Ann McCoy, Paulina Peavy, and Olga Spiegel

By Christine Davis

NOV 2022 | ArtSeen

In this stunning exhibition, we see the work of three women whose visionary practices show us lives lived in service of reflection upon the immaterial. Although their philosophical explorations are different, McCoy, Peavy, and Spiegel all work through personal cosmologies guided by forms of knowledge outside mainstream critical discourse.

Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis

By Jarrod Shanahan and Abby Cunniff

SEPT 2022 | Field Notes

A crumbling strip of asphalt winds through the craggy countryside of eastern Kentucky, striated with power lines sagging in every direction. Wobbly pavement markings and errant skidmarks vanish at a hairpin bend buffered by low guard rails framing a rolling, sparsely tree-spotted expanse of hills. On one side of this road stands a roughly chiseled open coal seam, marking the remnants of a former mine. On the other, a bowed chain link fence capped in razor-wire announces the outer periphery of Otter Creek Correctional Facility. This remarkable image by photographer Jill Frank adorns the jacket of prison scholar Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis (New York: NYU Press, 2022), confronting the reader with the book’s central preoccupations.

Playing the Room

By Scott Gutterman

DEC 22–JAN 23 | Music

Musicians are always playing off one another, and their own sounds are altered by these different contexts. Guitarist Grant Green sounds very different on two separate recordings of “My Favorite Things,” one with the low-slung, stepped-back style of pianist Sonny Clark, another with the ethereal modal reach of pianist McCoy Tyner. And these particularities are not limited to the musicians, but to the spaces in which the music is played.

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By Bianca Stone

MARCH 2022 | Poetry

Bianca Stone is author of The Mobius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else's Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014); the children’s book A Little Called Pauline, with text by Gertrude Stein, (Penny Candy Books, 2020). Her newest poetry collection is What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022). She teaches poetry and hosts a podcast as Creative Director at the Ruth Stone House in Vermont.