July 22nd, 2010 | General
I cannot begin to express how much I dislike China Chow. I dislike everything about her and when she turns to the “winner” and says, “You made a true work of art,” I just wanna send her to her room for a permanent time-out. A list-serve friend described episode seven...
July 18th, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
In episode 6, a collaborative challenge was custom-designed for drama, an art school equivalent of shirts and skins in gym class. BRAVO producers determined that interpersonal tensions are entertaining in a way that the creation of art is not. In the first five...
July 17th, 2010 | General, Travel, United States
I love horses. I always have. I was a typically horse-crazy girl, collecting china figurines, assembling the stable of my dreams on note cards (drawing on one side, statistics on the other), reading everything published by Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry as well as...
July 9th, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
I predict that Miles will take home the prize. I thought this might be the case as early as the first challenge and was moderately certain by the second. I will be genuinely surprised at this point if he loses. Miles will win, not because of Simon de Pury’s...
July 2nd, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
Shock takes center stage in this episode of Work of Art—or at least it was supposed to. The celebrity du moment was Andres Serrano whose Piss Christ, a large-scale photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine, sent various members of the religious right and United...
June 25th, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
“I am a fine artist” said Judith. The idea of designing a book cover, even one for a classic novel, seemed to her to be a task beneath contempt. Mark, a contestant who makes a reasonably steady living as a commercial artist, was insulted by Judith’s comments. Did I...
June 20th, 2010 | Genealogy, General
Dear Cal and Charlie, Father’s Day comes and goes. I remind my Tattooed Boy to call his father. I try to indulge my Dear One, serving meals he likes, joining in whatever pastimes that give him pleasure. I read the remembrances and eulogies that fill the papers and...
June 18th, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
So far I have successfully resisted the bait dangled by all the reality shows. Tribal hostilities, The Donald’s flunky-wannabees, housewives, litters of children, none of these strikes me as entertainment. BRAVO got me, though, with “The Next Great Artist.” I might...
June 16th, 2010 | Friends, General, Travel
One can only hope that the arrest of Joran van der Sloot means that Natalee Holloway’s family will be allowed the grace of burying whatever remains of her body. The events in Peru that marked the 5th anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance have consumed the media. The...
May 22nd, 2010 | Education, General, Society at Large
As Michael Birnbaum writes in today’s Washington Post, “The Texas state school board gave final approval Friday to controversial social studies standards that minimize the separation of church and state and say that America is not a democracy but a ‘constitutional...
