On the “about” page of his website Nick Heller shares two quotes. The first comes from poet-activist John Trudell (1946–2015): “When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and...

The day of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, I was in Berlin, standing at what’s left of the Berlin Wall. I was at the East Side Gallery, which is a series of murals painted on the east-facing side of a 4,300 foot remnant of the wall. It was created in 1990 by 118...

I want to play a part in building a safer, more equitable, and empathic society—of that much I’m certain. What’s unclear to me is how exactly I should go about doing that. Where and how should I direct my energy? My inclination is to build a relatively small and...

For much of my career I have used the conceptual space of maps, extensive research, and a painter’s vocabulary, to abstractly visualize information about historic and contemporary topics and events. I combine media including painting, collage, drawing, and printmaking...

It has been a cold winter, the first normal winter in years. The Androscoggin River is clogged with ice on its way to the ocean. As we drive along it I think of the rivers I have known. First is this river’s tributary, the Little Androscoggin, which begins at Bryant...

Tanja Hollander is a photographer best known for her Are You Really My Friend? project in which she photographed all 430 of her Facebook “friends.” Neither pure portraits nor straight documentary photographs, Hollander’s Facebook pictures are conceptual images that...

This article first appeared as John Bell, “Pictures and Puppet Performance: Peter Schumann's Bedsheet Paintings.” Puppetry Research International 1.2 (2024): 1–24. This is an edited version of the original article. Late in his life, and influenced by the isolation of...

"Look for the helpers." —Fred Rogers Robert Shetterly's Americans Who Tell the Truth Robert Shetterly's Americans Who Tell the Truth is a singular masterpiece comprised of many parts—a synthesis of art, biography, American history, and civic engagement. It is a...

This January, I joined those viewing Mary Louise Schumacher’s extraordinary film, Out of the Picture, at the Portland Museum of Art. Out of the Picture answers mourning with energy for renewal. Elegiac, investigative, and defiant, Schumacher’s film holds up a mirror...