#art

BACKWORDS blog explores the intersection between presence and history. The blog is a platform that honors the moment of encounter that any one person experiences—with art, literature, music, performance, or place. Often, reflections fit multiple categories—the opposite of a news program or style blog, BACKWORDS is not preoccupied with immediacy. An event does not need to be current to be relevant, nor does a memory need to be close to its origins to hold its potency.

Featured Posts

2020 and The One Where We All Try to Stay Sane

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Giverny, This Way

Happy Holidays!

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

Spice and Rain

Traveling with Less

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

What Kind of a Question is "What is Art?"

Lately, when I go to write about art, I’ve been feeling a little stuck. No inspiration springs effortlessly to mind. This got me thinking about art and its place in my life; how my relationship (or lack of) with it has shaped (or hasn’t) my view of the world. What came to me is a moment I remember well: I was at the Oregon Book Awards at The Armory building in downtown Portland. It was 2013 and author Ismet Prcic had just won for fiction. He was giving his acceptance speech b

Seth at the MoCA Shanghai (and me at another modern art museum)

I am unwaveringly fond of modern art museums. It’s one of the first things I look up when I search for things to do in a new city, and it was no different for my trip to Shanghai. But let me start here: Shanghai is big. Imagine a big city you’ve been to – if it’s Los Angeles, multiply the population by six, if it’s New York City, multiply by three, if it’s Delhi, you’re getting closer but you still need another 6 million. I have been to a lot of big cities, but nothing really

Andrew Wyeth: an American Artist Everybody Knows(?)

There I was, in the MoMA for the first time ever and sick to my stomach, trying to use the art as a visual antacid. It was November two years ago, and my family and I were in New York City for a couple of days before flying to Florida to go on a week-long cruise for my brother’s 30th birthday. But before the beaches and warm weather, I found myself staring at original Van Goghs and other omnipresent artists in a world-class museum. While sluggishly scanning the rooms, I remem

The Pride of Proudy

My daughter and I were in Prague, Czech Republic, making our way to the Kafka Museum when we came upon a fascinating sculpture. Proudy, by internationally famed sculptor David Cerny, greets anyone who enters the museum’s plaza from the twists and turns of alleyways along the left bank of the Vltava River. Proudy is comprised of two smiling, patina’d bronze men peeing into a pool shaped like the Czech Republic. Created by stacking slices of carved bronze, their life-size bodie

Another Rainy Wordstock Weekend: Laika Studios and Making Time for Art at the Portland Art Museum

It was another rainy Wordstock weekend in Portland. (Okay, I know this is the third post I’ve started that way, but I promise I’m going somewhere different with this one.) But it was – Wordstock weekend, I mean... and raining. And even though I got to hear a handful of fantastic authors discuss their work – namely Jeffrey Eugenides, Danzy Senna, and Ta-Nehisi Coates – there was another element of the day that stood out the most. Wordstock has been hosted at the Portland Art

Dreams of Gold

It arrived in the mail, one of my first assignments for my Master’s in Fine Arts Program: The Lady in Gold, a book by Anne-Marie O’Connor. I was accepted into a pan-European low-residency program for creative writing, and our first residency was in July, in Vienna, Austria, and the book was to be one of my weekly assignments. I didn’t know what to expect out of the “golden book,” but I had a feeling that, if the picture on the cover and the quote from The Washington Post: “Fa

Trapped by Crows

Imagine a square-shaped stage. People sitting on the floor all around. With no introduction, around 20 diverse women stand grouped together at the edges. Slowly, one enters the stage, then two, sometimes 3 at a time. Sometimes a single woman again, and so on, until all are standing throughout, each of them facing different directions. All of the women are dressed in black with a white cloth wrapped around their hair. Suddenly, half of the group begins to rock forward while th

El Anatsui and My Love of Modern Art Museums

In the Vatican Museum in Rome – on your way down to the Sistine Chapel, after weaving your way through rooms and rooms of paintings and tapestries by famous artists from hundreds of years ago – you’ll find a small display of modern art pieces. Or at least I did when I was there in the Fall of 2013. I’d spent hours upstairs taking in dark portraits and religious symbolism of the Italians masters, but while I rushed my way through the seemingly empty mid-level of the museum, so

The Art of the Victoria Art Gallery

In March I was back in Bath – just shy of 10 years after my first visit. We (my mother, her best friend, and her best friend’s sister) visited the Jane Austen Centre, the famed Roman Baths, enjoyed afternoon tea in the pump room, and popped our heads into the surrounding gift shops. The tea, the cakes, the rain, the sun, the architecture, more rain, more sun. It was a pretty (typical) day in England. After hitting up several of the more common tourist spots, we found ourselve

The Art of (Mr.) Brainwash

Outside of the context, it’s odd for me to say I was hunting for rats. It was 2012 and I was traveling solo in Berlin but had befriended a lovely Kiwi girl. We had decided to go on the “Alternative Walking Tour” offered by our hostel. Our guide was an enthusiastic ex-pat from Maine, and his normal tour quickly turned into a treasure hunt of street art. The most famous artist on display was Banksy – one of his signature designs is a rat. I found myself drawn to the idea of thi

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