The Art of Donna Distefano By Sara Evans Ring by Donna Distefano, inspired by Dante’s vision of Paradise: “The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Ever since the first Neanderthal strung a shell around her neck, we have had the impulse to adorn ourselves. Jewelry doesn’t feed
The Art of Chiharu Shiota These days everybody is a rolling stone. More people than ever live in a place that’s far from the town where they were born or raised. We are all, to some degree or another, on foreign ground—grappling with what it means to feel like a
By Farwa Ali Graceful, veined hands turn the seashell over in reverent contemplation. A few moments later, artist Ann Arnold tosses the seashell back into the waves lapping against the sand at San Francisco’s Baker Beach. In the documentary, Wrestling The Angel – An Artist’s Passage, this shell accompanies Arnold through a
By J. Ruth Gendler As an artist and writer, student and teacher, I have visited the Town of Qualities, written directions to the Land of the Imagjnation, lamented the exponential growth in the Lands of Glittering and Compelling Distractions, and most recently, become a sustaining member of the Library of
By L. John Harris Left: The Girl in Red, positioned where I found her at 35 Rue Guénégaud, Paris. Right: Photoshopped on a pile of discards as she was when I discovered her. From the moment I spied her leaning against a pile of junk on a Paris sidewalk, she
By Sara Evans A wallboard at this summer’s blockbuster John Singer Sargent exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum posed an intriguing question: “Do you have to be French to be a Parisienne?” For the countless young American women artists who flocked to the City of Light in the early 1900’s
An old house has an old soul, and you get the sense that all the souls that have passed through its doors since its construction are speaking to you, the current beneficiary of its many gifts—and, sometimes, its troubles. They speak to you every time you decide to alter the house in some fundamental way—and especially vocal is the architect. You wonder, “How would he or she react if I add this, remove that, or cover over this?” The responses are heard deep within.
Through my photography, I delight in the discovery of perspective, a new relationship between light and shadow, the dialogue between the man-made and the natural. And if I am lucky, I get a glimpse into the unseen whole. This is how you, too, can pursue the art of looking.
The word craft indicates strength or skill. It also means “to make something with one’s hands.” In this issue of Reinventing Home, we’ve heard makers describe their process. Now it’s time to show you how they do it.
We begin with a trip to The American Folk Art Museum in New York which showcases work by people whose skills are self-taught or whose craft was passed on through the generations. Their medium ranges from cloth, wood, and paper to clay and metal. Folk art expresses the identity of a community rather than the individuals. This five-minute film gives an overview of the museum’s collection and shows the range of items–from samplers to hand-carved whirligigs, flags and quilts to decoys and weathervanes, that we have come to think of as uniquely American.