I write mostly about artists and books. Mentally, I’m always circling the same preoccupations: the relationship between the personal and the political, who gets taken seriously and why, and what the figure of “the artist” represents in our cultural imagination.

Art

Artist Emil Sands’ Fascination With the Mystery of the Human Form for T Magazine — The young artist Emil Sands has a mild case of cerebral palsy, which has made him acutely aware of bodies—his own and others’. That’s reflected in his paintings, which tend to feature people wearing little to no clothing. When I spoke to him, he was at an inflection point, moving away from purely natural landscapes toward more constructed ones, and wrapping up a residency with Victoria Miro in Venice ahead of his debut solo show with the gallery.

Joan Jonas’s Potluck for the American Academy of Arts and Letters for T Magazine — This assignment was equal part fun and anxiety-inducing. I was asked to cover a potluck held by the Academy of Arts and Letters at artist Joan Jonas’s Soho loft. Many of the the guests were members of the Academy, a society of 300 writers, composers, architects, and artists who are at the top of their creative fields. James Baldwin and Joan Didion were once members; today it includes Kara Walker, Laurie Anderson, Henry Threadgill, and Amy Sillman—all of whom were in attendance. At dinner, I had the good luck to sit next to the architect, artist, and activist Sharon Egretta Sutton. I was drawn to the gentle directness and openness that she brought to conversation. A few weeks later, I attended a talk she gave at Parsons Design School about her memoir-in-progress, which included recollections of growing up as a Black girl in segregated Ohio and her decision 50 years ago to embark on a teaching career and leave the hard-won comforts of her life in New York City behind.

T Introduces: Painter Brenda Draney for T Magazine — My profile of the Canadian and Cree artist Brenda Draney appeared in T Magazine as one of their “T Introduces” pieces, where the magazine spotlights a creative person having a breakout moment in their career. These pieces are very short—usually between 400 and 800 words. Sometimes what makes it into print is very different from the first draft I turn into my editor. My profile of Draney was a good example of this. She told me that when she was in art school, she'd developed a fascination with family photographs and wanted to depict them in her painting. Eventually, she realized that she was more interested in the subjectivity of memory than in documentation. Her paintings are usually very spare, inspired by composite memories reduced to an essence. The blank space invites a viewer’s own associations.

A New Documentary Spotlights the New York Sanitation Department’s First—and Only—Artist-in-Residence for Cultured — I first read Ukeles’ Maintanence Art Manifesto when I was a new mother. A friend-of-a-friend stopped by my house to grab some keys, and I must have looked pretty chaotic, because after he left, he texted me a link to Ukeles’ 1969 manifesto. It was so punk rock and true. So when I learned that the filmmaker Toby Perl Freilich had made a documentary about Ukeles, I jumped at the opportunity to interview them both. Ukeles is someone who truly believes in small-d democracy and the importance of integrating art into daily life. She’s best known for being the first and only unpaid artist in residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation, but I find “Transfer: The Maintenance of the Art Object” (1973)—one of her earlier, smaller-scale performance works—intellectually and emotionally very moving. If she’d done nothing after that, she’d still deserve accolades.

Joan Snyder Hates Art Openings and Hates Going Out for Plaster — Joan Snyder has making critically acclaimed art since the 1960s but only recent got blue chip representation, with Thaddaeus Ropac in London. This was one case where I struggled to find anything interesting to say about a subject that I didn’t feel had been said before. Writing about her gave me an intense window into the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. I really admired her determination to make art that was very much for herself, and not necessarily make it legible to others. I also appreciated the opportunity to highlight one of her newer works, Roses for Souls (2024), inspired by the genocide in Gaza.

Build It And They Will Come for Family Style — Creative Time is a unique and influential public art organization founded in the 1970s by a woman named Anita Contini. Contini was one of 50 or so people I interviewed in celebration of Creative Time’s 50th Anniversary. I did this over the course of a month. It was stressful but also hugely stimulating. I learned so much about New York and social practice art, and I got to speak to so many incredible people, including: artists Simone Leigh, Doug Aitken, Charles Gaines, Bahar Behbahani, Bill Brand, Jill Madig, Pedro Reyes, Rick Lowe, Hans Haacke, Duke Riley, members of New Red Order, and Paul Ramirez Jones; writer Sarah Schulman; curators Rashida Bumbray, Peter Eeley, Diya Vij, Nato Thompson, and Lisa Phillips.

Painter With an Eye for the Ridiculous for T Magazine — The Canadian painter Ambera Wellman’s paintings are surreal but classically refined, and she tends to work on a large scale. We spoke in advance of her first show with Hauser & Wirth, when she was completing several paintings inspired by oceanic landscapes and mythology. Many of her paintings are moody and melancholic, but they often contain surprising elements of humor that lend an image’s melodrama a sense of self-awareness. I absolutely love Wellman’s work.

With Brute Force and Steel, This Artist Creates Works of Ephemeral Beauty for The New York Times — My profile of Blanka Amezkua was part of The New York Times’ “Art of Craft” series, which spotlights individuals who have pushed a craft into the realm of art. Amezkua is a multimedia artist who grew up in Mexico and America. Around the time of Donald Trump’s first election, she traveled to Mexico and learned to make papel picado—those intricately carved banners of tissue paper often used in Mexican celebrations. Amezkua was one of the warmest, most inviting people I’ve ever interviewed. She shared so many interesting thoughts about the power of color, manual craft, and ephemerality. From my research for the article, I had the opportunity to learn about the history of papel picado itself—which, like many forms of folk art, is the result of indigenous practices and colonial influences colliding.

Stubborn Genius for Family Style – I interviewed the artist Marilyn Minter at her studio in midtown Manhattan, and wound up interviewing her chief assistant as well. The relationship between the two of them formed part of my resulting profile. This article was one of the few times I have expressed exasperation with my subject: I thought Minter’s politics and feminism were were benevolent but shallow. At the same time, Minter’s talent and work ethic are undeniable, and I was lucky to meet her.

The Sun Never Sets for Family Style — Yazan Abu Salame was one of three West Bank artists I interviewed who contributed posters to a 2024 group show, “Posters for Gaza,” organized by Zawyeh Gallery in the West Bank to raise money for civilian medical care in Gaza. (The others, Rana Samara and Vera Tamari, are linked below.) Salame is probably the least pretentious artist I’ve ever interviewed. His work is very geometric and meditative. Some of his pieces incorporate cardboard, references to the international aid many in Palestine receive in boxes, a symbol of the charity that Palestinians are forced to accept in lieu of freedom.

Painting Pleasure Into View for Family Style — My interview with the West Bank artist Rana Samara will always live in my heart. Samara didn’t study art until after she’d married her first husband and become a mother. We spoke several times over the course of 2024, when our daughters were both one-year-olds. Shortly before, I interviewed the renowned American artist Judy Chicago, when she was the subject of a retrospective at the New Museum. The retrospective included massive embroidery works that she made in the 1970s with women, many of them housewives, but I got the impression that the relationship she had with the women was highly unequal; the women were really her labor force rather than her collaborators. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I even asked Chicago about it. Soon after that experience, I got to meet Samara, whose first show out of art school included textile works made in collaboration with women in refugee camps. Her approach had been so different—less focused on perfection and more interested in the women themselves, with the art serving as their testaments.

Vera Tamari’s Art of Resourcefulness for Family Style — I spoke with Palestinian artist Vera Tamari two or three times over Zoom. Tamari has been active since the 1960s and lived through many artistic movements in and about Palestine. She’s also spent many years as a teacher. So talking to her about her life proved to be a bit of a primer in recent Palestinian art history. Her massive 2002 installation “Going for a Ride?” is incredible. I encountered anti-Palestinian censorship from my editor when publishing this Q&A. I had me omit facts and contextualizing quotes from Tamari that put Israel in a negative light.

The Afterparty for Family Style — I interviewed seminal (feminist) artist Judy Chicago in anticipation of her retrospective at the New Museum. She was also promoting a book, Judy Chicago: The Inside Story, a collection of prints and curatorial essays about her evolution as an artist. I had to conduct the interview over email, which was not ideal.

An Artist Grappling With Mexico’s Cultural Legacy for T Magazine — I love Lucía Vidales’s paintings. They’re sensual and deceptively complex. I spoke to her ahead of a large show at Guadalajara’s Museo Cabañas, home to 57 frescoes by the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco. She’s someone who’s respecting the canon by rebelling against it.

The Film World Doesn’t Know What to Make of Ja’Tovia Gary for Cultured Magazine — My first interview with the experimental filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary was over Zoom when she was in her studio in Texas. The second time was at Paula Cooper, where she was overseeing the installation of “You Smell Like Outside…,” which included her 20-minute film “Quiet As Its Kept.” In between our two conversations, I was inspired to finally read Toni Morrison’s seminal novel The Bluest Eye, from which Gary’s film takes its title. I loved the way that Gary articulated the difference between making art that’s specific and making art that’s exclusive.

Is Jim Shaw Too Weird for the Art World? for Cultured Magazine — I flew out to LA when I was seven months pregnant to interview the artist Jim Shaw. I felt a secret connection to him, because some of his work draws on the iconography of Jehovah’s Witnesses—a strange, made-in-America cult that I happened to grow up in. The occasion for this was piece was twofold: He was completing a commissioned series of installations for the mansion of a reclusive billionaire and preparing to open his first show with Gagosian.

Dawn Williams Boyd Stitches Together a New American Story for Cultured Magazine — Dawn Williams Boyd is an Atlanta-based artist who uses fabric to create large, often panoramic paintings that recall the work of the late Faith Ringgold. Frequently her works depict historical events, like the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. I cherished talking to Boyd not only because her art is incredible, but because she is someone who made art on the margins of mainstream recognition for the majority of her life, all while raising a family, holding down 9-to-5 jobs, and enriching her community.

Zoe Leonard Goes With the Flow for T Magazine — I interviewed Zoe Leonard in anticipation of a huge show at Hauser & Wirth, where she was exhibiting “Al río / To the River,” a collection of more than 300 photos that she took over the course of four years, beginning in 2016, of the river known in the U.S. as the Rio Grande and in Mexico as the Río Bravo. We discussed the ways that she tried to depict surveillance without further intruding on those being surveilled.

How to Make Floral Arrangements That Last and Last T Magazine — Lutfi Janania is a Honduras-born floral designer who has channelled his love for natural materials into a multi-hyphenate practice that includes making home goods. He won HBO’s “Full Bloom,” a competition series for avant-garde florists in the mold of “The Great British Bake Off.” One thing I will always remember from our interview was the distinction he drew between finding his voice and finding his vision: He said he’d always had vision, but needed help finding his voice. He also said he loves carnations—cheap bodega flowers that have a long vase life.

Rochelle Feinstein Makes Work That Is Purposefully Hard to Define for T Magazine — I interviewed Feinstein at her studio in Queens when she completing works for a six-gallery exhibit. At some point in her career, in the early 1990s, she really found her own groove and rejected conventional painting. I love the way her art points to its own context. She doesn’t make art in a vacuum. My interview with Feinstein deeply influenced the way I think about my fiction writing.

A Floral Designer Who Heightens the Drama of Nature for T Magazine — The floral designer and photographer Doan Ly is an artist who just happens to use flowers as a medium. I learned so much from her about the floristry profession, which, like many jobs that revolve around beauty, can be quite grueling. Ly was my first profile subject. Later, she asked me to write the forward to her first book, Still Life.

Books

A review of Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin for Washington Post

A review of Filterworld by Kyle Chayka for The Rumpus

The 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature for T Magazine

Writer Sophia Giovannitti Is Into Revenge-Based Feminism for Cultured Magazine

The 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years for T Magazine

An essay on “What Henry James (and Everyone Else) Gets Wrong About “Middlemarch” for The Millions

An essay on Natasha Warikoo’s The Diversity Bargain for The Atlantic

Lifestyle

The 25 Most Influential Postwar Men’s Wear Collections for T Magazine

The 25 Most Defining Pieces of Furniture From the Last 100 Years for T Magazine

The 25 Most Influential Postwar Women’s Wear Collections for T Magazine

The Architect Who Invited Her Mother to Be Her Next-Door Neighbor for T Magazine

The Eight Rules for Mastering Any Conversation for Vogue

Personal

Don’t Trust Your In-Laws for Elle

RIP American Apparel, May Your Sexy Staples Never Be Forgotten for InStyle