A suburb of Chicago, a college at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains in North
Carolina, and a former fabric shop on the lower east side of New York City are not necessarily places where you would
expect to find significant art, but our writers, two of whom have transformed their spaces into places for art, generously
share the reasons these locations are meaningful to them.
Maybe this issue is all about change. Sabina Ott, a painter whose work I have long known, has now turned the front
yard of her house in suburban Chicago into a spot where artists can come and make installations. Marc Straus, whose wonderful
poetry graced a recent issue of TAS, tells us about his galleries both in the East Village in the 80’s and the current
one on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
And
I am also delighted to present a poem by David Schuster about his visit to Black Mountain College, a place well known as the
teaching ground of many significant artists as well as the birthplace of a movement in American poetry. The college was founded
in 1933; early faculty members included German war refugees Anni and Josef Albers. Walter Gropius, Jacob Lawrence, Willem
de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Alfred Kazin, Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham, among many other distinguished
figures, all taught there. It was one of the first schools where performance art was taught. Robert Rauschenberg was a student,
and William Carlos Williams and Albert Einstein were board members.
I have always thought that different longitudes
and latitudes do not just intersect arbitrarily but define points where certain things become possible.
All my best,
