Mark Gibson's Cartoon-Inspired Illustrations Confront Injustice
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“To me, grief is the last translation of love,” Ocean Vuong says, referring to his new poetry collection, Time Is a Mother. “My life now is: Today when my mother is not here, and then whatever big yesterday where she was. It’s just two days.” In his new book, Vuong articulates his unbroken experience of grief as a queer, Vietnamese American artist. To promote its publication, Vuong read and spoke with Philadelphia Poet Laureate Airea D. Matthews at Parkway Central Library about topics ranging from wasting time watching straight boys play video games to the capitalistic limits on professional writing.
The internet is a ruthless place: Twitter wars, harsh memes, and ferocious fights in comment sections are the norm. For four days beginning on April Fool's day in 2017 (and revived for its fifth anniversary at the beginning of this month), Reddit’s r/Place subreddit was the home of much of this intensity. Instead of up– or down–voting one another’s posts, users both cooperated and competed for space on a virtual canvas as part of this online initiative.
“Po–wa–ha (water–wind–breath) is the essence of life. Existence is determined not by a physical body or other physical manifestation but by the breath, which is symbolized by the movement of the water and wind. It is the breath which flows without distinction through the entirety of animate and inanimate existences. … We flow in the Po–wa–ha along with all other manifestations of life.” — Rina Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo), 1993
On the rug of my dorm room, I set down a crystal of jagged purple amethyst and an opaque tower of selenite—a deck of tarot cards facing down in between them. When I conduct readings, I keep these two crystals on either side of the spread like guards: the amethyst, which is meant to bring one’s vibrations onto the attraction of life change, and the selenite, which is for clearing and neutralizing energy. With both present, the reading should both invite change while ensuring that it's safe. After circling my deck with some jasmine incense smoke, I hand the cards to the person I'm reading and ask them to shuffle.
It’s hard to believe that Jennifer Egan (C ‘85), six–time novelist and current president of PEN America, once doubted anything would come of her writing. Yet, for all her laurels today, Egan’s early career follows a familiar plot: Young, bright–eyed college graduate turns up in New York, only to have her hopes quashed by the big city. “I just sort of washed up as a complete mess,” recalls Egan. And for all her fellow classmates in New York, Egan felt alone.
In Western art, we tend to look for the artist before the art, curious about the personal secrets hidden in their work. In Kaiser Ke’s (C ‘24) premier exhibit, Non Sequitur, collage is the medium for art that doesn’t need meaning to vibrate with historical, cultural, and compositional resonance. “A non sequitur means a statement that does not logically follow from the previous statement … that is the essence and beauty of collage,” Kaiser says.
Renée Fleming. Joyce DiDonato. Kelli O’Hara.
A midnight blue paints the sky and streetlights adorn unassuming buildings, casting a soft glow on those passing by. This painted landscape is tranquil and uncomplicated—it could be any downtown suburban street. But in reality, it’s a dreamscape of Anna Hoppel’s (C ‘23) conception—incredibly real, yet entirely fictitious.
Mark Kocent (C ‘82, GCP ‘91, GFA ‘91) fell for Penn’s gargoyles when they called him a jackass.
As the 59th Venice Biennale announces its 2022 theme, “The Milk of Dreams," the upward trend of surreal representations becomes explicit in today’s post–pandemic art world. Living in a time of uncertainty and unknown, magical stories that go beyond logic allow us to suspend our notion of disbelief. Over spring break, I visited New York and checked out several of its museums and galleries that present novel, surreal narratives.
Hands, generally speaking, are the bane of an artist’s existence. Anyone with experience drawing from anatomy knows why: Between five fingers, as many fingernails, and a smattering of knuckles, even the most practiced artists easily lose patience. Yet, Auguste Rodin goes against the grain. “I have always,” declares the famed French sculptor, “had an intense passion for the expression of the human hands.” The Rodin Museum’s latest exhibition delves into his lifelong fascination with that most troublesome body part.
The morning of February 25, after a restless night for the world, a pencil portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky leans against the brick wall of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts lobby. Dostoevsky was exiled in a Russian prison for being a force of liberal thought and social freedom. Although a century before Vladimir Putin came to power, Dostoevsky's fate, captured in a portrait, is one that's still haunting today. In a similar act of chronological compression, Mark Stockton’s exhibition, 100 People, brings subjects that are generations apart only inches away from one another.
Reading is for nerds. Or is it? Recently, it seems like reading is for comfy sweater–wearing trendsetters who love spilling spicy details about their favorite must–read books. On TikTok, enjoying books has gained a massive cult following as users around the world build a community over their shared interest in reading.
"Once upon a time there was a railroad line / Don't ask where, brother, don't ask why / It was the road to Hell / It was hard times"—these seemingly unspirited lyrics are sung in an extremely cheerful, uplifting tone as those singing them clap and dance on the stage. It's a fascinating contradiction.
Most of women’s history is hidden in plain sight. From an unmarked painting in the background of your study session to the sidewalk you walk on to class, the souls of women linger throughout Penn. The art across campus tells a chronicle of women’s invention that has become invisible over the years. Explore these ten pieces from Woodland Walk to the Penn’s Women's Center – all either created by female artists and architects or honoring female figures in Philadelphia’s history.
When we make art, we tend to focus on the art itself, never the space where it was created.
The quickest connection people make when attempting to validate the art of hip–hop is to compare it to poetry, or more specifically, spoken word. But no genre of Black music needs to be validated, as Black musicians and artists influenced and created the roots of most popular American culture. Either way, when I think of poetry, I think of love songs. Considering a ballad is a form of verse set to music, described as a narrative poem or song, the connection between verse form, love, and music seems clear–cut. Being cautious to not reduce R&B to merely poetry with music behind it, and taking into account the complexities of the genre, there is something to be gained by exploring the lyrics of Summer Walker’s Still Over It for their poetic significance, especially considering her rocky relationship with the music producer London on da Track, and therefore perhaps to the music itself.
After graduating from Penn with a degree in Economics, getting her Masters of Public Administration, and working in corporate America for years, Airea D. Matthews finally began to actualize her deep-seated passion for poetry. Looking back on her life, Matthews knew this love was always within her, from the book of 17th–century poems she used to peruse as a child to the Toni Morrison novels she read in college, all the way to the slam poems she performed at her friend’s café during graduate school. “You nurture your passions, you don’t have to force them,” she says. “The sweet entity that poetry is stayed there, even when I was ignoring it and didn’t know it was a big part of my life.” Now, as the newest Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Matthews strives to spread her love of the art form to the city.
There’s no denying it: It’s been a rough year. From lockdown blues, to stateside political upheavals, to an escalating climate crisis, we’ve had to learn to weather the challenges as they come. In the face of all this gloominess and uncertainty, it’s no wonder that so much recent academic research has a pessimistic bent. The past year has seen a spate of research on darker subjects like death, decay, illness, and depression by prominent scholars—all against the backdrop of recent trends towards doomsaying and reactionary rhetoric in and outside of academia. Pundits all across the board sound the death knell for democracy, civil liberties, and even basic human decency. Whoever you listen to, one thing is clear: the world as we know it is ending. But in the current moment of dystopian thinking, one scholar’s work stands apart from the crowd.
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