Monthly Conversations

Interviews with Social Artists, Uncommon Heroes

Newsletter #20 -- July 1, 2011

From the Editor

Richard Whittaker

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. [more]

More Conversations

• Jacob Needleman Interviews Nipun Mehta
• The Way North, Mary Stein
• Paul Van Slambrouck: A Moment Along the Mississippi River

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Peter Selz: A Life in Art

Among other things, in the basement of that building Bucky Fuller and some students designed the first geodesic dome. He came as a guest professor every once in a while. Gropius came from Harvard. He was a friend of Moholy-Nagy's. Gropius was the original head of the Bauhaus, and then, at the end, Mies Van Der Rohe became head of the Bauhaus. He was also in Chicago. The people who decided to come there knew what they were coming to -- to this wonderful experimental school, which tried to educate the whole personality as a creative human being.

Remote Wonders: Interview Elaine Ling

I use the desert as my lead. That's how I started my Mongolian project. I wanted to go to the Gobi. I didn't know much about it, so I said, 'Let's go to the Gobi desert and see what's there.' Then the project took on a life of it's own as I was finding the deer stones and meeting the Nomads. The same thing happened with my recent project of the baobab trees. I wanted to see the Sahara again and I decided to travel through Mali up to Timbucktu, and go into the Sahara. So that's when I first saw the baobab trees. That led me to other baobabs in South Africa and Madagascar.