They rise from earth and flame: clay fired into witness,three figures planted on the plaza like a question.One spits syllables—short, bright as flint—“Remember the border,” it says, “remember the lists.”The second counts each answer, folds it into its mouth,“Measure the rent, count the votes, soften the edge,” it counsels.The third hunches, palms pressed to its … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – Discussions #2, v.2
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Setting Up Your Ceramic Studio: Ideas & Plans from Working Artists by Virginia Scotchie
Virginia Scotchie’s compact, image-rich manual reads less like a how-to pamphlet and more like a set of curated studio portraits: clear-eyed, practical, and quietly persuasive about the idea that a maker’s workspace is an extension of their thinking. She, herself a practicing ceramist, organizes the book around photographic tours, measured floor plans, and concise commentaries … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Setting Up Your Ceramic Studio: Ideas & Plans from Working Artists by Virginia Scotchie
Revisionist Poetry – “Statue Gallery Negotiations” – Discussion #1, v.4
In the dim gallery a single bulb walks the floor.Three sculptures lean together, elbows of stone touching,a private parliament on a shared plinth. Bronze clears its throat — a small metallic scrape —and speaks first, hands like oars pointing outward:“Borders are wounds,” it says. “We stitch them with paperand call the stitch a treaty. It … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Statue Gallery Negotiations” – Discussion #1, v.4
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Art Lab for Kids: 52 Creative Adventures in Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Paper, and Mixed Media by Susan Schwake
Susan Schwake’s approach in this compact manual is quietly ambitious: deliver fine-art experiences in short, repeatable labs so that a parent, teacher, or small-group leader can run a semester’s worth of explorations with minimal prep and maximum creative payoff. The book is organized as six units (Drawing; Painting; Printmaking; Paper; Mixed Media; plus usage/how-to material) … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Art Lab for Kids: 52 Creative Adventures in Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Paper, and Mixed Media by Susan Schwake
Revisionist Poetry – “Silent Council” – Discussion #1, v.3
Three statues lean into a private parliament of stone.A single bulb makes slow decisions across their knees;bronze knuckles etch coastlines into the gallery's base,marble eyes hold the names they dare not say aloud.They quarrel with the language of the body —a cracked thumb points east, a jaw tightens like a border,a fractured nose becomes the … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Silent Council” – Discussion #1, v.3
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – American Surreal by Todd Schorr
The lavish monograph published by Last Gasp and issued as the catalogue to a mid-career retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art is more than a handsome picture book: it stages a sustained argument about how “low” imagery—cartoons, B-movies, advertising—can be retooled into a repository for moral satire, visual allegory, and painterly virtuosity. The … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – American Surreal by Todd Schorr
Revisionist Poetry – “Plinth Politics” – Discussion #1, v.2
In the dim gallery a hush leans close.Three sculptures arc into a conspiratorial semicircle —a bronze hand scratches a map across the plinth,marble brows furrow where battles once were scored.They do not speak; they point with chipped fingers,name cities like lit matches and toss them down.One bears a child's palm impressed into its flank —a … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Plinth Politics” – Discussion #1, v.2
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Dreamland by Todd Schorr
In Dreamland by Todd Schorr, the picture-book monograph performs a small, wicked miracle: it translates the tactile spectacle of Schorr’s paintings into a narrative argument about American visual fantasy — one in which commercial icons, childhood cartoons, and Old-Master technique collide and breed. The book is both a career statement and a provocation: sumptuous, obscene, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Dreamland by Todd Schorr
Revisionist Poetry – “Coin of Light” – Inner Contemplation, v.3
Her thought is a coin of light flipping in the air;I see it tumble and settle on the curve of her face.She sits—knee scabbed, thumb inked with blue—and the ordinary becomes a small cathedral. In that quiet the child returns:a comet of laughter, a paper boat on the kitchen sink,eyes like glass where new mornings … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Coin of Light” – Inner Contemplation, v.3
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger’s paired novellas arrive—delicately, maddeningly—at a place where private grief and public performance meet. In this compact book the apparently casual voice of a younger sibling steadies two very different attempts to account for Seymour Glass: one an anecdotal, gallant rescue of reputation and social scene, the other a long, digressive attempt at … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J. D. Salinger
The New Renaissance Mindset 