​        I’m taking a short break from my “How to Stay Sane as an Artist and Art Teacher” series to review an art exhibition on display at MASS MoCA now through January 2017: Alex Da Corte’s Free Roses.
       For those who haven’t been, MASS MoCA is an art center composed of a building complex that used to be an old textile mill. They bring contemporary and thought provoking, yet accessible artists to work with the architecture and massive spaces instead of simply filling a traditional gallery setting.

​        Prior to Da Corte’s exhibition, I saw Richard Nonas in Building Nine, a mammoth, football-field-sized space. In any Chelsea gallery I’d have called the minimal wood and metal studies serene, but in the grand hall of the old textile mill they were overwhelmed and disappointing. Even the long arch of sloping, weathered railroad ties was dwarfed. 

        ​At first the exhibit seems too much to process in its variety, from large collages, neon smiling and frowning sculptures, to video of bread being stacked. The next room holds a rotating, acid-red snake made of fake nails and gems gleaming in the darkness. Everyday items are made giant, or pulled apart into odd fragments that take on new roles. Motorized components bring life to sculptures as a pair of plastic swans swim endlessly on neon-pink lit liquid, and a droning mechanical bat circles pedestals of found object sculptures.

All Hail the Sketchbook.​
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​     As a teacher, post-it notes are my best friend for keeping track of all the small things to do; as an artist, a sketchbook can be a really under-appreciated tool for sanity as well.

 ​      I seem to accumulate sketchbooks like dust bunnies, but have found that my go-to, artist-on-the-go sketchbook is a greeting card-sized, soft bound, unruled book with a band to hold the cover. It fits anywhere but is still big enough for little drawings. Spiral bound books tear up everything, and hard bound journals tend to come apart at the spine. ​