As those of you who have been reading my weekly emails know, last week I wrote about seeing the movie "Mr. Turner" and the influence his work had on my work, having first seen his paintings at MOMA as a child. The response to this email took me quite by surprise. Lenny Campello, who has been publishing the blog "DC Art News" for the past twelve years, asked to publish the piece. It went up Tuesday and if you like, you can go to www.dcartnews.blogspot.com to have a look. My confidence peaked! I wondered who else might like the piece. My father, a writer, still writing and publishing and sharp as a tack at 85 (lucky me) suggested I submit it to "Lives", the back page feature of The Sunday Magazine of The New York Times. In order to do so I have re-worked the piece to make it more personal, which seems to be the thrust of what has been published there. For those of you who are interested, you can read the piece by clicking on the link at the very bottom of this page.
Witnessing this string of events, the painter, Phyllis Plattner asked if I knew how her current show might be reviewed on Lenny's site. And then asked if I might write it. So I asked Lenny and he said "Do it!" So here I am, about to write my first art review with a place to publish it to boot! Truth be told, I did write art reviews for The Antioch Record when I was in college. But that was many years ago. I won't say how many! The best moment of that gig was when I asked my fellow student and artist Joe Hart if he wanted to have a link to his audience. He replied "Links?!? Links?!! Links remind me of chains!!!" For me this summed up perfectly everything wrong with the Modernist art ethos with which I was at war.
Phyllis Plattner's show is at The Katzen Center at American University. Her work is top notch. It is particularly timely as we witness the near daily, ever escalating barbarity of ISIS. Her art can be viewed here: http://www.american.edu/cas/museum/gallery/2015/plattner-gods.cfm She is a long time professor at The Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art in Baltimore, and in my humble opinion, way under-recognized.
Had my friend with whom I saw this movie last week, chosen to see "American Sniper", my other suggestion, instead, none of this would be happening!
Please feel free to respond to this email with any thoughts you might have in response to this writing. I am very grateful to those of you who are reading this, clicking through to the links, and replying to me. It is my intention to create a meaningful dialogue with you, hoping you will feel glad that you bothered to open this email. I know for all of us, our inboxes are, inevitably, very full.
In gratitude I remain,
Amy
ps My own work is also available and can be seen be clicking here: http://www.amymarx.com
The full text of my Times submission can be seen by clicking here: https://gallery.mailchimp.com/c6955b466345466495b50be70/files/Turner_final_cut.pages