Jane McFadden

  • Laurie Nye, Aureolin Dream, 2021, oil on linen, 44 × 34".

    Laurie Nye

    “Landscapes are culture before they are nature,” art historian Simon Schama reminds us, but the relationship can be tangled, blending sign and referent, making both new meanings and new worlds. Laurie Nye’s oil-on-linen landscapes reside here, between the quotidian and the fantastical, creating a lush commentary on the ways in which we see, imagine, and experience an idea of nature. Her visual references are wide ranging: Echoes of Art Nouveau permeated the show, and we were reminded of the long-lost dreams of the Gesamtkunstwerk, where pattern and form were meant to build a better future. Nye’s

  • passages May 07, 2018

    Marcia Hafif (1929–2018)

    AT DIFFERENT POINTS IN HER CAREER, Marcia Hafif proposed a cave, a solitary room with no distractions, and a lusthus (gazebo) in the middle of a remote forest as appropriate environments for and as art. Within the contemporary milieu, such possibilities promise particular grace, sheltering us from the chaos by which we find ourselves surrounded. She was not suggesting escape, however, for she also engaged consistently in an ongoing practice: studiously, carefully, one stroke after another. Nor was this proposal insular. Hafif’s almost lifelong practice of mark-making toward seemingly monochromatic

  • National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL, 2018. Photo: Equal Justice Initiative.

    BRYAN STEVENSON

    AT THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL for Peace and Justice, which overlooks downtown Montgomery, Alabama, more than eight hundred steel monuments hang, bearing the weight of over four thousand lynchings. A few blocks away, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration chronicles the history and continued presence of racial violence in America. Opened in April, these two cultural sites were created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) under the leadership of Bryan Stevenson in order to rewrite, and set right, the narratives regarding the African American experience. EJI was founded in 1989 and

  • National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL, 2018. Photo: Equal Justice Initiative.
    interviews April 27, 2018

    1000 Words: Bryan Stevenson

    AT THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL for Peace and Justice, which overlooks downtown Montgomery, Alabama, more than eight hundred steel monuments hang, bearing the weight of over four thousand lynchings. A few blocks away, the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration chronicles the history and continued presence of racial violence in America. Opened in April, these two cultural sites were created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) under the leadership of Bryan Stevenson in order to rewrite, and set right, the narratives regarding the African American experience. EJI was founded in 1989 and