Dispatch from NY

On my 50th Bday, a few things worth sharing...

Hello, my fine DrawTogether GUT friends.

I interrupt our regularly scheduled program of overlooked art supplies with an official…

50th Birthday Dispatch from NY.

Soooooo serious. ;)

Yup, I turn 50 tomorrow. At last.

---

Here’s a little 50th birthday treat for you! For a limited time, you can get 22% off your subscription. Just click this button to access the sale:

---

To celebrate, this double scorpio is predictably scrapping the plan and sharing with you what I’ve been up to the past week: I gave myself a quick trip to NY to look at art and test out the new hip on the city streets. And friends, it was a revelation. A triumph! I’ve said it before/I’ll say it again: Take The Trip.

What follows are glimpses of some drawings and photos of art I saw, and a few notes on the exhibits, a GUT-style sketchbook from the past few days. My big takeaway from the week (and maybe my first 50 years) is that if something doesn’t make me feel something, then it ain’t for me. Life is too short to walk and talk in circles.

My bday wish is our assignment this week, which you’ll find at the bottom of this dispatch: that you, too, grab a sketchbook and go out into the world. Say hi to people you don’t know. Notice small moments, chance compositions, meaningful aesthetic mishaps. Go see some art, and if it strikes you, do some digging to learn more about it. Get off the screens, the internet, the socials. Go be around people. Slow down, look closely, talk to strangers, and draw. ❤️

Here’s some of the stuff I saw:

The Hotel Lobby

The Frick

The Frick just opened this year after a $220 million, 5-year renovation, and it is jawdropping. Every detail in the Gilded-Age home is beyond considered, and it made me wonder why I haven’t painted on my ceiling yet. But what I loved even more than the incredible collection of Ingres, Rembrandts, even Vermeer, was the contemporary addition to the 360-degree exhibit: the porcelain floral arrangements by artist Vladimir Kanevsky that are placed throughout the museum. Like these wild artichoke flowers and pomegranate branches below. (Yes they are entirely porcelain.) Give yourself a couple hours in the Frick and bring your sketchbook. No photos are allowed.

The Subway

The Guggenheim: Rashid Johnson

Rashid Johnson is a conceptual artist just a year or two younger than me. He works in photography, sculpture, installation, video, painting, you name it. I love how he moves from medium to medium to explore and question. The whole museum is filled with his work, including the building’s vertical atrium, where plants hang on cables, frozen in time, falling, flying, circling in space. Also, in the photo below you can see the giant grid of artifacts that constitute a collection of stories and thoughts and feelings in the form of objects, which is kind of like standing in the middle of the artist’s brain and history.

The drawings below are from his photo series titled The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club — Johnson imagined a contemporary men’s society that includes African American historical figures like Marcus Garvey, Thurgood Marshall, and Emmett Till, and photographed himself as these figures, come back to life, staring straight at you.

The Brooklyn Museum: Portraits

There’s a few great exhibitions at the BK museum, but the one on portraits grabbed me most of all. It pushes you to wonder: who gets represented, who does the representing, and how is it all presented? Three moments that struck me in the show:

1. Sasha Gordon’s self-portrait

She isn’t even 30 yet! Queer, multiracial, amazing jawdropping skill and presentation... Love what she brings to the room. So weird and creepy and smart. Zoom in on the paint!

2. The collection of “seated white people” portraits

As power and perspectives evolve and change, curators and historians (and all of us) grapple with what to do with things like seated portraits that symbolized wealth and power — and now are widely understood to represent past and present oppression. Instead of tossing these portraits out and denying the past, the curators chose to position the portraits low on the wall, offering viewers seats to sit and look at them, eye to eye, and consider what they mean to us today.

3. George Washington next to the fire extinguisher. LOL.

I love the Brooklyn Museum.

I love New York.

And while it’s officially tomorrow, I’m owning it now. And I already love being 50.

We’ve been here in DrawTogether and the Grown-Ups Table for five years. And a helluva five years it’s been. The best of times and the worst of times. And while it’s an especially hard time right now in the United States, I remain staunchly hopeful that we can move in the right direction if we do it together.

Maybe I’ll write a larger reflection in the future, but right now I’m focused on being IN IT. But real quick, cause I believe writing things down wills them into existence, on my 50th I recommit to the work I’ve been doing for, jeez, as long as i can remember: to use art and drawing and making stuff to grow and connect with each other from the inside out. And on my 50th I’m adding a small change, or maybe a return to a time a few years back: to hold it a little more lightly, prioritize the people, and enjoy it all along the way. More talking to strangers. More silliness. More joy.

That’s better.

Onwards.

Love you, DTxGUT

Pencils UP!!

xoxo,

w

Assignment: GET CURIOUS WITH ME