This and That by JL

When I was a little kid growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens, there was a war raging in Europe. As a toddler, of course I was too little to understand the gravity of what was going on. Or was I? Something about Ukraine brought me back some eighty years to a reoccurring scene in my childhood […]

Recovering from a life-changing accident, Frida Kahlo was bedridden for many months at age 18. With a makeshift easel, a mirror and some of her father’s oils, she painted portraits of herself to fill the time. Thus began one of the most revered images in art history—that of Frida Kahlo herself—which has resonated for decades. […]

    In thinking about the uncertainty of the past 20 months, I can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that the arts in Westchester have survived. Yes, although we are somewhat battered financially, we are spiritually stronger than ever, undaunted in the knowledge that the value of the arts is not a myth, […]

Bravo to artist  Mary Lincoln Blondell, who didn’t leave the disposition of her artwork to chance. She left money in her estate to take care of her artwork after her death. She was a sculptor who was as bold in her art as she was in her determination that her work live on after her […]

For just a few moments, it felt much like a time warp, in which I was back in the Sixties in the East Village searching for some abandoned church or obscure place where there was an arts happening going on. It was always some hard-to-find place like the one in Verplank, NY, which just opened […]

Many Americans like myself have blended families. In this case, I am referring to families that have become multicultural through marriage and other means. The recent fervor to assist Afghanis to leave their country (not an easy thing to introduce strangers to a new life and certainly a traumatic circumstance) is an all too poignant […]

As we put ArtsNews to bed, we watched our Congress struggle with the meaning of infrastructure. We too struggle with this same question: What is infrastructure? Is it simply roads and bridges, as we’ve been led to believe? Or does it include other things that make life livable, or even bearable, such as health, education […]

  Hearing the roar of Niagara Falls for the first time since I was eight years old was chilling. Perhaps it was because I heard it not at the edge of the falls but in a cavernous 19th century ruin. It was at the abandoned pool house on the historic Lyndhurst estate. It was an […]