Chester Arnold: Prayers and Warnings Chester Arnold is one of the Bay Area's most dramatic and powerful painters. Ten years ago his work was paired with the work of LA-based painter, James Doolin in one of the more exciting painting exhibits I'd ever seen [San Jose Museum of Art]. It made Kenneth Baker's list of the Bay Area's ten best that year. Arnold reflects: "A lot of my paintings in the last thirty years have touched on the subject of the inconsequentiality of humankind, although humankind has done a lot to damage its own environment or, as my father used to say, has peed in its own chili." Talking about technical issues, he says, "The massive centrality of an object as a compositional element has always fascinated me. How can you make that work? In design classes they say you can't do that and I always thought, that's crap. Some of my favorite paintings seem to do that." Read more »
Elaine Ling: Remote Wonders Not a lot of photographers still lug an old-fashioned view camera around. The ones who do are dedicated. Chinese Canadian Elaine Ling goes a step further. She takes time away from her medical practice to follow her passion to the world's most remote places in search of her hidden subjects: mysterious stones, ancient monuments, rare plants, petroglyphs, indigenous peoples. As she says, "I love photography and medicine." In recent photographic trips to Mongolia, she says, "My guide was a Mongolian doctor and everywhere we went we connected with doctors in the field. They would often come with me, so I bombed along the steppes in a jeep full of singing doctors and mare's milk." Read more »
Cherri Farrell: Kitchen Teachings Cherri Farrell is a natural born teacher. It's a gift that comes vividly to life in this interview as she tells one moving story after another. Home economics. Supposedly one of those less critical subjects. But listening to her made me regret not having given my own mother more respect. For many years she, too, taught home economics. Talking with Farrell, a window is opened into the rich world that's in play between teacher and student and how much a good teacher can do in this subtle realm. Kids need more teachers like this one, no matter what subject is being taught. Read more »
Pam Hiller: Reflections of a Weaver I met with Pam Hiller on a day she was leading a team of women who had designed and were weaving a knotted rug in the traditional Turkish manner. As she said, weaving "is something that's directly transmitted from one person to another." I found talking with Hiller about her own journey in this ancient craft full of surprising wisdom. Her teacher, she told me, "would never allow me to take out my mistakes. He said you have to learn to work from exactly where you find yourself and to work through it." The conversation is really a treasure of hidden teachings. Read more »
Stephen De Staebler: An Ancient Feeling Stepping through the high redwood gate at his home, I found myself in another world. Several of revered sculptor Stephen De Staebler's ceramic figures stood around his pool, along a walkway to his studio and scattered in the landscaping as if waiting for something. I'd stumbled upon an archeological site full of relics, ancient fragments and timeless figures halfway gone or partly restored. Had they been rescued from the slow process of disintegration or were they poised for some new resurrection? De Staebler greeted me and something about his ease affected me immediately. There's a quality about him, I found, a presence, that's quietly irresistible. One falls under the man's spell, which even now, years after our first meeting, brings a smile to my face. Read more »
Betsy Damon: Living Water She was studying sacred springs in China when she began meeting individuals interested in water from many different angles. Amazingly, this eventually led to an invitation to review a major water project in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan. Due to her critique, the project was scrapped. Even more amazingly, since Damon was unaffiliated with any institution or group, she was asked to design a new project. And it was built! According to Damon, it's the first municipal living water garden in the world. Situated in Chengdu, it stretches along the Yangtze River. Read more »
Nathan Oliveira: Fundamentals Oliviera reflects about how he was in search of the fundamental man. And there were strong memories of nature: "I remember after a rain the meadowlarks were out in the bush, singing a very beautiful song that I still identify with." He reflects on a life of painting, such a difficult calling! But sometimes... "Once I was back at Harvard and walked into the Fogg, and like that experience of seeing the painting of Rembrandt's son, I walked in and was suddenly startled. There was a group of Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings and suddenly, there's this incredible scream! A visual scream! You couldn't deny it. It was Van Gogh! It was just, whhoooo! [laughs] And in that room there were some awfully good paintings, but nothing could come up to that. Read more »

A collection of in-depth interviews with artists from all walks of life.

FEATURED INTERVIEWS

Demetrio Braceros: New Trail of Hope There's a little park at the end of Cayuga Street up against the concrete wall of Highway 280, where BART trains run overhead with an earsplitting whine. The day I found it, the sky was overcast. Walking in I was shocked to see so many pieces of art. It was a city park, after all. And what was an entire symphony of outsider art doing in a city park? I'd heard something about it. Read full story

Jonathan Parker: Untitled During this year's San Francisco International Film Festival, I happened upon the film Untitled, which caught my eye mainly because it dealt with the artworld. As the festival director noted in introducing the work to a full audience at the Kabuki Theater, several major films have sought to get under the skin of the art world.
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Lucidity: A Conversation with Irene Pijoan This interview took place in August of 2004. For a year, I delayed its publication. The delay is not important in terms of the content, as will be apparent. But the experience was so moving I found I needed to allow some time to pass, a kind of silence, before making the interview public. Read full story

Mary Stein: Gift of Danger I'd known Mary for years and had heard she practiced aikido. But one day I got a big shock. I learned she was close to 80. Eighty? It was hard to imagine. And five days a week, each morning she continued to workout at her dojo. Suddenly an outlandish image crossed my mind: Mary flying through the air upside down! Could that be possible? Being a photographer, I wondered if ... Read full story

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Art of Engagement

Monday, Sep 12, 2011

Why are the arts so often considered frills when it comes to what is needed in schools, in politics, in so many parts of life? The capacity for creative response is needed in all walks of life. In this issue we explore art as a tool for social engagement. Read More

Sharing the Wealth

Friday, June 27, 2011

It's been my good fortune to have more than my share of remarkable friends, and several of them appear in this issue of the newsletter. One of the joys of having a venue like this newsletter is that its a vehicle for expanding my own circle. Read More

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Conversations.org is a collection of in-depth inteviews with artists from all walks of life. It's a project of CharityFocus, a fully volunteer-run effort that aims to empower gift-economy efforts. Carrying no advertising, making the entire interviews available on-line without charge, ours is a humble effort to "be the change we wish to see in the world."

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