Adam Blue

There are two significant and frightening bills coming before the NH House of Representatives in the near future. Both threaten to eliminate arts funding in the state:

HB 1274 would abolish the Department of Cultural Resources

HB 1285 would eliminate the Percent for Art Program

If you are an artist in NH, please contact your Representative to let them know you oppose these bills.

They go before committee on Friday, 1/20.

For complete details, including talking points and who you should be reaching out to and their contact information, please visit the New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts website.

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I’m proud to announce that Issue #10 of the Whitefish Review is out!

5 years & 10 issues!  It’s pretty wonderful that this nonprofit literary and arts journal has made it this far!  (btw- I’m delighted to be listed among the editors.)

Here’s a link to see the table of contents, this issue’s featured writers and artists, and to buy.  Check it out!

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This painting was commissioned by RSD Trucking Company. As you can guess, it was incredibly fun to make.  It’s about 8′ x 3.5′, oil on canvas.

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There are many wonderful facets to my ongoing tradition of knitting the kids a new hat every winter. The experience of sitting in the early-season warmth of the wood stove, hands working productively while a video shows, recharging with a sip of tea as the form comes together… It’s a labor of love, for sure.

This year was especially delightful as both kids are now old enough to choose their preferred yarn and could also help by braiding their own tassels.

Of course, knowing that their ears will be covered, heads toasty-warm and looking crazy-cute makes the project all the better, too…

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Always curious about the aesthetics of our contemporary condition, I’ve come across these articles that aspire to describe where we are in relationship to everybody’s new favorite closed door, the postmodern era (call it late ’60s-late ’90s).

Nicholas Bourriaud’s Altermodernism, from the 2009 Tate exhibition, is hard for me to get my head around—this mini-essay reads like a curator who considers himself an artist with a manifesto that’s a marketing tool… pretty blurry to me…

Alan Kirby’s Pseudomodernism read to me as novel in its attempt to differentiate the current from the previous in the viewer’s / reader’s perceived role as integral to the production of works / texts.  Not sure how well this model scales across disciplines, but it’s new and constructive, which I appreciated. I’m looking forward to more propositions like this one.

Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s Metamodernism read to me as pragmatic, though dissatisfying, since I suppose I carry the hope we are  transitioning into something new…  Their argument that the metamodern, as the synthesis of the modern and postmodern, has that end-of-history feel to it… The-future-is-basically-the-present-but-with-more-of-it,-isn’t-that-great notion doesn’t really inspire me to try to push it along…  Admittedly, some days it doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort to argue against this position, but it can’t be yesterday forever… can it?

If anyone has other essays to recommend – please send them my way!  I’d appreciate it.

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