polycentrica:
I know. You’ve seen it all.
You know a lot about art and culture and you have your own opinions based on your own way of seeing the world. You’re a curious, intelligent person looking for something to float your boat on a ho-hum day, eager to drift down different currents.
Well, that’s why Brutus and I are here. I encountered Brutus the alligator while sitting in a bayou boat, touring the wet and the swamp just outside New Orleans. I sat in the boat and watched Brutus devour marshmallows and raw hot dogs.
I was meeting Mystery and Power. Brutus held me fascinated down to my very bones. He launched me into a reality of awe and otherness and I loved it. I’m not sure how often art can still do that on such a raw, unmediated basis. But I keep looking for it to happen… and every once in a while that kind of art resurfaces for me and I need to talk about it.
About me:
photo by M. Zarsky
I’ve been writing about the visual arts, culture and the environment since the mid-nineties. At first, I contributed New York reviews regularly to magazines like New Art Examiner, Art Papers and zingmagazine. Then I went on to write for and edit my own online arts journal WBURG.com from 2003-2006.
After 25 years in NYC, I made the move to southeast Queensland from Williamsburg. I fell in love with Australia’s flora and fauna, its culture and its art history. By that time I was ready to be freed up from Calvinism, Clement Greenberg and purely Eurocentric values. I like being positioned on the Earth from a different vantage point: here the moon appears differently, and so does humanity.
I continue to write for Sculpture, Artlink, Art Monthly Australia, Art & Australia, The Brooklyn Rail and The Journal of Australian Ceramics, and eyeline and for exhibition essays, books and catalogues. In 2014, I created a blog for the eco-ephemeral arts and cultural festival Lines in the Sand 2013 on Stradbroke Island that can be accessed at linesstradbroke@wordpress.com. Learn more here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lines-in-the-Sand-North-Stradbroke-Island-LTD/348402065192385
Carol Schwarzman
Windsor
July 2018
polycentrica 