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His Sacred Incantations, Scarlett Gale, second half of that fantasy het romance duology. I liked the climactic fight against the necromancer, thought the denouement was a bit dragged out (and got so earnest as to be cringey in spots). Still, fun, I'd read more by her.
Glass Today by American Studio Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This is the catalogue from a fantastic glass show I saw at the MFA in 1997. I checked it out because I was thinking about Carol Cohen's "Little Compton" from that show, as I sometimes do, and learned online that Cohen had died in 2020 (at the age of 81, and also apparently her studio was in Cambridge - I wonder if she ever did open studios? that's a missed opportunity), and then I couldn't remember the artist who did my other favorite piece from the show. And then when I got it from the library I was reminded that the reason I hadn't bought it in the first place back in 1997 was that neither of my favorite pieces was pictured. (Also I was in college and museum stuff is always so expensive.) But it was kind of fun to flip through and see works I recognized from the MFA that I had forgotten I had first seen at that show, and lots of works I didn't remember at all. Anyways, here's "Little Compton - MFA visitors may catch the similarity to "The Vineyard", which the MFA commissioned from her because people liked "Little Compton", and which was on display near one of the staircases in the wing that has the bookstore for quite a few years. And my other favorite piece was Jay Musler's "Cityscape", which might actually be a series of similar works, but I think this photo is pretty close to my recollection of it.
(I wonder how many little pieces of paper or txt notes I have somewhere, with "cohen little compton" or "musler cityscape" on them, from forgetting one or the other and then figuring it out again? Like the other day I managed to google up Shaggy's "Boombastic" as the song from the jeans commercial - my brain likes to cough up the "mister lover lover" bit as a very brief earworm, and I would swear that it had been driving me nuts for years (and I couldn't recall if it was actually a jeans commercial or an MTV station tag, which didn't help the search), but for all I know I've figured it out and forgotten repeatedly. The Memento life, sigh.)
(The full explanation for why I'm so obsessed with this 1997 glass show involves Objectivism and my college ex and a long argument about Rodin's "Eternal Springtime" and a bigger ongoing argument about orthodox Randian benevolent-universe romantic realism vs. artists (particularly contemporary artists) doing 1) depictions of tragedy or ugliness and b) art that falls somewhere between figurative art and abstraction, like, semi-representational, which is where some of my personal favorite art lives. Like "Cityscape", which is, on the one hand, a bowl that to some people is just a bowl, and on the other hand in person a glowing crater and an utter gutpunch about the horror of war/the atomic bomb. Or like certain of Arthur Ganson's work, like the one with the artichoke petal, or the wishbone. (I haven't been to the MIT museum in years, I wonder if he's added anything new there...) Anyways, I'm not saying art singlehandedly saved me from Randroidism, but it was certainly a crack in the glass, so to speak.)
(These parentheticals are becoming much longer than the actual post but I'm also wondering now how long it's been since I've added anything to my mental list of favorite art. If I go to list things it's so much from college - who was the last new favorite artist I discovered? Anything from my 30s even? (Note I am now 45.) Hm.)
Glass Today by American Studio Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This is the catalogue from a fantastic glass show I saw at the MFA in 1997. I checked it out because I was thinking about Carol Cohen's "Little Compton" from that show, as I sometimes do, and learned online that Cohen had died in 2020 (at the age of 81, and also apparently her studio was in Cambridge - I wonder if she ever did open studios? that's a missed opportunity), and then I couldn't remember the artist who did my other favorite piece from the show. And then when I got it from the library I was reminded that the reason I hadn't bought it in the first place back in 1997 was that neither of my favorite pieces was pictured. (Also I was in college and museum stuff is always so expensive.) But it was kind of fun to flip through and see works I recognized from the MFA that I had forgotten I had first seen at that show, and lots of works I didn't remember at all. Anyways, here's "Little Compton - MFA visitors may catch the similarity to "The Vineyard", which the MFA commissioned from her because people liked "Little Compton", and which was on display near one of the staircases in the wing that has the bookstore for quite a few years. And my other favorite piece was Jay Musler's "Cityscape", which might actually be a series of similar works, but I think this photo is pretty close to my recollection of it.
(I wonder how many little pieces of paper or txt notes I have somewhere, with "cohen little compton" or "musler cityscape" on them, from forgetting one or the other and then figuring it out again? Like the other day I managed to google up Shaggy's "Boombastic" as the song from the jeans commercial - my brain likes to cough up the "mister lover lover" bit as a very brief earworm, and I would swear that it had been driving me nuts for years (and I couldn't recall if it was actually a jeans commercial or an MTV station tag, which didn't help the search), but for all I know I've figured it out and forgotten repeatedly. The Memento life, sigh.)
(The full explanation for why I'm so obsessed with this 1997 glass show involves Objectivism and my college ex and a long argument about Rodin's "Eternal Springtime" and a bigger ongoing argument about orthodox Randian benevolent-universe romantic realism vs. artists (particularly contemporary artists) doing 1) depictions of tragedy or ugliness and b) art that falls somewhere between figurative art and abstraction, like, semi-representational, which is where some of my personal favorite art lives. Like "Cityscape", which is, on the one hand, a bowl that to some people is just a bowl, and on the other hand in person a glowing crater and an utter gutpunch about the horror of war/the atomic bomb. Or like certain of Arthur Ganson's work, like the one with the artichoke petal, or the wishbone. (I haven't been to the MIT museum in years, I wonder if he's added anything new there...) Anyways, I'm not saying art singlehandedly saved me from Randroidism, but it was certainly a crack in the glass, so to speak.)
(These parentheticals are becoming much longer than the actual post but I'm also wondering now how long it's been since I've added anything to my mental list of favorite art. If I go to list things it's so much from college - who was the last new favorite artist I discovered? Anything from my 30s even? (Note I am now 45.) Hm.)
