The Brooklyn Rail

Our new theater section editor Billy McEntee on why he stuck with the Rail as a writer and the inquisitive spirit of the publication that keeps him around as an editor. Thank you for these words Billy, happy to have you on board Until we can gather safely and celebrate the energy and ideas and connections that the Rail thrives on, we're asking our editors to tell us what it's like to helm a section, and why they stay.

Lisa Yuskavage recounting how looking at Philip Guston helped show her the way back into painting. The point she makes about humanizing, about implicating the complex ways that people may be privileged by evil actions and unjust systems is especially important today. If you're one of the nearly 100 million people who voted early, thank you. If you haven't voted yet, today is the day. Think about who stands to lose the most in this election, vote for them, if not for yourself.... Lisa references an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote from The Gulag Archipelago: If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? from a 2019 panel on Guston's late works @hauserwirth #vote #vote2020 #lisayuskavage #philipguston @the_guston_foundation

A reminder from the Rail staff: please vote tomorrow! This is one of the most important elections in our country's history. We all have our reasons for voting, but perhaps the most crucial one is to re-cement the legitimacy of the democracy. Participation gives us the grounds to hold the government accountable. The work will continue after November 3rd. #vote #vote2020

Artseen editor Ben Clifford discusses the community the Rail brought to his life as a PhD candidate, and how the Rail's vitality and "indefatigable spirit" continues on. Thank you Ben, we're happy to have your energy help drive us onwards. Until we can gather safely and celebrate the energy and ideas and connections that the Rail thrives on, we're asking our editors to tell us what it's like to helm a section, and why they stay.

Fiction editor Will Chancellor (@willchance) weighs in on his work building solidarity with the international literary community and the inspiration he gets from the interdisciplinary nature of working at the Rail and interacting with editors from other sections. Thanks for these words Will, happy to have you on board. Until we can gather safely and celebrate the energy and ideas and connections that the Rail thrives on, we're asking our editors to tell us what it's like to helm a section, and why they stay. #WillChancellor #7arts

Vermont-based painter Richard Jacobs (@richardjacobs_) joins us from his studio in Vermont for the second part of our New England weekend. Jacobs shows the latest iterations of his print-involved paintings, some snow prints made during the spring lockdown, and gives us a sense of his collective-minded art philosophy, finishing with a recitation of W.S. Merwin. Thank you for this lovely visit Richard Richard Jacobs, a Cooper Union and Yale University MFA graduate, was a Henr...y Luce Scholar in Bali in 1987. His work is represented in private and public collections that include the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the deCordova Museum, the Rose Art Museum, Fidelity Investments, and the Hall Collection. Jacobs' recent paintings follow a transition from abstraction toward an exploration of figuration and portraiture, where he combines woodcut transfers to create a conglomerate of vibrant shapes and features that equivocate spatially. Jacobs solo shows include Bali Moon at the Hammond Museum, in North Salem, NY, Portraits at Ober Gallery, Kent CT, and Slowly Turning into You, at Geary Gallery in 2017, among others. Jacobs lives and works in Putney, Vermont. #richardjacobs #newenglandpainter #WayanSika See more

Maine-based painter Kayla Mohammadi (@kaylamohammadi) joins us from the Bristol schoolhouse that serves as her studio for Weekend Journal #53. Mohammadi kicks off a weekend of New England painting, giving us a look into her multi-media painting practice, grounded in the forms and colors that surround her, some of the various stages her works go through on their way to full realization, and a look at her unruly palette. Many thanks for this visit Kayla! You can see more of Moh...ammadi's works @caldbeckgallery in Rockland and online @musacollective_boston. Kayla Mohammadi, born in San Francisco, CA, lives and works in Boston and South Bristol, Maine. Mohammadi earned an MFA from Boston University in 2002 . Her awards include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in 2014; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painters in 2008 and the Joan Mitchell Artist Residency in New Orleans; the Dedalus Foundation Award for the Vermont Studio School Fellowship in 2008; the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant in 2006; the Blanche E. Colman Award in 2004; the Constantin Alajalov Scholarship; and the Vermont Studio School Fellowship in 2001. She has also lectured about her work at institutions including Rhode Island School of Design, University of Washington, and Dartmouth College. She is currently teaching Painting via zoom and in class at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Current exhibitions include Fall Group show at Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, Maine; and Quiet/Disquiet at Musa Collective online exhibition. : Margrit Lewczuk

Last few days to see Joanna Pousette-Dart's (@joannapousettedart) show Floating World, up through October 17th @locksgallery in Philadelphia. Editor at Large Tom McGlynn (@tom_mcglynn) reviews the show in our October issue, writing, "There occurs in real time a resultant space in the gallery that wonderfully echoes such graphically virtual spaces in the artist’s paintings. And whereas the ambition of the one shot gestalt valued by such painters as Kenneth Noland and Morris ...Louis implies a will toward formal unity, Pousette-Dart offers shifting multiplicities in each of her paintings." You can read the rest of McGlynn's historically-grounded review in our most recent issue, and see Pousette-Dart's works in the physical plane by making an appointment at Locks Gallery. Video from Locks Gallery, excerpted by the Brooklyn Rail. #JoannaPousetteDart #TomMcGlynn #LocksGallery #KennethNoland #MorrisLouis

Artists Felix Bernstein and Gabe Rubin deliver an actual video artwork to us this weekend with a drag rendition of Stephen Schwartz's Meadowlark as Ms. Frazzle and Mx. Dazzle in high YouTube style for this Weekend Journal #53. Felix Bernstein and Gabe Rubin are Brooklyn-based artists. Bernstein and Rubin’s multifaceted approach to composition encompasses theater, film, poetry, and digital media. Often performing as fictional, anachronous personae, they employ the elasticity of theatricality in moments of tenuous changeover and transition. Their work together has been presented at MOCA Los Angeles, Issue Project Room, Anthology Film Archives, the Drawing Center, Reena Spaulings Fine Arts, Pilar Corrias Gallery, Artists Space, David Lewis Gallery, the Kitchen, LUMA Westbau, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. #gaberubin #felixbernstein

Legendary New York artist Dorothea Rockburne joins us from her SoHo loft for a tour around the historic space, talking about her recent work with knot theoryan idea that has been percolating since her time at Black Mountain Collegeand the way her work fits into her cosmology, in Weekend Journal #52. Many thanks for this gorgeous visit Dorothea! Dorothea Rockburne was born in 1932 in Montreal, where she studied art and philosophy before attending Black Mountain College near ...Asheville, North Carolina, from 1950 to 1954. After moving to New York City in 1954, she became involved with the nascent Judson Dance Theater, and later participated in Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy (1964), among other notable performances. Her work has been featured in two solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1981 and 201314) and a major retrospective at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York (2011), which traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. She was the 2020 recipient of the Guild Hall Prize. Her work is included in many museum collections worldwide including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the National Galleries in Washington DC. Rockburne resides in New York. #dorothearockburne See more

Until we can gather safely and celebrate the energy and ideas and connections that the Rail thrives on, we're asking our editors to tell us what it's like to helm a section, and why they stay. Longtime music editor George Grella (@gtra1n) kicks the series off with a touching tribute to the our democratic ethic. Thanks so much George! #georgegrella #nycmusic #survivingsandy

A visit to the transcendent Susan Bee's (@susan_bee_1) show @airgallery this weekend, alongside works by Ivy Dachman (@ivydachman), and Crys Yin (@crysyin). You can see Bee's incredible mythological paintings by appointment through October 11th, and catch up with her feature interview from last spring (when the show was meant to open) in our Aril 2020 issue. #SusanBee

Painter Lisa Beck (@lisabeck58) joins us from Sunset Park to show us what she's been working on these last six months in Weekend Journal #51. Beck's floating, spaced out worlds are resonating deeply these days. Thank you for the visit Lisa! Lisa Beck is a Brooklyn-based painter. Since the 1980s, her work has been exhibited in the US and internationally in venues including MoMA PS1, White Columns, MAMCO Museé d’ Art moderne et contemporain (Geneva), Circuit, (Lausanne), Port...land Institute of Contemporary Art (OR) and the New Britain Museum of American Art (CT). Her work was the subject of a 2013 survey show, Endless, at the Fort du Brussin, a hors le murs exhibition by La Salle de Bains, in Lyon, France. Her work has been reviewed in the NewYork Times, the New Yorker, Artforum , Frieze, Beck’s work is included in collections of the Tang Teaching Museum of Skidmore College; the Maramotti Collection, Italy; the FRAC pays de la Loire, France; Museé des Beaux-Arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; JP Morgan Chase; Nestlé; Progressive and many private collections. She was a resident at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program Studio Residency in Brooklyn in 2012-13 and will have a residency at Yaddo in 2021. #lisabeck by Kevin Bud Jones (@kbudj)