Thought for the Day

. . . At its best, faith is the overflow of gratitude,

the attempt to live as if we are loved, the fragile hope

for something better on the other side of pain and death. . . .

~ Michael Gerson

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Quoted from Michael Gerson, "The Last Temptation" in The Atlantic, April 2018 (This is an excellent piece.)

Michael Gerson, Nationally Syndicated Columnist, The Washington Post; Senior Adviser, ONE Campaign

Michael Gerson on Twitter

Saturday Short

Today's short is the official trailer for the documentary Unfractured, which features environmental activist Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., as she and other anti-fracking protestors take on the oil and gas industry in upstate New York. (A natural gas-extraction process, fracking contaminates the environment with toxic chemicals that harm humans' health.) Steingraber is a biologist, public speaker, poet and writer, and cancer survivor. She co-founded New Yorkers Against Fracking and Concerned Health Professionals of New York.

Produced and directed by Canadian Chanda Chevannes, the documentary, which premiered last year at the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival, currently is screening around the country. Upcoming screenings are scheduled in the United States at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, April 4; and Martin Koppel Theater, Chenango Arts, Norwich, New York, April 19. Another screening is scheduled at Fast-Forward 2018 Eco-Film Festival, Erin, ON, April 25. The film is being shown this afternoon at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, D.C., as part of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital.

Unfractured on FaceBook and Vimeo

Sandra Steingraber on FaceBook 

New Yorkers Against Fracking on FaceBook 

Americans Against Fracking

Thought for the Day

Everyone has a      burning building      inside them.

~ Nick Lantz

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Quoted from Nick Lantz, "Ruin", in American Poetry Review, Vol. 47, No. 2, March/April 2018, page 34

Nick Lantz Website

Nick Lantz at Academy of American Poets and Poetry Foundation

Lantz is the author of We Don't Know We Don't Know (Graywolf Press, 2010), The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors' House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), How to Dance as the Roof Caves In (Graywolf, 2014), and You, Beast (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017).

New Artist Watch Feature at Escape Into Life

Pooja Campbell, Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart, 2017

Oil on Canvas, 48" x 36"

Copyright © Pooja Campbell

PLEASE DO NOT COPY IMAGE

I could not be more delighted than I am today to present in this month's Artist Watch for the online arts magazine Escape Into Life the work of the superbly talented painter Pooja Campbell.

A native of Bangalore, India, Pooja came to the United States in 1995 and, after earning a fine arts degree and studying textile design, settled in Maryland. In addition to attracting the attention of private collectors, Pooja's work, which is highly distinctive in style and easily identifiable for its bold, tropical-like colors, has been exhibited around the U.S. and in India.

Today's Artist Watch features eight images of Pooja's spectacular paintings, her biography, her Artist Statement, and her social media addresses. 

Pooja maintains a studio at Artist & Makers Studios, 11810 Parklawn Dr., Rockville, MD 20852. If you're in the area, be sure to stop by to introduce yourself and see Pooja's paintings.

A Trio of Don't-Misses

Take note of and don't miss the following:

★ A new documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, Leaning Into the Wind (Magnolia Pictures, 2016), directed, photographed, and edited by Thomas Riedelsheimer, is playing now in theatres. Shot between 2013 and 2016, the 93-minute English-language film, which includes Goldsworthy's daughter and assistant Holly, captures the artist at work in urban settings, dense forests, jungles, and fields of grain using such natural materials as mud, leaves, bark, rocks, clay, bracken, and even sheep to create site-specific works. Goldsworthy's locales include Scotland, France, and the United States. See the trailer at the title link above or as it appears on Vimeo, below. The documentary is an official selection of the San Francisco Film Festival, scheduled for April 4-17.

LEANING INTO THE WIND (Trailer) from filmswelike on Vimeo.

Reviews or Other Articles at Film Forum, Hyperallergic, Variety, and Screen Daily

Leaning Into the Wind on FaceBook

★ "Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings", a major survey of the work of photographer Sally Mann, opened March 4 at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and continues through May 28. Featuring more than 100 images, the show is organized into five sections: "Family", "The Land", "Last Measure", "Abide with Me", and "What Remains".

Related programming at NGA includes a public symposium, "History, Photography, and Race in the South: From the Civil War to Now", April 14, 10:30 a.m., East Building Auditorium; and two lectures, also in the East Building: "Crossing Paths", April 21, 12:00 p.m., and "The Evidence of Things Seen and Unseen", May 20, 2:00 p.m. 

A traveling exhibition, "A Thousand Crossings" will appear at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (June 30 - September 23); The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California (November 20, 2018 - February 10, 2019); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas (March 3, 2018 - May 27, 2019); Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (June 17, 2019 - September 22, 2019); and High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia (October 19, 2019 - January 20, 2020).

A 320-page exhibition catalogue (see image below) is available.

Cover Art, Sally Mann Exhibition Catalogue

★ What is it like to leave . . . your partner or your family, your career or job, the only place you've called home, or even your life? In Last Works: Lessons in Leaving (Yale University Press, January 9, 2018), Columbia University professor of religion Mark C. Taylor looks at writers' and thinkers' final reflections to discover how people confront and experience leavings and endings and to better understand the lessons others offer about life and living. Taylor's subjects include, among others, philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, medical doctor and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and novelist, essayist, publisher, and critic Virginia Woolf.

Cover Art

Read an excerpt at Yale Books blog.

Mark C. Taylor Website

Thought for the Day

. . . the extraordinary is waiting quietly. . . Light is in both

the broken bottle and the diamond. . . .

~ Mark Nepo

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Quoted from Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening (Conari Press, 2011), page 24

Mark Nepo, Poet, Spiritual Writer, Philosopher, Healing Arts Teacher

Artist Mindy Alper in Short Doc Film

When you have time, watch the 40-minute Oscar-winning documentary about Brooklyn-born artist Mindy Alper, Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (2018). (The 405 is a California freeway. Its name's significance is explained in the film.)

Both film and animation, the documentary by director and writer Frank Stiefel allows Alper to talk openly and frankly about her life and her art — drawings and papier-mache sculptures that reflect her experience of and feelings about depression, anxiety, and other physical and mental problems. She speaks movingly about her dark and isolated childhood and her need for and ability to love. Interviews, reenactments, and artwork complement the story of Alper's life, which includes commitment to a mental institution, electro-schock therapy, and a 10-year period during which she could not speak.

A resident of Los Angeles, California, Alper is a remarkable and inspiring person whose acclaimed gift for art-making is a key to her survival.

Mindy Alper at Rosamund Felsen Gallery

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 Website

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 on FaceBook

Film Trailer

(My thanks to Hyperallergic, which published an article about the documentary, "This Oscar-Winning Short Doc Animates the Life of an Unpretentious Artist" (March 6, 2018).)

Note: Go to the film's Website to see the trailer (see link above); the full documentary is no longer available via YouTube, where I first watched it in its entirety.

Thought for the Day

. . . sometimes only nothing can open the door to something else.

~ Barbara Hamby

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Quoted from Barbara Hamby, "Athena Ode", in Bird Odyssey (University of Pittsburgh Press/Pitt Poetry Series, March 2018). The text of the poem was published in The New Yorker (January 25, 2016).

Barbara Hamby, Award-Winning Poet; Short Story Writer; Distinguished University Scholar, Florida State University

If you've never read Hamby, look her up (plenty of poems are online and on her Website). She's a terrific poet.

Saturday Short

Cover Art

Today's Saturday Short is the trailer for Luisa A. Igloria's new poetry collection, the marvelously titled The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (Phoenicia Publishing, March 2018). Igloria produced the trailer with Belgian video- and sound-artist Swoon (a.k.a. Marc Neys) with whom she has collaborated on at least five other filmpoems.

If you are unfamiliar with the poetry of Igloria, who maintains a daily poetry writing practice at poet Dave Bonta's Via Negativa blog, I encourage you to browse her pieces at Dave's blog or at Igloria's own Website, and then order a chapbook or full-length collection to read. You will not be disappointed in this immensely talented poet.

Igloria, who lives in Virginia and is a professor of creative writing and English at Old Dominion University, has written more than a dozen poetry collections, including Ode to the Heart Smaller Than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014) and Night Willow (Phoenicia, 2014), and three chapbooks, and is published in numerous literary journals and periodicals, as well as anthologies. She is the recipient of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (for her poem "Auguries") and the 2014 May Swenson Poetry Award, just two of many honors that have deservedly come her way.

Luisa A. Igloria Website

Swoon Website 

Phoenicia Publishing Website