MQR Online

Good Material: Toward Rigor and Resolution in the New Year

The artists I know are perfectionists, heartlessly so, because that is required. They will paint right over a failed canvas; they will rip out every stitch and start anew. The artist comes to her material with an mix of control and surrender, and her success seems to rely on her ability to grasp a material’s specific demands, while reconciling those with her own vision. There is something there, in the material, that works against you—which requires rigor, but might bring relief.

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On “Children of the New World”: An Interview with Alexander Weinstein

“Humor helps the heart to open. And heartfelt laughter leads us towards greater connection with those around us. If you can find a way to share humor with others, then there’s an openness towards greater listening and compassion. With the serious topics I write about […] there’s a way such stories can calcify the heart if one isn’t careful. I noticed this in my teaching—if I’m just giving my students the disturbing facts about humanity without humor, it can lead to depression, discouragement, and a deeper political/social apathy. So, humor seems to restore our humanity to us—it allows us to deal with suffering with a more open heart.”

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An Interview with Isaac Fitzgerald on “Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos”

“It was about showcasing a range of stories — from heartbreaking to absolutely hilarious. One of my favorite stories in Pen is of the woman who had ‘Pizza Party’ inked on her toes. I was like, ‘Hey, what’s your story?’ and she was like, ‘I just fucking love pizza.’ So, you’re trying to let the hilarity of something like that come through, too. We wanted there to be a bit of a narrative if you read it from front to end, but something you could also just pick up and flip around.”

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Delicate Things: Finding Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was a photographer who is well known for her surreal, black and white photography of which she is often the subject. The daughter of a family of artists, Francesca studied photography at RISD and in Italy, ultimately settling in New York City, where she had a studio. She died in 1982 at age twenty-two by suicide, jumping out of the Barbizon building.

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When Scripts Are Not Enough: Finding Your Voice Post-Election

Even if they don’t, even if our stories are met with apathy, with disdain, I believe our enduring anger and our passion require them. These stories sustain my activism because they make concrete the issues that, for me, have always had a certain looming intangibility to them. Scripts are not enough, and they were never meant to be enough. The best thing my scripts ever did was open up a channel to the people in my community. To force me to ask the questions that I had never thought to ask.

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