
I teach drawing, and I often have people tell me that they can’t draw, that they couldn’t even draw a stick figure. And so I ask them how they know that. And they say, “Yeah, I tried it and it looked like crap.” The truth of the matter is that art is not so much the way things look, but a way of looking at things.
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At what point does a paying customer become a collaborator? Whether it’s a down-home Fish Fry Truck or a levitating dinner table staffed by mythological creatures, viewers play an integral role in Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw’s lavish performances.
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After living through two wars and emigrating from his native Iraq, Ahmed Alsoudani began his study of art in the U.S. shortly before the events of 9/11. Talk about timing. To say this history has influenced his work would be an understatement — it may well be its defining characteristic.
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NORTH ADAMS, Massachusetts — Framed on the faux-log-cabin wall of Kent Monkman’s piece “Two Kindred Spirits” (which depicts the American western characters of Tonto and the Lone Ranger as lovers in a sort of Horatio/Hamlet life-sized diorama death scene) is a hand-embroidered phrase: “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.” This Oscar Wildean quotation also encapsulates the ever-nuanced Canada/U.S. relationship, and may give us a clue as to what’s really up with our neighbor to the north.
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