Why subscribe?

The Conceptual Artist’s Cookbook, along with its companion web presence, The Autobiography of Paradox offers a different perspective on how to be an artist, one drawn from a lifetime of sustaining life as an artist. I am the former Artistic Director of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, one of the nation’s most venerable residency program for artists. Before that, I founded an alternative art space that programmed installation, performance, conceptual art and other non-traditional forms and in that role I was part of the movement that created the National Association of Artists Organizations. I’ve been making art for fifty years and crazy as it seems, much of the work I have made, especially the very early work from long before the internet existed, seems as though it could have been made with the internet as its intended venue. Now, as then, I am grappling with some of the questions all artists face: What value does art offer a society? What does it mean, really, to be an artist? At bottom, what qualifies something as art? You might assume there are established, certain answers to these questions, but as the Oracle at Delphi cautions, “engia pára d’ate.” Certainty brings ruin.

I invite you to come with me, talk to me as we go. Help me understand. It’s free, after all, so why not? For more about what you might find here check out the first post: THE GIFT.