago, I realized that a lot of emerging artists around me were also saying important things that

There’s a saying: “if you can hurt an animal, you can hurt a person.” That statement refers to the condition of the predator, not the prey, but I’m going to flip it for a moment. That predator sees no value in life. But what is the condition of the prey? For me, it’s not so

Often we know more about the intangible than what surrounds us day in and day out. By virtue of reaching for what we desire, we study, and in studying an object it becomes intimate, an “other” part of ourselves that we need, perhaps one we are meant to search out. I believe it was Abba

The thing about creativity is that as soon as you start to create anything, take that first step, you become aware that you have no idea where you will end up, or what you’ll be holding when you emerge from that dark forest into the light. You make one gesture toward that glimmer of a

With thanks to Octavia Butler. Lionesses all—we know: Lonely we race savanna down For blood for meat For ourselves to be found in a kill of love. He hunts, too, for her, but it’s not the same. Protect Provide Profess And thank goddess. And yet, still it is not the hunt of love lioness makes:

Wise women made of reeds Rushing into water well above their knees. Women carrying children, carrying incense, carrying Scent of themselves, And the men in their sacks. Women, lionesses all, who work those bales Like thread, in and out of economies of loss. Locusts collecting where their hair begins Hovering for the color, sweat and

He is at sea. she is by land. the irony of her tidepool feeding on savanna, drawing down seeds as his horizons grow dark with stars cast on slack tide oceans flat and full of mirages at sea, or at sky? sand collects at the edges (his dry kisses) where young red crabs crawl out

Last Born Who are you, last born? What did you know, lying on your mother’s chest, A twin in the world, Separated from mother and brother? What flesh did you speak, Thin paint of meat dense as clay? And what did you orbit, Your hands passing one over another? Taking flowers in hand: The magnolias

Your black eyes burnme up to cinders, ashes,screaming on the rock. I want your hands:my skin disintegrates,ashen back to earth. Your hand on my legburns through to bone taking withit all my tears. Day covers nightlike a woman and her man; heis taken away. Your sand skin seesmy otherwise unknown: thisbody, dawn broken. Salamander mine,Deep

LOVE SONG to SLEEP The whole world is asleep In the room next to mine – His little fists curled around A sweaty receiving blanket. Eyes closed so gently to the night And day alike, To my steps over the floor, And the 30-somethings’ party across the back, To military jets overhead, And the prostitutes

I’ve been watching #NoDAPL, “no Dakota access pipeline,” go down this summer (2016) like a hawk. What’s horrifying is that the culminating political and personal moment in progress right now is the confluence of environmental and ethnic destruction we’ve been watching since the industrial revolution—probably before. What’s amazing and beautiful and hopeful and strong about

Everyone loses their way sometimes. Your compass gets wacked and the lodestone is off. Your tuner hits the floor and the D string cannot harmonize for shit. For me, it’s writing. It’s always the writing. If I don’t produce my work, write my mind and the world, everything goes haywire. I literally have to write.

I have seen Xu Bing’s two phoenixes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine three times. They are huge soaring birds, suspended from the ceiling of the cathedral, and they are made of trash. Trash soaring through a holy sky. Now, I’m either old school or new age, but for me there are other

This is only a piece, of the whole. Is it curious that we call works of art “pieces”? Pieces of something larger, without which they are not complete. As though, if only seeing one work, we cannot truly see what it is or what it means? And yet, we do. We see words, meanings, worlds.

In every game there are rules. We start playing the game, and figure them out. Good teachers help us understand the rules and why they’re there. You know the rules of your game. I know mine. Don’t mix metaphors, the oxford comma is no longer necessary. Slim down. Cut. Watch. Pivot. Roll. If you’ve ever

In 2014, I rebirthed my blog as a way to share art, ideas and poetry. The work is meditations on art, and on life. After sharing new work, works in progress and the work of artists that move me, I find myself thinking in new terms. Maria Lassnig, Lee Friedlander, Romare Bearden, Kehinde Whiley, Robert