30 days of june

30 days of June series, June 2022

30 days of june

Gramma draws Pokémon

Knowing Gramma could draw, I’d sometimes ask her to copy pictures. I recently rediscovered a notebook of Pokémon I ‘commissioned.’ These are pencil drawings on school supply-grade paper.

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30 days of june

Everybody: Get in here!

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30 days of june

Birthday gifts (1997 - present)

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30 days of june

Love you to the moon and back

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30 days of june

Obnoxious appetites

30 days of june

Intestinal visions

The propulsion of any Twombly canvas is independent of the viewer’s perception. When we do manage to grab a hold of something, it whips us around with a slasher’s glee. Cy Twombly is the Jason Voorhees of abstraction. His kills are both brazen and artful.

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30 days of june

"Pledge of nothingness"

30 days of june

Potato Head sculptures in Rhode Island (ranked)

In 1999, 47 Potato Heads were sculpted and displayed across Rhode Island. Today only 10 remain on view. So I took the pilgrimage to see 'em all. Almost all of the potatoes looked better in person than they do in pictures.

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30 days of june

Beautiful fraud

30 days of june

What's her line?

Making a mark stops a line from becoming infinite. This is what a ‘line worker’ like Twombly, or Mary Dondero, does. And they do it enthusiastically. Within this genre, how a mark hits the ground or paper is just as important as where.

30 days of june

Outcasts of a certain age

Joe Banda’s VHS tapes are a funny, thoughtful medium. They recall a time when there were only so many narratives and cliques to choose from.

30 days of june

Cataloging Jacob Lawrence in New England

Being provincial: This means you see the great paintings when you’re lucky. The painter Jacob Lawrence: his work certainly falls under that “great” label. Here in New England: can you even find a Lawrence painting? I was curious.

30 days of june

How to fold a sheet

An unknown object might be treated reverently—or not. But a bedspread saturated with ten years’ worth of slumber? Talk about attachments. It makes sense to give it a proper sendoff. So that’s exactly what Kate Barber did with several pieces in her show "Manifold."

30 days of june

Absolute unit

Carl Simmons has arranged everything to be suggestively messy without obscuring anything necessary. A cursory look may give the impression of things stacked in haste, but examine deeper and you’ll see the care afforded the display.

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30 days of june

Speed killed

30 days of june

I forgot to write a title

Two shows. Two senior theses. Two studio art majors. Beyond that, the two offerings currently on view at Providence College Galleries don’t seem to share much.

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30 days of june

Aqueous man

30 days of june

An open-and-shut case

In Maxime Belykh’s "Making a Case," the only thing posturing is shapes. Some slouch. Others stand. A playfulness between edges is apparent. Something happens where colors abut, join, or split apart. Grids, wavelengths, crosshatches. There are many ways to do a line.

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30 days of june

Rip it up and start again

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30 days of june

A tale of two cities, and five windows

30 days of june

Avert your eyes (or not)

Blubber, a collection of Gilbert Hernandez’s X-rated cartoons, isn’t a book I’d recommend to most people. I think most people would find it vile, actually.

30 days of june

Needs more fushigi

Nakamori presents something with more menace, distance and frost. "Fushigi" is not quite sinister. It’s more like an untreated fever. The chills start to set in.

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30 days of june

Wednesday morning filler

30 days of june

You could burn up my clothes

(Part 2 of 2) SOTT’s many collisions show how things come together. Or don't come together. The ways our best efforts inevitably get misinterpreted, shuffled, or just plain fail—quite a series of signs to receive, no?

30 days of june

I could read you poetry

(Part 1 of 2) Prince’s 1987 album was once my northern star. A rare asteroid that had been excavated in snowy Minneapolis. And now, as I missed my third chance in ten years to contemplate it, I wondered: did I really love this album? Writing, as expected, brought answers clumsily, if at all.