So, it’s happened to me. My postings on my blog have become erratic and infrequent. Somehow the fast train that is the momentum of time between now and Christmas had hijacked a more meditative self.
That same self was jerked to life this past Saturday. Seventeen years has taught me that there is much wisdom behind [...]
Category Archives: Asides
An advent calendar of Campbell Steele artists!
December 1, 2008, 6:52 pm
A source of great joy
September 15, 2008, 9:02 pm
It seems that most of the sea changes of my life have been marked by pilgrimages along the vast stretches of Route 80. A coupla weekends ago we drove our youngest daughter, Willa, with her earthly possessions to Providence, R.I., and stopped for a lightning quick birthday celebration in Brooklyn with Maggie, our oldest daughter. [...]
An instinctual teacher
September 10, 2008, 6:30 pm
I came upon the word “polymath” in a review by Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times. It means: “a person of great learning in several fields”.
I know a lot of people who know a LOT about one thing, but the only true polymath in my personal experience has been David Goodwin. On the art [...]
Couch Time: The OberLuecks & Kathy Thor
August 26, 2008, 3:47 pm
Two dear friends whom we have known since we were all just beginning our careers are “transitioning”. To celebrate the culmination of their highly successful and dedicated work with the public schools, we gifted them the low-fire ceramic work of our own wacky Kathy Thor. There is nothing that is predictable about this woman’s [...]
New cyanotypes from David Heffner
August 19, 2008, 7:26 pm
Artist, Peter Thompson, looked up from some new cyanotypes by Iowa City photographer (and Coe adjunct instructor), David Heffner. With a big smile on his face he pronounced them to be, “SO Northern European Renaissance!”
We are accustomed to the easy connections we make to somewhat obscure, visual references. That we can do this, forges a [...]
Bee Balm
August 8, 2008, 7:20 am
As far as I know, bee balm is not native to the part of the East Coast where I was raised. When I first saw this “weed” flourishing on the roadsides and the margins of fields in Michigan over thirty years ago, I remember a rapturous sense of discovery- so exotic were its lavender petals [...]