A few thoughts on writing:

1. Let your mind wander - be careful in your exploration of associations, connections,

and possibilities. Then when you sit down to really write, be disciplined. Strive for
authority and clarity, plausibility and coherence. Build and support your arguments with
examples.

2. If you start a thought, follow through (otherwise, don’t start it). Don’t bite off too much-
a smattering of half-expressed ideas is not as meaningful as a single idea fully unfolded.

3. Vary sentence structure and length. A well-placed question can be very effective in
changing pace and engaging, even directing readers by placing the question into their
heads.

4. Enjoy the physicality of words. Gertrude Stein wrote: “In writing, a word must be for
me a really existing thing.”

Watch out for:

“I feel” or “I like”
you’re writing it, so this is implicit

Cliched, empty phrases

e.g. “to a new level”

Wordiness
e.g. “discuss my work in context with deep analysis” could be “contextualize my work”

Vague praise
e.g. “wonderful,” “interesting,” even “beautiful”

Exchanging “that” for “who”

e.g. “the artist who painted Mona Lisa”

Relying on spell check

Passive Voice
e.g. “It has a similar effect to that created by Islamic tiles.” Rather: “Islamic tiles create a
similar effect.”

Subject/verb agreement
e.g. “The series of drawings is” verb “is,” connects to “series” rather than “drawings”

Works exist in the present tense

e.g. “Mona Lisa is a portrait”

Always identify your sources

e.g. “French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote…”

Decide whether you prefer the serial comma

e.g. “apples, oranges, and pears” vs. “apples, oranges and pears” and be consistent

*above content from writer Jennifer Liese’s course Permission to Write

The Creative Captial | Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant rewards:

1. Writing about art that is rigorous, passionate, eloquent, and precise

2. Writing about art in which a keen engagement with the present is infused with an
appreciation of the historical

3. Writing about art that is neither afraid to take a stand, nor content to deliver
authoritative pronouncements, but seeks rather to pose questions and generate new
possibilities for thinking, seeing, and making.

4. Writing about art that is sensitive to both the importance and difficulty of situating
aesthetic objects within their broader social and political contexts

5. Writing about art that does not dilute or sidestep complex ideas but renders
accessible their meaning and value.

6. Writing about art that challenges creatively the limits of existing conventions, without
valorizing novelty as an end in itself.
Subject Quotes
* Unless otherwise noted, quotes are from Inside the Studio

Leon Golub
“I’m interested in the ways society is made to organize itself in terms of power.”

Paula Scher
“I’m in rebellion against the information explosion. Because information can be
accumulated, programmed, and controlled by an individual so effortlessly, the tendency
is to think it’s more believable. We should trust less not more. (Interview with Jen Liese)

Jim Dine
“I am on a lifelong journey to express my feelings about this world and myself in it. The
subject matter is essentially me.”

Robert Mapplethorpe
“ Ever since I started taking pictures, I’ve photographed sex of one kind or another.
…The photograph becomes a document of a certain moment of a certain kind of
sexuality in New York.”

Jerszy Seymour
“Living systems is about the experience of growing, making, and doing, as a
replacement for buying, consuming, and owning.” (NY Times Magazine)

Petah Coyne
“They’re about those times that are almost perfect but not quite, You go searching to
meet them again, and you’re all excited, and it’s never quite the same - and you always
have the memory. So it’s not just about people passing. It’s more about friendships that
have gone awry or people who have strayed. Just basically, humanity. That’s what all
these pieces are about.”

Duane Michals
“You know, everything is subject for photography, absolutely everything. It’s not just the
pretty faces and moonrise and the sunset…It’s called being alive at this moment, the
sixty years we’re here on the planet. How do you make this tangible? How do you really
touch things, really know they’re there?”

Andrea Zittel
“As our external worlds become more universalized and everything becomes more and
more the same, we’ve become increasingly focused on our inner world. Today we look
at the way people decorate their houses as something that reveals their soul…I don’t’
know if that’s a good thing, but I think it’s a reality, and I’m interested in trying to
examine it.”
Allan McCollum
“I’ve always been interested in the distinction between the unique object, such as
artwork, and the mass-produced object, such as something industrially produced.”

Janine Antoni
“All my work deals with … objects that mediate our intimate interaction with our bodies,
objects that replace the body, and objects that somehow define the body within the
culture.”

Mark Dion
“My work is largely about the history of natural history. I don’t really think of it as being
about nature, I think of it as being about ideas about nature.”

Fred Tomaselli
“I grew up in the shadow of Disneyland, where it was normal to look up into the night
sky and see Tinkerbell flying around amid the fireworks. This environment informed the
dislocation I later felt upon seeing my first real waterfall: I just assumed it was a
fabrication, even though I’d hiked half a day to get to it. The only waterfalls I’d ever seen
were manmade, and I actually searched for the conduit and pumps that might run it. My
mind was blown when I discovered that something so sublime was not artificial. I was a
stoner kid, a mall rat, living amidst the theme parks of Southern California, so I guess
you could say that the idea of reality slippage never seemed abnormal to me. Solid
reality was stranger. Maybe it was coming to New York seventeen years ago that gave
me the proper perspective to make art about that kind of reality slippage, that
dislocation.”

Sanford Mirling
“My current work focuses on how advanced technologies have affected people and our
environment. The images I use are mathematically based that are used as fundamental
building blocks of the pieces. This is representational of the fundamental building blocks
of life that have been acquired by science and engineering for industrial purposes. The
goal of my work is to confront the viewer with an issue that may be unpleasant but the
image is captivating. By doing this I want the viewer to question their view and
relationship with the issues.” (Franconia Sculpture Park)

Sunita Prasad
“Sunita Prasad's works often employ methods of hybridization between documentary
and fiction. These methods have included the insertion of hyperbolic acts of intimacy
into public space, using drag personas to intervene in a breast-implant crowdfunding
site, and the creation of “misgendered” re-enactments of accounts of gender
discrimination. Sunita’s projects span a variety of subjects, landing frequently on
gender, representation, and social movements.” (artist’s website)