In her novel The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar quotes an alchemical saying: obscurum per obscurius; ignotum per ignotius, which roughly translates, proceed toward the obscure and unknown through the still more obscure and unknown. All my work begins with my dreams, recorded in sketchbooks with narratives and drawings. These dreams are often prophetic, telling me where […]

My studio is on fire, so what do I grab? No pets here; it’s my sketchbooks. Carefully annotated and lined up on shelves, I would need a chute to send these stacks and stacks out the window, but they must be saved for they are my encyclopedia, my secrets. Ever since I can remember I […]

In his commentary on Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, John Lanchester says this book “does for [modern] man what Montaigne did in the 16th Century… In a time which celebrates fame, success, stupidity, convenience and noise, here is the perfect antidote, a hymn of praise to obscurity, failure, intelligence, difficulty, and silence.” For what is the […]

Were it not for the things we make and for those we love as evidence of a life lived, what we call Time might leave life hopelessly incomprehensible. After over thirty years of living on and off in Rome, Time, on the one hand, laughs at how little I have seen. On the other hand, […]

Se non fosse per le cose che facciamo e per coloro che amiamo a testimonianza di una vita vissuta, quello che chiamiamo Tempo, con la sua natura elastica, lascerebbe le nostre vite irrimediabilmente incomprensibili e senza senso. Dopo oltre trenta anni in cui ho vissuto più o meno frequentemente a Roma, il Tempo sembra irridere […]

Photography was provided by Karen Philippi at Philippi Photographi, Rhode Island School of Design, Russell Rudzinski and Susan Werner. This website was built by Web Programming Solutions.