There are books you read through, books you read into, and books with which you end up having a conversation. Andrew Solomon’s extensive 443 page survey on depression (not including the 55 pages of notes and 34 pages of bibliography) is such a book. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, a 2001 National Book Award winner and a 2002 Pulitzer finalist came to me by way of my then boss’s suggestion. I think, at some point, I would have found this text on my own or through an

I have been for a while interested in the architectural layout of spaces, and how those spaces dictate or facilitate our experiences and feelings. For example, Joan Meyers-Levy (University of Minnesota) and co-author Rui (Juliet) Zhu (University of British Columbia) published a consumer research paper in 2007 titled “The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use” and found that “When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling,

Emcee and music producer Oddisee’s twelve track instrumental album The Beauty in All (2013) is an emblem of his creative process. He tours and performs between 100 to 120, sometimes 180 shows a year, so to make music he’s adjusted his recording studio to a mobile one with a hard drive full of samples, headphones, and a laptop. In an interview on Nah Right, Oddisee shared that his music is influenced by his environment, “I’m always trying to find the beauty in everything I see

Sometime in 2012, I started attending art museums and galleries because I wanted to include different modalities beyond those of literature and words. This was spurred by my interest in writers that were challenging or playing with traditional narrative and poetic form in ways that seemed architectural or painterly in scope. They treated the text as objects to be stacked and arranged, and were often accused of being haphazard and without purpose. But with some patience and a

Studio 2 @ Zoomtopia from the outside looks like a dentist’s office, the old boxy kind from the 70s. The name might cull images of a room full of yoga mats for short-distance sprinters, but it is not. The venue has a sprung dance floor, modern theatrical lighting, an excellent sound system, and bleacher-style seating for 40-100 built from un-sanded birch wood. It also houses the N.E.W (New Expressive Works) artists residency program, which is how I came to see Suniti Dernovse

I was introduced to Mary Ruefle on a road trip to Bend, Oregon when I had a fiancé, a comfortable existence—domestic and unchallenging. It was the four of us: my partner D, my brother, my good friend Matt, and me. D was driving, and seated behind him was my brother deep in a Manga on an e- reader. I was in the front passenger seat reading a book about depression. Then from behind my left shoulder the words “Madness,” “Rack,” “and” “Honey” in thick black type on an eggshell pa

This project was conceived on Park Avenue in front of the Portland Art Museum on a Sunday afternoon in July. Jenny and Phillip, post-grads and held in their adult lives, were enrolled in an art history class at the museum that day. It was gloriously bright. They had sunglasses on. They’re sunglasses-type people. Phillip lifted his shades and said, “I have a great idea.” Jenny tilted her aviators down and said, “Yeah?” And the rest, as they say, is history. Phillip found that