The Chip on Molly Crabapple’s Shoulder

In this July 2024 interview, the brilliant, popular originator of what Der Spiegel magazine dubbed “art-journalism,” Molly Crabapple explained that if she carried a chip on her shoulder it was not anger at some past injustice she suffered, but for other people. Seeking to give a voice to victimized, stigmatized, and oppressed, Crabapple, has sympathetically…

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My latest INTERFACES essay–a new art form

interfaces

Voilá, the latest issue of INTERFACES, internationally renowned journal of text and image and my contribution to it–an extended essay on Frederic Tuten along with an on-camera interview with him.  Note this is not the brief commentary previously posted but an expanded discussion of the prolific author Tuten, and his art, including a first-of-its-kind art in…

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FREDERIC TUTEN FOUND A NEW JOY

“At this time of my life–someone would say, the winter of my life, although I don’t feel cold,” Frederic Tuten, novelist, essayist, short story writer, and art critic, tells of finding a new joy in painting.  “Practically no day passes where I’m not either writing and painting or painting and writing, whichever comes first in…

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Roberta Allen: “Language is the bridge…”

“Language is the bridge…” Roberta Allen began making and exhibiting her conceptual art more than a half century ago, before she came to author eight books and more than 200 works of short fiction. Indeed, as she explains in this 2021 interview, her earliest writing was about her art. Allen had her first solo exhibition…

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Charlie Brown and Spider-Man inspired Clifford Thompson

Charlie Brown, Marvel, and Clifford Thompson: Inspired by Comics

Writer-Artist 14: Clifford Thompson “Being at odds with the world around you is a common theme among personal essayists, and my first model of an artistic treatment of such themes was Peanuts.” Writing and Art Were a Single Pursuit Even as a child of seven or eight, Thompson says his attempts at writing and art…

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An Interview with Jules Feiffer

Jules Feiffer

“My goal was to overthrow the government…” – Jules Feiffer What a treat it was to chat with Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award-winning cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, author of more than 35 books, illustrator, and for decades the most widely read satirist in America. Enjoy this candid interview in which he explains how…

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“Eating with my Eyes”: The Landscapes of Guy de Maupassant

Eating with my Eyes: The Sketches of Guy de Maupassant

Writer-Artist 13: Guy de Maupassant “I have the clear and profound feeling of eating with my eyes, and digesting colors as you would digest meat and fruit.” Achieved Greatness and Wished for More France’s greatest short story writer—his first collection of short stories was in its twelfth printing in less than two years, and his…

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Poly-poly-math: Lera Auerbach is a Quadruple Threat

Poly-poly-math: Lera Auerbach is a Quadruple Threat

Writer-Artist 12: Lera Auerbach “Borderless creativity” A Living Renaissance Woman Lera Auerbach has resisted creative pigeonholing from her earliest years. Playing the piano and composing at four, she was told she must choose, that it was not possible to become both a virtuoso performer and serious composer. When, at 12, she informed her piano instructor that…

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Dylan Paints America

bob dylan paints america

Writer-Artist 11: Bob Dylan “The idea was to create pictures that would not be misinterpreted.” A 20th century icon, winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, 12 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a special Pulitzer Prize, Bob Dylan has been making art since recovering from a motorcycle accident in the 60’s, has published…

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Prolific Poet William Jay Smith Somehow Found Time to Paint

Prolific Poet William Jay Smith Remarkably Found Time to Paint

Writer-Artist 10: William Jay Smith 97 years old when he died, William Jay Smith apparently wasted not a minute of them. U.S. Poet Laureate Achieving national publication of a poem at 14, it was probably unsurprising that Smith would end up Poet Laureate of the United States, a member of the American Academy of Arts…

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