Maxo Vanka’s Radical Gaze
If a focus on workers tied Vanka with New Deal artists, he diverged by drawing on Catholic spirituality and forcefully critiquing capitalism.
St. Louis Brick by Brick
To understand the history of St. Louis’s bricks is to unearth systems of power, economy, dispossession, decline, and manifest destiny; the storybook decorative brickwork we see today becomes a tale as complex—and as sinister—as American history itself.
Unlocking the Gateway to the West
My city has also not been particularly adept at acknowledging its sins, past or present, let alone attempting to atone for them.
A Love Supreme
Artists and activists continue to organize as Keith LaMar’s November execution date draws near.
The Secrets of a “Homeless Influencer”
Huck Finn had his river, Kerouac his road, Ishmael his sea. Sham has his abandoned buildings. All 21 of them. Eighteen abandoned, two under construction, one still operational. Ten cities. Thirty-five hours of exploration.
Color Bursts – The Utopian Art of Avery Williamson
Williamson struggled with processing the emotional weight of living in what seemed like relentlessly unprecedented times. "At the time, I was thinking about them as... a place to capture competing, strong emotions."
A Pink Apocalypse in Elizabeth, PA
Experiencing Danielle Mužina’s paintings at MadKat beside the river and the train tracks in Elizabeth was one of the first times I felt women were the subject of the sentence.
New York, Los Angeles, Columbus?
How art can grow from Midwestern roots.
Unbreakable: Glass in the Rust Belt
What’s left of domestic glass manufacturing in the U.S. remains concentrated in the Rust Belt–eight of the industry’s top ten employers are in Pennsylvania, New York, and the Midwest. But studio glassblowing is adding relevance to a material long forgotten by many communities shaped by it. Today, the Rust Belt is home to three of the United States’ top five hubs for glass studios.
Art that’s Rooted in the Rust Belt
Thriving creative communities can be found throughout the Rust Belt in other small- to mid-size industrial cities like Racine. Places like Sheboygan, Rockford, Peoria, Flint, South Bend, Dayton, Toledo, Canton—the list goes on.
Novelist Idra Novey on the Places That Made Her
"I came from somewhere that has a lot of character and really fascinating people who have carved out really beautiful lives, and they don't fall easily into the caricatures that we see of rural Pennsylvanian people in the news."
Dreaming at the Mattress Factory
Given that the Mattress Factory once made literal mattresses, the place where dreams most often form in our minds, it feels fitting that it’s now a site for collective dreaming.