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Sit and stare

It’s a parent-led insurrection, and it’s about losing local control. Today marks the beginning of New York State Assessment for ELA and math grades 3-8. It’s my understanding that some districts will require non-compliant students to sit for the duration of the exam and do nothing. “Basically none of our children will be allowed to …

Art and depravity

Theresienstadt painting by Ela Weissberger “I remember thinking in school how I would grow up and would protect my students from unpleasant impressions, from uncertainty, from scrappy learning,” Friedl Dicker-Brandeis wrote in 1940. “Today only one thing seems important — to rouse the desire towards creative work, to make it a habit, and to teach …

It takes time

The Harvest is Plenty, 36X48, by Carol L. Douglas On Friday I had the opportunity of hearing Dr. James Romaine give a gallery talk at Roberts Wesleyan. He described a piece of art as working in three spheres. There is the material—your technical approach to the work. There is the subject. The meaning comes from …

Making it look easy

Renocation of the Kirkland Hotel, acrylic on canvas, by Bruce Bundock. Remember my pal Bruce Bundock from Kingston? He’s on a roll this year. The catalog for his Faces of Vassar is out. And he is featured in this month’s Acrylic Artist Magazine as one of five winners in the 60th anniversary show of the …

Presence

Winter Lambing, 36X48, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas It’s that season when artists gather up their slides—by which I mean the JPGs on their desktops—and send them off to be juried. Technology has advanced so that we now get the same kind of results with a point-and-shoot camera that we used to rely …

Je suis France

The ‘controversial’ street art that earned Combo a beating. On Monday I wrote about the responsibility of artists to tell the truth. In the United States, we are reasonably safe from persecution, but that isn’t the case in France. Last month 17 people were assassinated and 22 wounded in a series of terroristic attacks that …