portstwillow: Good morning! Here is my new record.  All of it.  It’s nice to listen to all the way through, or in two halves.  On the floor, or looking out the window of something moving. There are no singles, though it is built from many pieces.  It is easily the largest project I have ever completed and could never have finished it without the love and support of so many others.   Thank you.  For all of it.  I really hope you enjoy listening.  xo, Nick 

portstwillow:

Good morning!

Here is my new record.  All of it.  It’s nice to listen to all the way through, or in two halves.  On the floor, or looking out the window of something moving.

There are no singles, though it is built from many pieces.  It is easily the largest project I have ever completed and could never have finished it without the love and support of so many others.  

Thank you.  For all of it. 

I really hope you enjoy listening. 

xo, Nick 

portstwillow

artaddictsanonymous: Sean Scully, Round and Round, 1985

artaddictsanonymous:

Sean Scully, Round and Round, 1985

artaddictsanonymous

halodecouturiere: Fashion week„ in Paris

halodecouturiere:

Fashion week„ in Paris

halodecouturiere

mondonoir: Glenn Littlechild, 3600 Cycle, Charcoal, spray paint, pencil and pen on paper, 2008

mondonoir:

Glenn Littlechild, 3600 Cycle, Charcoal, spray paint, pencil and pen on paper, 2008

mondonoir

an-artwork-a-day: Ad Reinhardt (American, Abstract Expressionism, 1913-1967), Black Painting, 1960-61. 60x60” (152.4x152.4cm). Oil on canvas. MoMA, New York.

an-artwork-a-day:

Ad Reinhardt (American, Abstract Expressionism, 1913-1967), Black Painting, 1960-61. 60x60” (152.4x152.4cm). Oil on canvas. MoMA, New York.

an-artwork-a-day

Untitled (Ultramarine), 1974 Robert Motherwell

Untitled (Ultramarine), 1974

Robert Motherwell

telethon

That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
It was not (to start again) what one had expected.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
from East Coker, T.S. Eliot
kcuj: Robert Goodnough

kcuj:

Robert Goodnough

heyimonline

Goal | week of May 7 - results

I got 7 finished and got started on a few others.  That nagging feeling that the prose style is boring is starting to come up again!  Onward!

excerpt…

If you were the person at the party in Brooklyn and you and I got this far into my story I figure I would have about a 50% chance of you liking me and a 50% of you despising me and excusing yourself abruptly.  Maybe, because it’s NYC and people are generally open-minded my odds might be a little bit higher.  Some people can get past a divorce – some can even call you brave for facing up to one.  It’s a little rougher that it was with a soldier.  That’s hard to get over.  People do though when they find out about it.  Maybe half, maybe a little bit more.

It’s what came after that gets me in trouble.  It’s the story I really can’t tell at a party, not anymore, not even before what happened after.   It’s the shame that I couldn’t outrun, the horror at what I couldn’t prevent; it’s the terror about what life snuck up and dealt me.  It’s the beauty of it too, the way no matter how horrible things got there was still that love-struck sun-glint moment. None of it is the stuff of cocktail hour.

  I wish it were though because it’s always with me.  Without it I feel phony.

Which is why I’m telling it now. 

But let me first just say it clearly.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry that I hurt him. 

thegetty: Detail from an illuminated initial D in a Franco-Flemish antiphonal on view in Gothic Grandeur.

thegetty:

Detail from an illuminated initial D in a Franco-Flemish antiphonal on view in Gothic Grandeur.

thegetty

cooking for the kids…

They are like locusts: Just today it was pasta with homemade red sauce, grilled panini sandwiches with cheese and pesto, fresh blackberries with yogurt, baby carrots, pesto pasta, spaghetti and meatballs and homemade whole wheat chocolate cookies.  

Turns out swapping the white flour for whole wheat was a non-event.  Who knew?

Also I think they went to Shake Shack in between all of this.

Sculptor Deborah Baldizar “I liken my sculptures to maps. Each one is a physical description of an emotional place.

Sculptor Deborah Baldizar

“I liken my sculptures to maps. Each one is a physical description of an emotional place.

archivesofamericanart: Evolution of a painting: compare this study to the finished work at the Whitney Museum. Study for The Subway, 1949. George Tooker papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

archivesofamericanart:

Evolution of a painting: compare this study to the finished work at the Whitney Museum.

Study for The Subway, 1949. George Tooker papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

archivesofamericanart

boundaries…

are what I have been practicing (aren’t we all) - even with my kids for whom I would eschew all boundaries if I were possibly able, for whom I would deplete my bank account, friendships, contacts, memory and body if I did not stop myself.  

On this particular evening, I had told my son, we are both busy.  (His sister and I).  Though you are in town for just this weekend, we are not free.  I was so proud.  I had not moved heaven and earth to accommodate his (beloved, annoying) last minute planning.  I had set a boundary.  The earth did not stop.  He still knows I love him. I still know I love him.

At 5pm today I got a text.  We’ll be there in an hour.  I texted back - we have plans.  He texted back -  See you soon.  Because he is my son I did not text back WTF?

So here is how I spent my evening.  With my daughter on her six page English paper that had to be researched and written pretty much from scratch while multitasking with my son and his girlfriend on topics as wide ranging as Jamie Oliver to Texas reproductive choice to Legos to HBO’s Girls.  

Motherhood.