Robert Schirmer’s novel Barrow’s Point won the Gival Press Novel Award and was a finalist for a Foreword INDIES Book Award. He’s also published a collection of short stories titled Living with Strangers (NYU Press), winner of the Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. His stories have appeared in a wide range of literary journals such as Glimmer Train, The Sewanee Review, Epoch, New England Review, Fiction, Byliner, Confrontation, Joyland, and The Best of Witness. Over the years he’s won an O. Henry Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Walter E. Dakin fellowship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a fellowship from The Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project. His screenplays have been optioned by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Brothers. He’s also been a Visiting Writer at the Southwest Writers Series and at Stetson University as part of the Tim Sullivan Endowment for Writing.
Selina Trepp
Selina Trepp (Swiss/American b.1973) is an artist researching economy and improvisation. Finding a balance between the intuitive and conceptual is a goal, living a life of adventure is a way, embarrassment is often a result.
She works across media, combining performance, installation, painting, and sculpture to create intricate setups that result in photos, drawings and animations.
In addition to the studio-based work, Selina is active in the experimental music scene. In this context she sings and plays the videolah, her midi controlled video synthesizer, to create projected animations in real-time as visual music. She performs with a varying cast of collaborators and as one half of Spectralina, her long running audiovisual collaboration with Dan Bitney.
Woven from Selina Trepp on Vimeo.
Michael Shewmaker
Michael Shewmaker is the author of Leviathan (2023) and Penumbra (2017), winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His recent poems appear in Best American Poetry, The Believer, Oxford American, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Yale Review, and other literary journals and anthologies. Born in Texarkana, Texas, he earned an M.F.A. from McNeese State University and a Ph.D. in creative writing from Texas Tech University. He teaches creative writing at Stanford University and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Emily.
Lissa McClure
Lissa McClure is the inaugural Executive Director of the Woodman Family Foundation, which stewards the work and legacies of Betty Woodman, Francesca Woodman, and George Woodman. She directs the vision and strategy for the Foundation with the Board of Directors and oversees its administration, operations, and partnerships. Prior to joining the Foundation, she was a longtime director of the Marian Goodman Gallery, where she worked closely with Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari, and Lawrence Weiner, and with Betty and George Woodman on behalf of Francesca Woodman. She was the founding Senior Director of Kurimanzutto New York and is currently on the Board of Directors of the John Baldessari Family Foundation.
Freefall
“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
We have no control. Our days are filled with motion for which we often take credit, actions we believe to have defined and executed of our own free will. And yet there is, at the very base of things, nothing but chaos that we have learned to deftly navigate. The neat lines of each day spin out of control more often than we may care to admit. However frustrating or frightening this may feel, the ability to allow each moment to wash over us, free of expectations and open to the unexpected, is the stuff of a rich, fulfilling life.
Varvara Keiden Shavrova spoke to us from Berlin in late August. She reported improvement from the time she arrived in early April of this year during the height of the lockdown. Whereas the city was closed off and deserted and people seemed scared, now, she says, the city has opened up with admission to museums and galleries once more allowed and cafes and restaurants brimming with guests once more. In terms of her artistic practice, the lockdown slowed her pace considerably. Despite having ample time to work, there was a void that she – like many artists – did not find conducive to creating art. In the month before we spoke, things had just begun to pick up with some shows coming up and she has begun working again in some small ways, examining surveillance as it relates to flight. To hear more about her work, including a knitted parachute she’s collaborating on, listen to the complete interview.
Nathan Hoks is a poet whose most recent book, Nests in Air, was published in 2021 by Black Ocean Press. Living in Chicago, he reports a mixed landscape when it came to the lockdown period. While some didn’t enjoy this time, Hoks found the ability to stay home to be a refreshing change from his usual commute. The pandemic exacerbated some of the themes of his recent book – namely the compressions of homelife. The parent of small children, his experience of lockdown was strongly infused with the daily labor of parenting. This coupled with learning how to teach online proved a steep curve in the beginning of lockdown. To hear more about this, his published works and live readings of poems from Nests in Air, listen to the complete interview.
A Few Words to Keep in your Pocket:
Perhaps learning to give in more easily is a better way to make our way along the path of life.
Interviews are available on iTunes as podcasts, and for Android please click here. All weekly essay pieces in a shareable format are here. The full archive of interviews here.
Books to Read
What are you reading? Add your titles to our reading list here. When we spoke, Varvara Keiden Shavrova was reading a Russian translation of Rainer Maria Rilke poems. Books by Nathan Hoks can be found here.
Deadlines:
The 19th annual Smithsonian Photo Contest is accepting submissions in multiple categories. Eight prizes will be awarded in spring 2022, including a grand prize of $2,500, six category prizes of $500 each and a reader’s choice prize of $500. For full details and to submit your work, visit the website. Deadline for submissions is November 30.
From 24 June to 20 August 2021, Marian Goodman Gallery and Holt/Smithson Foundation will present the first exhibition of Robert Smithson’s work in the gallery’s New York space. The exhibition, Abstract Cartography, will focus on a crucial five-year period in Smithson’s development: 1966 to 1971, a time when his “inklings of earthworks” began. This careful selection of artworks will trace Smithson’s radical rethinking of what art could be and where it could be found.
Brainard Carey is an author, artist and educator. He is the director of Praxis for Aesthetics. He has written six books for artists; Making it in the Art World, New Markets for Artists, The Art World Demystified, Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius, Sell Online Like a Creative Genius, and Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius. His book, Making it in the Art World, is available now with bonus content here.