Woman in Orbit

Bruce Herman

(Gloucester, MA)

Bruce Herman is the kind of artist whose work reminds you that some things can't be said with words, so I won't try to elaborate on the statements he's made here with pencil and paint.  But one thing I do love about these trades: how a recognizable image emerges so quickly from the few lines of the pencil drawing, while all the color and motion of the image fully covered in paint leaves you only with a thought, a feeling, or a hint.

Independent Study

Dillies P.
(Marlboro, NJ)

   

One of the things I love about books is that, although a writer spends years of her life to write one, the magic of printing makes them so affordable that teenagers can pick up used copies of the greatest literature of all time for pennies.  No other art form is so democratic.  The privilege of reading Crime and Punishment or War and Peace should cost us thousands of dollars, but it doesn't.

Dillies P. is a teacher of literature, and as her trade, she designed an independent study for me of some of her own favorite stories: A Simple Heart by Flaubert, The Killers by Ernest Hemingway, The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O'Connor, Day of the Butterfly by Alice Munroe, The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud, The Greatest Man in the World by James Thurber, Hands by Sherwood Anderson, Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl, and The Lady with the Pet Dog by Anton Chekhov.  It's an undeniable treasure trove, but also: a free gift.