works & conversations

works & conversations art news that stays news

Here's something worth watching...
12/22/2020

Here's something worth watching...

This 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, is an incredible story of how degraded, gorse-infested farmland, has been regenerated into beautiful native forest over the course of 30 years. Once considered a plan expected only of fools and dreamers, m...

This treasure sat in a folder on my computer for seven years. How did that happen? There are several others sitting ther...
08/22/2020

This treasure sat in a folder on my computer for seven years. How did that happen? There are several others sitting there, too. But not this one any more, I'm happy to say...

A collection of in-depth interviews with artists from all walks of life. Founded by Richard Whittaker.

08/10/2020

Here's a lovely little artist video that just came my way

A great interview featured today on DailyGood. It's long, as usual for my interviews, but worth it. Milford Zornes led t...
08/08/2020

A great interview featured today on DailyGood. It's long, as usual for my interviews, but worth it. Milford Zornes led the quintessential life of an artist.

When I met Milford, he was 97 and blind. I met him on Friday and on Saturday he was going to give a watercolor workshop. Earlier that Friday, I

Just posted a piece I wrote this almost 20 years ago when w&c #5 was published. That issue's center piece was my interv...
07/19/2020

Just posted a piece I wrote this almost 20 years ago when w&c #5 was published. That issue's center piece was my interview with Paolo Soleri (who had stopped giving interviews), but also included my account of all that led up to it - a most memorable experience....

A collection of in-depth interviews with artists from all walks of life. Founded by Richard Whittaker.

03/31/2020

Here are a few quotes I like from the recent, long interview Pavi Mehta and I did with artist Pat Benincasa:

"When Heidegger asks: What is a thing? His answer was “you know what a thing is by the way it gathers the world unto itself.” It gave me a way to understand art: you know what art is by the way it gathers the world unto itself. Art is a point of proximity that dissolves the distinction between our “here” and “there” as it pulls us toward each other."

"Who’s to say that art school defines what’s creative? I’m getting pi**ed by that, because what is creativity? It spills into other buckets, it doesn’t stay in one."

"The second you put in things that are not logical—like listening to your ancestors, or being guided by unseen things and paying attention to them—someone thinks they just turned on 'The Twilight Zone.'"

"Artists are storytellers; that’s what we do. That’s how we know each other. I can see an art kid coming into the building; I can spot them a mile away. It’s almost like it’s tattooed on their forehead."

"I don’t really feel part of this art world. I just feel like I’m doing my thing. I find like-minded people. If I can touch lives, and if my life is touched,—to me that’s the art world, the one I care about."

There are lots more.

I just revisited this powerful interview. It's a sobering read. http://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=353 Less than...
01/27/2020

I just revisited this powerful interview. It's a sobering read.
http://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=353 Less than a hundred years ago, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of approximately twenty-three thousand square miles. By 2007 it was only about 10% of its former size.

A great, unexpected interview: http://www.dailygood.org/2020/01/04/the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping/ featured yesterday a...
01/06/2020

A great, unexpected interview: http://www.dailygood.org/2020/01/04/the-sound-of-one-hand-clapping/ featured yesterday and as good as ever... over 3300 reads in a day and a half so far...

One morning in a local coffee shop, I was surprised to see a man at work on a little painting at a table nearby. It wasnt a place where artists gathered. I walked over, took a peek, and was surprised again. It was really good. I complimented the stranger on his work. He seemed to welcome the....

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conversations with artists

Began in 1998, each issue features in-depth interviews, portfolios and other features.

In the early 1980s, as an artist myself, I was dismayed by the jargon and technical prose typical of the critical writing about art I was encountering. As a philosophy grad, I wasn’t intimidated as much as dismayed. This wasn’t what art was really about, as far as I was concerned, and works & conversations emerged as my own response. In talking with artists I discovered a sense of common ground. A K Coomaraswamy’s statement that “the artist is not a special man, but rather each man is a special kind of artist” is closer to the way I see it. Eventually, I began to include interviews with people not conventionally seen as artists. But, as Ann Hatch, founder (with Robert Mondavi) of the Oxbow school so deeply insists, “creativity is needed in all walks of life.” Let me leave you with another quote, this one from Joseph Beuys: “Creativity isn’t the monopoly of artists, this is the crucial fact I’ve come to realize, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art.”

Our print magazine is published twice a year.

Visit our website at www.conversations.org