I’ve been thinking about what makes art possible — not just the making of it, but the conditions that allow it to exist. When I studied contact improvisation with Steve Paxton at Bennington and later danced with Trisha Brown in New Mexico, I learned that trust wasn’t an abstract concept; it was physical. You lean into another person and discover that their balance supports your own. That same principle — that generosity sustains creation — runs through the story of Judson Church, Black Mountain College, and the Chelsea Hotel. Each was a kind of living experiment in mutual reliance. This post explores how those places turned community into a medium, proving that art and generosity have always been intertwined.

While reading Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Eric Gill, the English sculptor and designer, I was not only shocked by his behavior (read below), but also by the author’s matter-of-fact way of depicting it. Throughout history, we have had artists who behaved badly. In this “woke” era (I say that proudly), the inclination has been to “ghost” these artists. I advocate for something more nuanced. Let’s neither hide the facts nor erase the art. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t specific artworks I would like to stick a knife through, but that isn’t necessarily due to the bad behavior of the artist.

I’m heading into a busy stretch, and I’d love to see you at any (or all!) of these shows. Mark your calendars now, whether you catch the full summer spectrum at The Erik Laffer Gallery, a concentrated weekend burst in Greenwich, or a seaside finale in Newport, I look forward to talking color frequencies with you in person.

Six-artist show exploring the meeting point of science and poetry in visual form.

I’m heading into a busy stretch, and I’d love to see you at any (or all!) of these shows. Mark your calendars now, whether you catch the full summer spectrum at The Erik Laffer Gallery, a concentrated weekend burst in Greenwich, or a seaside finale in Newport, I look forward to talking color frequencies with you in person.

I’m heading into a busy stretch, and I’d love to see you at any (or all!) of these shows. Mark your calendars now, whether you catch the full summer spectrum at The Erik Laffer Gallery, a concentrated weekend burst in Greenwich, or a seaside finale in Newport, I look forward to talking color frequencies with you in person.

Recently, I started to take a memoir writing course with Marion Roach Smith. When Michael Marton , the German documentary filmmaker who I lived and worked with for eight years, died, I wanted to write something about our work together and I felt that Marion’s class would help me do that. Little did I know what black holes I would wander down in the process.

When I visited Japan, I was filled with questions about how the ideas about Japanese art penetrated the French market. In other words, how did Japanese art arrive on the shores of France. With that question in mind I headed south to Kyushu and on to Sasebo, where my friends lived, and with their help I was able to explore where the Dutch traded with Japan from the small, artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay.

This winter I reworked some older paintings, in some cases creating completely new works. You can see those HERE. Another direction has emerged in the work. Mostly in a square format I have been making paintings with an all-over composition. There is motion in the paintings, sometimes reflective light, many details, but also a general gestalt. You get one painting when you look at it close up, a different one from a distance, and yet another when you move in front of it. The experience of the painting can’t be replicated in a photograph. You need to see it in person.

Every art movement, from Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Symbolism, Surrealism, and Mid-Century Modernism, would not have evolved as it did without the fairly sudden and thorough inundation of Japonism in the second half of the 19th Century.