I have never been one to be compelled by the numbers. How might one measure a year, Jonathan Larson? In minutes or cups of coffee? I guess I have found in general quality outweighs quantity. But, what happens when quality and quantity collide? I have found they often do here in New York City.

Over the last seven months, I have seen 4 Pulitzer Prize winning pieces of drama. I have been stunned by 2 Broadway legends (Patti LuPone & Audra McDonald). I have sat through countless fidgeting audience members because we still don’t know how to be together. And I still haven’t found the minutes to write down all my feelings (now writing on my commutes on the subway or any space that I can find), all my learnings or my opinions on all the art that my body has experienced. It’s all in me, trust me, I know what greatness I am taking in. To be a witness is almost as important as being a creator. Often people are asking me, how is the book? How is the musical? I do appreciate these sentiments greatly. The process is not linear or easy to push creative endeavors forward. But, this witnessing was my goal for my first year of New York - take it all in. Surround myself with magic. Longtime New Yorkers have heard my list and the sentiment they generally share is one of exhaustion. One said, “kid it sounds like you are seeing Broadway like you are running out of time.” Aren’t we all? And yes, I am running out of time. Similar to Jonathan Larson, he never had enough time and struggled much more to make an income and get his work out there. A pandemic, a childhood fascination, and now my own dream awaits on the stage. What am I waiting for? I have waited since my six year old self learned about Broadway to be able to go to a show on, let’s say, a Tuesday. (I played the Jesus Christ Superstar vinyl all the way to Resurrection and beyond) So much has happened on Broadway this year, while so much is happening off stage. I finally know what it feels like to be angry at The New York Times and mean it. The push and pull of what is “real” life is constant. And yet, here I am counting the minutes, the hours of drama witnessed, the art exhibits come and go, and the shows I saw multiple times and those that I undoubtedly missed. For many, I was able to make that Broadway experience happen for them, friends and family alike, a ticket whisperer if you will. In so many ways, the last couple of months has been walking inside a dream full of energy, large orchestral sound, operatic arias, and old theaters murmuring their tales of past great performances. And what was the best of the best? It is difficult to pin down. And thank goodness I am not a critic. I thought I would create my own Freshman superlatives from my imaginary New York Public City School 2022 to spread the love across the last seven months, of the one and only, Broadway: 

Overall Favorite Fat Ham *Coming to Broadway in April 2023 🍔🧺✨ *Pulitzer

Most important A Strange Loop➿💜➿ *Pulitzer & Tony

Best Musical performanceParade at NY City Center [ensemble cast]⚖️👨🏼‍⚖️

Favorite Off Broadway Little Shop of Horrors 🪴🩸👽

MVP ArtistMeret Oppenheim at MoMA 🟩⚪️☕️

Best Friend AwardWolfgang Tillmans at MoMA🔎🍃🍑

Most intellectual  Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge 📣🇬🇧🙎🏿‍♂️🙍🏼‍♂️

Most disappointing…by far &Juliet🍿💁🏼‍♂️😕

Most likely to succeed after graduation KPOP👯👯‍♀️💃🏽🕺🏽

Class Clown The Old man and the Pool by Mike Birbiglia 💦👴🏼🪧

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Innovations in art:

* The ceramic kiln (29,000 and 25,000 B.C.E.)

* Stained glass (2700 B.C.E.)

* Woodblock printing (618 to 907 C.E.)

* The paint palette (1374 or prior?)

* Canvas (early 14th-century)

* The camera (1826 )

* The paint tube (end of the 19th century)

* The typewriter (1868)

… And now Artificial Intelligence illustration? (2000s)

Read in Artsy: (9 inventions That Changed the Way We Make Art)

Everywhere I scan for news, the AI revolution is happening in a renewed spirit: self-driving cars, Darth Vader’s voice, and now, make way for AI artists. I have never truly paid attention to what technological inventions shift art making or art practices. Today, we are living in a fascinating era of digital tools and technology shifting our approach, process, and outputs. In contrast to the hand developed photograph, which I learned to develop in a dark room when I was 15, I have recently been moved by a newer imagery innovation in AI called DALL*E 2. I see this technology be placed in the great line of conceptual art canons. The idea that it exists is almost greater than the output, as the technology stands currently. But, what about when artists push it to its limits?

I am often pulled in a lot of different directions in what I pay attention to and how I interact with new technologies. I don’t even consider myself an early adopter (the scale). I have a foundation and love for art history, objects, collections with the pull of the constant presence of the new digital world. I am not drawn as much to the intersection of these two industries as one might think. I have siloed my art historical passion as a hobby, a musing, or my time reading alone in my book nook. Art history for me is soothing, pleasurable, grounding, and informative. One might even say I learn for fun (geek alert 🤓). Digital technology on the other hand has driven my income, career, profession, and a job. I have strategically been able to leverage my cultural acumen in building digital products, experiences, and brands. It all intersects whether I like it or not. OpenAI (the company behind DALL-E) has some broad and sweeping mission: Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Seems like an impossible task for me. I ask myself, are the benefits necessary to all of humanity? Based on my travels through the developing world, I see very little “benefit” of AI in the developing world, particularly AI-generated imagery. I may be wrong. But, as it is often with tech, I might be missing the point. I do know when I first used the technology, I did get a small dose of awe. The only thing in tech that has ever really brought delight to my face is the Starbuck’s app stars. I know, I know. But, the stars are genuinely beautiful. Props to that designer. What I find most interesting about the introduction of the technology is that artists, image gatekeepers, and the internet was quick to protest. Cancel it, they say. Well, it is here to stay whether we like it our not. The website goes on to say “We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome.” Open Source is generally equated with a value of goodness. I see little goodness. I do not consider myself a techno-optimist, but I also understand that there will be humans on the constant quest of innovation. I support the quest. DALL-E is now open for all. So, I encourage you to try it yourself. A tip if you do: be as specific as possible. Write a long and specific sentence. Here are some of my musings:

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I remember walking into the Guggenheim in February 2019 and rushing to the Mapplethorpe exhibition, Implicit Tensions. I had waited years to see this many Mapplethorpe photographs in one place. All the iconic images were in the exhibit and I needed to see them. The main galleries were dedicated to a little known (at that time), Hilma af Klint: Paintings from the Future. I had never heard of her and thought there might be a relationship to Gustav Klint (How sexist and ignorant, Gregory). I rushed past the massive paintings to get to see the photographs of my gay Catholic icon. After I spent time with Mapplethorpe I wandered back to the rotunda. You always gradually end up back to the rotunda as Frank Lloyd Wright designed for visitors. I was overwhelmed by the paintings and did not know what I was looking at. I am comfortable with abstract and like most abstraction, but there was something different about these paintings. It was a different palette, there was much more fluidity and pastel coloring. The paint was more sensitive, less imposing, and felt more intentional. I generally veer away from paintings that feel like tempra paint, or lighter colors. (Ah, the sexist palette strikes again- dark, masculine, and the 90 degree angle, how predictable?). I didn’t take that many photographs of the paintings. How might I even capture an entire painting? I generally snap a few photos of paintings I like, or specific cropped areas of a painting. Not in this exhibit and I have always wondered why? Was I rushing? Was I just that overwhelmed and present? She commanded my full attention. I was listening. Af Klint’s exhibition is one of the most widely attended exhibitions in Guggenheim history. Since that exhibition, af Klint has been arriving at her rightful  place in the art historical canon, as few women have been able to fight through the noise of the patriarchy. There has been a wonderful documentary made and now to my wonderful surprise, a moving graphic novel now exists, The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint (David Zwirner Books) by husband and wife duo Julia Voss and Philipe Deines. 

I have a general love of graphic novels with Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (made in a Tony Winning Best Musical) and Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughn being in the frequent list of my favorite literary and visual achievements. Though not as widely respected, the graphic novel commands illustration and text together, unfolds like drama on a stage. The Five Lives of Hilma af Klint burrowed quickly into my new favorites. The story is as compelling as af Klint’s artistic journey. Rarely have I been moved so much as how this story unfolds. As the reader, you follow Hilma through her own artistic discovery in materials, spirituality, and rejection. She persists. She keeps painting, drawing and asking questions of the past. She travels. She falls in love. And all with an eye on creating art that is unique. I noticed, while sitting with the book, the quality of the paper and size were perfect. The book is solid and open to holding the grandeur and complexity of af Klint’s paintings.

.

And you would think the heroine of the story would get to bask in her artistic achievement, but no. Such satisfaction rarely exists in the art world, or any endeavor for women throughout time. She comes to a quiet resignation that she will not be “understood” as an artist in her lifetime. I am not sure if we “understand” even now, but she has certainly gained popularity. I do not like using the term “ahead of one’s time.” Hilma af Klint was not ahead of her time. She was of her time. Artists observe the world and their work helps them understand themselves and world around them. They pay attention. Hilma af Klint was paying attention to the mystical world that made up her life. She was undeniably trying to quench a thirst to reflect the mysteries she encountered in her time here. How wonderful she was able to capture those curiosities? And now, her life and work has captured my imagination once again in this lovely, accessible, and joyous artistic book that has convinced me ever more that Hilma af Klint deserved our adulation then, and most certainly now.

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I have always been a collector. My first collection was books, as I think many children start with their favorite bedtime stories as precious objects. It is one of the first time in our lives that we might feel a part of something that is not our own family. We befriend Winney the Pooh as if he were our friend and we start to get a glimpse of other ways of being. I started a lifelong pursuit of the perfect book, the perfect size, the perfect typeface, perfect color and of course that perfect old book smell. My first memories are holding books. I loved large-scale books that my little hands could barely hold. I gravitated towards Atlases. It really did feel like all the world’s information was held in the pages.  My mom and I used to go to this old bookstore call The Book House in Saint Louis. It was a three story Victorian home full of books: the study, the foyer, the living room, the dining room, the basement, the kitchen, and even the attic were an “organized” book heaven. Every inch of the house was covered with stacks of books. There were probably about six cats, too. I used to climb all the way up to the attic and read the Geography section. I was fascinated by the topographic map illustrations. The shades of green representing distant forests or the browns and yellows of faraway deserts. I have fond memories of rummaging old book sales for new additions to my collection. The collection eventually fed my fascination with the ocean. Like the tides, I would trade out old books for newer treasures. This would naturally lead to my second collection, centered around the ocean world. It was a highly curated and cultivated my deep fascination with marine life, coral reefs, sharks, and the biodiversity of our world’s ocean. This is where dreaming began for me.

I have never stopped collecting. There is something special about finding a copy of Henri Matisse’s first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art or the National Geographic featuring photographs of the Grand Canyon by Emery and Ellsworth Kolb for the first time in 1914. This ephemera helps me tell my story in a better way. Maybe I am telling the story to myself in some oddly comforting way through objects.

My collecting habits have not stopped. My first project as a member of the education team at the de Young Museum in 2010 was digitizing a board member’s collection of art history slides. He was lecturing on the history of absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit derived from several plants, including the flowers and leaves of "grand wormwood,” together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. Absinthe has a wild history of causing one to be addicted to the “green fairy” and is portrayed in literary classics and film. This was the first time I was introduced into the world of these little treasures of translucent film. I sat there for hours holding the slide up to the light in the de Young tower through the perforated holes of the tower’s architectural skin. I would reach, trying to grab just enough light. There is nothing quite like the quality of a slide. The object itself, holding it in your fingers and lifting it upwards to the light (or the Disney viewfinder with the solid lever shaped like Mickey’s hand to switch images) to see what image is captured. 35 mm slides hold our memories of roadtrips, family vacations, reunions, and those distant memories of stodgy art history classes. We have moved well past the age of film into the age of the digital. I am not sure why I am always holding one hand, reaching back to the past. My fascination with Kodak film, developing, and the chemicals awash to create the image has never waned since I first went into a dark room in high school and learned to develop. I think it is the combination of science observation, natural resources, and human creativity that mix to create the photographic image that compel me. Is convenience and speed worth sacrificing wonder and awe? And you guess it, my newest collection has begun - 35mm slides. Specially, 35mm slides of Land art. Someone in Portland, Oregon has quite a collection of Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, and Nancy Holt sculpture slides. And of course they are willing to sell them to me via the e-commerce landscape of Ebay. I purchased a new viewfinder and I can’t tell you how much joy it is to look at the slides lit up bringing to life the art that is in such remote places. The slides somehow brings the far away, capture the nearly inaccessible, a bit closer. And as I sit here in the constant state of bustle near Times Square, the slides give me a bit of solace and solitude. I can place the slide into the viewfinder, it wiggles into place and sits perfectly. I press the knob turning on the light powered by two double A batteries. The light shines. The image comes into focus. And magically, I am transported right back to the horizon line of the West.

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City may be opening this September, but I do not think Michael Heizer considers his grand work finished by any means. Many artists that build at this scale (and there are few in modern history that attempt it) rarely think their work is finished. Nature is ultimately in control of these “monuments.” Those who work with the land and revere the land and test the land like Heizer, there is a sheer will in his quest to dominate. It seems like a futile quest. Ultimately, there is a humility in knowing that nature always wins.

It was announced today that after a 50 year process, Michael Heizer’s City will be opening to public visitors (six persons a day, just like The Lightning Field, but you won’t be sleeping over here). And I am already planning my route to City. The vortex pulls me. Why am I obsessed to the remote, the seemingly impossible, the hard-to-get-to, effortful and austere artwork? It is fundamentally about the land, the place where digital technology cannot reach except the satellite images. It is a place to run to, not away. I like that places like this exist that draw me inward to the desert.

In my reading of the announcement, I learned a word today from The Art Newspaper article identifying City as a Gesamtkunstwerk. What? I love words in any language. I immediately had to Google. Google pronunciation, please tell me what this means? I will do my best to pronounce this German word, Gesamtkunstwerk, which roughly translates as a "total work of art" and describes an artwork, design, or creative process where different art forms are combined to create a single cohesive whole. And this leads me to ask the question, is this whole? Or necessary? The process is the art? I wonder what will be my Gesamtkunstwerk? Do you plan on having a Gesamtkunstwerk? I think I have now mispronounced this word four times.

There is a lot going on here in City, much like a real city full of busy people doing busy things. There is the interplay between the light and the landscape, the line, the shadows and the simplicity of the concrete. So much labor, it almost seems as if it was a Sisyphean task. Mixing, grating, grading — seeking perfection. A mighty privileged task (at a $40 million price tag), Heizer has created a shadow to human awe. And if our mouths agape was enough to react at the idea of the behemoth endeavor he started at 27, now 71. I think my mouth will be closed in viewing City. I think if anything, I will be moved to see the entirety, the cohesive whole, in the few precious hours I will have with the sculpture, leaving me most likely sunburnt, parched, and at the mercy of the desert once again.

More reading on City: NYTimes Interactive The Art NewspaperFrom June 2021, Double Negative 

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Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn't a thing in my life that has happened that hasn't been extreme - personal health, family, economic situations...absurdity is the key word. - Eva Hesse

Writing helps me coalesce my thinking. It is not an easy task that you get to just check off on the list. Nor does it stay consistent. Sometimes I feel like writing and sometimes I hate it. All writers seem to struggle with these existential questions of meaning and work. I am attracted to simple structures, structures in writing like Robert Johnson’s use of white space in his epic poem Ark, or the straight lines of Mondrian, marks on paper that know who they are. As if lines on paper need personifying. Maybe they do. 

Maybe we would take art more seriously if we knew the process of the artist giving of themselves to us, the viewer. What might it mean to have more empathy toward the artists? I think often we simply look and make a quick judgement if we don’t like or like it. Is it art? Is it valuable? Is it worth my time looking (as if staring at our phones is worth it, too?) I like things that I often don’t like at first glance. I like art that troubles me or cause me to go through an effort to understand. 

No art has always been more troublesome, difficult to access, or brought me more joy than Eva Hesse’s work. This past week at the Guggenheim I saw Eva Hesse Expanded Expansion. This piece once deemed “unviable” (whatever this means) is now installed for the first time in 35 years. Expanded Expansion was created in 1969 out of Fiberglass, polyester resin, latex, and cheesecloth. The materials, oh my! The tattered cheesecloth is unnervingly interesting. Hesse’s influence is great on our perception of the ephemeral, the hard, the infrastructure of our bodies, versus the soft. Her work is cellular. As the Guggenheim writes that the piece “ is a sculptural embodiment of opposites united. Both permanence and deterioration operate in the piece: fiberglass poles—rigid, durable entities—are juxtaposed with fragile, rubber-covered cheesecloth.” Deterioration is often unviable. Hesse knew her works would evolve and change. She had guilt around selling work to collectors. And to say Eva’s career, her art was cut short is unfair to her (She died of a brain tumor at 34). Her work is here in all its deteriorating glory meeting me in the moment. I am so grateful she did the work she did. Hesse accomplished something artists often shoot for and miss, she seized and captured time.

I did not know I needed Benedict Cumberbatch reading Sol LeWitt’s letter to Eva Hesse. Artists need our empathy to do the hard work, and yes, the sometimes uncomfortable labor of noticing. Watch the dramatic reading of the letter and feel the artist reciprocity highlighted there in his words to Eva, that ultimately drove her, and drive us to those who will listen, to ... just do.

On note on taking Color & Light to the next level. I am considering a paid subscription tier to Color & Light. I am taking a poll on my current subscribers to see where you might stand on this proposition. Participate! Reasons Why:

* Support my writing and build an opportunity to cultivate my audience

* Accountability to my writing

* Directly support the development of the musical, Rodeo and other writing projects in process

What you might expect:

* Saturday Morning Reflections (subscriber) 1 post per week

* Musical writing behind-the-scenes process (subscriber) 1 post per month

* Weekly round-ups of culture (free) 1 post per week

* Photo highlights (free) 1 every month 

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One of my most profound moments on my travels along the Continental Divide in August 2020 was my time in Glacier National Park. It is by far becoming my favorite park in my psyche, almost uncontrollably as time goes by. Somehow Glacier National Park is edging out the Grand Canyon, as if I ever thought that was possible. My memories of those four days right outside the park waking up to the sunrise at the Johnny Point on the banks of the Hungry Horse Reservoir were some of my happiest days of my life. It was the light. The quality of the light was something special beyond words. And maybe it was the combination of my hammock, my camping coffee, and pine trees that made it perfect. I needed nothing else in life. The light would crest the boulders and create the halos of Kings and Queens of the Northern Rockies. It is a special kind of land. It is land of the Blackfoot tribe. At times, I feel like I was trespassing on a secret that was not necessarily meant to be found out.

As I get further away from those special days in the wilderness, I have found myself making more connections between the natural world and the artistic expressions in the early 20th century including artists Georgia O’Keefe, Ansel Adams, and Marsden Hartley. Another obsession is John James Audubon, but I will leave that for a later post. I have done deep dives into where these artists chose to live, create art, and live their lives mostly surrounded by the great wilderness of North America. They all experience a boomerang of movement from wilderness back to an urban setting (New York, Mexico City, and Paris are common threads).

I recently went to the NY Historical Society and unexpectedly learned about a new artist through the exhibit, The Art of Winold Reiss: An Immigrant Modernist. Each gallery seemed to be like a new discovery in Reiss’ impact on what we know as modern posters, typeface, metalworks, and portraiture. He was a diverse artist choosing many mediums and interests. It seemed he was curious in anything that New York City had to offer and radically advocating for diversity and inclusion along the way. He painted two of my favorite artists: Isamu Noguchi and Langston Hughes. He made friends in artist circles, as well as philanthropy across racial and economic divides. He must have been an affable man. Unsurprisingly, I turned the corner of the exhibition and was pulled to a three-fold pamphlet featuring an artist residency. Of course Reiss had an artist residency at Glacier National Park and of course he had painted portraits of the Blackfoot community as they were. As they are.

Reiss opened an art school along the shore of St. Mary Lake near the east entrance to Glacier National Park. It opened in 1931, and was open during the summers of 1934 and 1937 and included some other influential artists that I also enjoy including Charles Russell (“the cowboy artist”). He painted members of the Blackfoot tribe and the park’s wide-reaching landscapes. Much of his work was also commissioned by the Great Northern Railroad, which used his portraiture as commercial advertisement for the railroad and tourism. I came to find out that tuition to the school was waived for members of the Blackfoot tribe and a number of native artists came through the school including Albert Racine, Isabelle McKay, Stanley Croff and Victor Pepion. 

It is a great feeling to go into an exhibit of an artist you have never heard of and find a way to connect with them through unexpected ways. Seemingly, you would think that would happen every time. It doesn’t. It is the job of the curators to lift up entry points into an artist’s life and make it relevant to the viewers. I did not expect my time in the wilderness to connect to an immigrant artist from Germany in the early 20th century right in the heart of New York City. But, there it was, another inescapable pattern I recognize in myself and these artists, warring with themselves seeking wildness within and pulled towards the vibrancy of urban life, often making both happen over time.

More Reading: 

Review in The GuardianThe Art of Winold ReissA New Deal for Native Art 

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“Some people stand togetherMeanwhile, I stand apart” - A Strange Loop Final SongAs I start my quest to find my own “Stephen Sodheim,” collaborator, and composer, I am focusing on seeing as much theater as possible. Rodeo’s libretto is about 80% and I just started character development on the second musical (more to come). Considering writing a musical is an endeavor I only started two years ago, the move to New York was meant to immerse myself in the community of theater makers. I want Color & Light to be about the process and inspiration, so my audience can learn along with me. And like great writers do, they read great writing. And great theater makers, they see great theater. In the last two months, I have seen A Strange Loop three times. The musical won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and recently won Best Musical and Best Book at the Tony Awards in June 2022. (I will leave the synopsis to the below linked Terry Gross interview on NPR. The interview does a better job than I can at this point at describing the premise of the show). 

One thing I noticed seeing a piece of theater multiple times is the nuance an actor/actress brings to a role. Even the sound can be different on one night. Yet, the biggest theme for me running through A Strange Loop is the difference in family dynamics. Usher, the main character, is a large, gay Black man raised in a Christian household. There is a Black acknowledgement of qualities of life, of personalities, relationships, and belief systems that are widely spoken to Usher and around Usher. There are tenets to the family and everyone knows them. Usher’s queerness is widely spoken of and at, wildly dealt with between characters, and the conversations ricochet off each other. Silence in these family dynamics is not an option. Silence is not tolerated. Usher faces his own struggle of silence with holding back his own feelings of judgement, shame, and failure until he unleashes his own truth on his parents about three-fourths through the 90 minute show. As a white midwestern gay man raised Catholic in a suburb, silence was the chosen tool among my overwhelming white community. Silence from my parents, brothers, teachers, coaches, and other influences in my life. And it still is in many regards the chosen tool, silence has built invisible walls in my life. Neither communication “tool” is better than one another. It creates different opportunities for one to maneuver one’s life, and save yourself. Ghosting has even become a popular tool for young people not choosing to face difficult conversations. We have built our society on these tenets. Yet, it is obvious the pain caused by this acknowledgement in Usher’s life. The characters (all Usher’s thoughts) all have depth, nuance, and texture highlighted in the lyrics in A Strange Loop. Michael R Jackson noticed these opportunities and leveraged them to create robust characters out of the fragments. His music ricochets off of each audience member’s own experience of family creating a universal feeling - our own desire to be loved for who we are fully and completely. Usher’s story is not fully autobiographical, but there are pieces of Jackson’s family woven within. How can a writer not be shaped by the people around them, specifically their family?  I used to think of my own pain in silence as mosaics, shattered pieces forming a whole. After A Strange Loop, I am investigating silence in a different manner and it is difficult notion to write to, this quietness. How might one describe withdrawal, a non-recognition, a palatable fear of unknown, nothingness, and emptiness?  One of my favorite songs in the show is not a song easily listened to: Periodically. (The song is also featured in the NPR interview with Terry Gross linked below). It is difficult to piece together why the song pierced into my heart and where I noticed similar paralleled reminders came into my life. The song takes place between Usher’s mother and Usher. The reminders that “Hell is real” came daily at my Catholic grade school, on Sunday via a priest’s homily, or my parents “harmless” judgements on others in the community. Usher’s mother is desperately seeking connection with her son and is certainly truly concerned for his safety after death. If you believe in Hell and Hell is real, Jesus is the only pathway to a full life: “Hell is realThough we love youDon't repent cause you know it would please usSon, you should do it so you can see JesusHe is realAnd He loves youAnd He don't want your soul to be wastedBecause the pain of the world, he done faced it”

This comes down to acknowledgement and a recognition that the Christian paradigm does not want to make space for queer people to live a full life. Sure, Catholics are “okay” with some of us if homosexuals are celibate. The same language is now being leveraged as Monkeypox is moving through those who have multiple sexual partners and men who sleep with men (though the virus will impact everyone soon). The shaming language, the judgement, and the ignorance is the same as it was in the 80s with HIV/AIDS, the language does harm us. I never thought I would have experienced this kind of failure of our society. But, the language, actions, and chosen silence will continue to remind us that queer people are certainly “apart” from the rest of society. A Strange Loop provides a lens, possibly a microscope into one moment where these words mattered and burned into Jackson’s memory.

It is near impossible not to be inspired, to be moved to action with A Strange Loop during this time of division. Jackson worked twenty years to craft his own acknowledgement. I hope A Strange Loop will travel to your regional theaters, that you may get the opportunity to acknowledge this character’s confusion, pain, and joy. Choose to go, choose to seek it out. It is impossible for theater to take the full responsibility for changing our society because so many of these stories are limited to the darkness of the theater, a privileged space in its own right, as Jackson calls out to a primarily white Broadway audience. It provides a certain controlled space for an audience and actors to be in dialogue. 

James Baldwin wrote “To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” Michael R Jackson certainly learned how to use his painful past and create a pathway for us to heal. I have not yet drowned under the weight of my own past. I am learning to use it. I choose to cultivate and let the weeds grow out of the cracks. The young oak trees will create shadows, and the underbrush will form. I am writing a great forest, though it is young, untidy and untrimmed, the buds are beginning. It is a forest of words, of pain, of joy, of healing, and certainly, of acknowledgement. It is a familiar tree, you will recognize it. Interview with Michael R Jackson on NPR * Last week’s Color & Light entry was featured in “Substack Reads!” Welcome to my new readers! *

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This past week, I went on my third tour of Donald Judd’s studio and home in Soho, 101 Spring Street. (The only way you can see the space is by tour). I love this “house,” which is an old textile factory from the late 1800s. The light cascading through the old thick panes of glass seems as if you are wrapped in the sun’s rays. You can see shadows at play and the century plus wood soaks up the sun generously. I love the space for its simplicity. Judd was the artist of the simple line. Find the right angle. But, Judd was also an avid art collector and writer. And on the  fourth floor, as you enter his bedroom that is adorned with a major installation by his best friend, Dan Flavin and a weighty sculpture by John Chamberlin. You are often distracted by their size. But, just before. Resting on a loft space was a drawing of Mickey Mouse. Mickey, our American hero staring down at me. It was surprising. I had not seen it before in my visits, probably pulled too quickly to the floating and dream-like bedroom of Judd and his ballerina wife. The drawing was by Claes Oldenburg. Oldenburg would die three days later at 93 years old. 

I had never thought about Oldenburg’s drawings, nor had I ever seen one in person. All artists draw, doodle, or take note at some point, pencil to paper. I remarked to the Spring Street Studio guide that I think I usually like artist’s drawings more because it shows me their process along the way. She agreed quickly. It shows me that they make mistakes along the way to the great masterpieces. The artist line takes work.

 Three days later, the internet was flooded with Oldenburg memories, reflections, and odes. In my own personal reflection, this Swedish artist has had a surprising impact on my life and the places I have one time or the other called home. I have to be honest, I was never a direct fan of his (and now I find out his wife Coosje played a dominate roll in his creations as well - the wife left behind once again). I wasn’t in love with the work. I was kidding myself if I said I didn’t love seeing an oversized cheeseburger in an art museum. The work is cheeky, kitsch, high pop art, easily insta-grammable. But, I was never in love. And maybe I didn’t need to be in love with it, but there was something more in my reflection of his work.

I spent my early arts career mapping public art in Saint Louis learning about monuments to white straight men who served in the civil war or the Missouri state senate. As I was recording each name, date, material, provenance, and geo-tag of monuments that probably need more than “context” to justify their existence. Nonetheless, I came across Saint Louis’ Art Museum Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A, 1971. I had grown up wondering about this plug and wondering if it actually worked. Where is the outlet to support this larger-than-life plug? Oh, Gregory. I really wanted a giant house to plug in a giant lamp. I thought to myself, it had to work, why else would we build this? I was an advocate for form and function early on.

 From Saint Louis, I arrived in San Francisco, California as a 22-year old Midwesterner with big dreams. And of course, Oldenburg met my dreams with  Cupid’s Span (2002, Gap, Inc.) This bow over the years changed meaning multiple times along the Embarcadero, nestled comfortably against the waters of San Francisco Bay. The change in meaning was particularly evident when The Bay Lights went live in 2013. I thought the largest light sculpture in the world and the largest bow were somehow playing with each other, that the arrow might get stuck in between the nodes of lights dancing on the bridge. 

And most recently, my time in Kansas City, often escaping writer’s block in the Nelson-Atkins, the shuttle cocks greeted me. The shuttle cocks of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City  (commissioned in 1994) are possibly one of his most iconic works because of local admiration. They are iconic in Kansas City, thought not beloved right away. Icons take a while. I recently read about the thinking behind the shuttlecocks. The artists thought of the Beaux arts museum as the badminton net, the space in between. It made more sense that he was using the entire landscape as something to play with and manipulate. A backyard game of my childhood built to grand size. I often had the same thought as I did with the plug. I imagined the 5,500 pound shuttlecocks flying across the sky. How wonderful that could be? Just the mere thought is wonderful.

These giants in my homes were backdrops and reminders to keep dreaming big. They always stopped me in my tracks even if I didn’t like them that much, they stopped me. Like giants, they are imposing, but not always mean. Even a small grimmacing Mickey Mouse in New York is quickly becoming an icon for me, the biggest dream might have the smallest icon. Sometimes, giants are friendly, even funny. And I think Oldenburg knew the power of a good joke. A joke that might be going on for much longer than even my life. He played an iconic joke on all of us, and for this, he won me over. And as Adam Gopnik so wonderfully wrote in his Postscript in The New Yorker, “Still, that his monuments got made at all was a triumph of the American capacity for belief.” And just maybe, we do have a capacity to laugh at ourselves. Thank you Claes. 

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Matisse: The Red Studio at MoMA through September 10

I am now walking distance from the Museum of Modern Art, which makes my daily existence something of Sophie’s Choice for me. I ask myself, is there some way that I can skip away to the museum even for a moment? It is as if the MoMA collection is like a vortex in the desert lulling me away from the reality of mundane daily life. The great masters of Modernity are pulling me in ever closer to 53rd street. The artists in this collection have faced the great pressing questions of our time. Though I spent years with SFMOMA’s collection, the MOMA collection is unparalleled with its depth, diversity, and sheer scale. Nothing compares in modern art in the world. Not even close. I wander these galleries and they speak the truths we need to hear. Known for his mastery of color, Henri Matisse ranks in my favorite artists of all time. He also has one of the great artist beards, too. The current exhibit Matisse: The Red Studio is one of the most pleasurable small exhibits I have ever experienced. I have enjoyed the museum trend of focusing on one quality object rather than bloated exhibitions that overwhelm you. Split between two galleries, it is a bit of a treasure hunt of Matisse’s later artistic life and the story of how the painting came to be at MoMA and placing Matisse solidly as a driver in the development of the great US collection. As my friend Elspeth wrote so wonderfully here, context matters. Context here is the story. We often avoid describing the context fully. We may not even know the entire nuance of how, when, why an artist creates their work. In this exhibit, the curators act more like archeologists of Matisse than traditional art historians. This seems like a full anthropological attempt to understand Matisse as a man, a business partner, painter, and aging human. The video at the end of exhibit showed a range of curators that all approached different aspects of the painting. It was quite a collaboration, which was wonderful to see on full view and MoMA was not shy showcasing the extensive work that went into the exhibit during the pandemic.

Most of all the objects that still exist are together for the first time in a century. One of my favorite paintings on display here is the Sailor Boy, a stunningly androgynous figure.  Vibrant and layered, I love the widened eye and casual stance of this portrait. It has a certain, “Hey, look at me” quality. This sailor was not just sitting for Matisse, he was posing. No matter where I was in the gallery, I kept coming back to these eye, almost as I was struggling like I was Oedipus and the sailor was the Sphinx. (Another great painting in art history by Gustave Moreau). He was staring me down. 

Art finds its way to collections in a myriad of ways, through commission, auction, gifts, estate planning, etc. Here in the exhibit, they place letters from Board members advocating for the purchase of the picture along with Matisse’s first exhibit catalogues at MoMA. The ephemera here makes the context. People fought for this painting to be in New York. And I will end with the quote from a board member describing their own love of the picture here in the typewritten letter below. “Every time I look at it, I get such sheer pleasure out of it that any other reaction comes as an afterthought. It seems to me one of the few modern works to which the words “joyous” and “inspired” can both be applied without any qualification whatever.” I keep coming back to this painting. Maybe the picture is haunting me in the same way the rest of the collection is because I am now living a couple blocks away and it is so new for me. But, I think to myself that after three visits to the Red Studio, feeling inspired seems quite inadequate to describe the overall tenor of the painting’s impact. The painting is holistic, comprehensive, a requiem in a grand career. It seems like Matisse was finally offering up something that told us something of him not as only as a painter, but of himself as a human. 

On view in New York through Sept 10. If you aren’t in New York, the video, installation shots, and more info is all here.

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