On The Inside Looking Out

01-tumble-dryer-683x1024
There is a story that Italian artist and Picasso contemporary Gino Severini willingly gave his broken (and therefore useless) camera to Picasso, who was curious about the odd images it...

Getting Through a Pandemic: Lessons from the Past

_Pand-Lens_essay-icon_102920d
People have been responding to pandemics for centuries with fear, panic, avoidance, blame, uncertainty, and confusion. How did our ancestors get through? How do we carry on through the COVID-19...

The Fury of Nature, the Power of Resilience

DSC00499 2
I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific…2,700 miles away from the mainland of the United States…on the Big Island of Hawaii. There are five volcanoes on...

PL Recommends #6

BBC Newswatch Art Vid
Coronavirus: A global pandemic told through art (5 minutes) BBC Newsnight Art Historian James Fox In this excellent video, James Fox explores three paintings relevant to the current pandemic. Dame...

Hope and Healing

Peace Lily 3 - Hope-DSC_7501-p
For me, this image of a Peace Lily captures the spirit of the moment now that the election has been called. The flower is associated with reconciliation, hope, and healing....

Abeyance

SBennett_Interlude-24x24
As we await the results of the 2020 election, I keep looking at a composite image, Interlude, that I created last year. At first glance, it's a mundane, albeit surreal,...

United We Stand

157.  Spared 50 x 30 framed
(This post refers to works by my late husband, Bill Oakes, a visionary, educator, and prolific painter.)   It’s a good thing Bill didn’t live in these surreal times. He...

Here and Now

Horizontal color photograph of a person wearing a hoodie sweatshirt reaches out to touch the Washington Monument. Washington, D.C.
Change is the only constant we can all depend on. Democracy can be slow and filled with anxiety while we all wait for the results of the 2020 election to...

Tenterhooks: Liminal Space

SBennett-Liminal Space
This composite image, which I created a year ago, was meant to depict the concept of being suspended in liminal space. The crosswalk is the ultimate symbol of liminality. When...

Stranger Danger

Horizontal color photograph of a blurred silhouette of a statue.
As part of our inherent drive for preservation and survival, the pandemic has forced many of us to re-evaluate how we interact with others—the person we pass by on the...