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A “favorites” list that is more like a series of visual conversations I’m in at the moment.
Some of my current favorites are about form, some about feeling, some I’m figuring out.
All of them are changing how I look.
Exhaust & Reflect (2026) is one of those paintings I keep circling back to. I first saw an image of it online while on a recent trip to Mexico City with friends, and I was instantly drawn to the intimacy of the composition, as I tend to be with so much of Andy’s work. She has this ability to make the simple look wonderful, though I suppose it already is. Our interior worlds, the quiet rituals that shape our days, often feel more important than any grand external display of life. For me, Andy gets that.
Of course, as an art historian, I know there is so much formally and conceptually to dissect here, but for a moment and maybe always, I’m less interested in traditional formal analysis than in feeling. Feeling is very important to me. In many ways, feeling is formal first and foremost.
This transparent glass pale yellow ashtray, tender in both its color and placement, rests on a dark wooden surface. Inside, a joint seemingly at the end of its life still burns, a small trail of smoke in a dance just above the ashtray. I don’t smoke, but I do understand how ceremonial it can be, how necessary it feels to some people: the appeal of stepping away for a moment, engaging in the ritual, slowing everything down. Relief.
Since I don’t smoke, I think instead about my own rituals that involve smoke and ashtrays: lighting incense at home and letting the smoke move through a room, then through the entire house depending on its length and my intention with lighting it, doing what it wants. I always let the smoke lead the way. The way smoke can both fog and clear fascinates me. I’m all or nothing with everything, and so that tension, clarity and cloudiness, comfort and disorientation existing all at once, feels good to me, unpredictable yet intentional in a deeply spiritual way.
I know this is a lot to place onto such a quaint still life, but I find so much peace, stillness, and comfort within this painting, and that is no small task. The work feels meditative. It doesn’t overexplain itself, yet nothing feels missing either. If you know me, you know this is something I am still working on and getting better at. For a painting so modest in scale, it somehow encompasses so much sensory weight.
Even the reflective object tucked quietly into the corner, barely entering the frame, is intentional in its restraint. Off-center, but necessary. That feels true to life too. The things slightly outside of focus often shape us the most.
I’ve always been drawn to extremes in scale, works that are either overwhelmingly large or intimately small. There’s something compelling to me about the presence of a massive piece, and then the opposite: the tangibility of a smaller work, the feeling that you could carry it with you, hold it close.
Exhaust & Reflect falls into that second category for me and its intimacy makes it feel deeply personal.
Of course, as an art historian, I know there is so much formally and conceptually to dissect here, but for a moment and maybe always, I’m less interested in traditional formal analysis than in feeling. Feeling is very important to me. In many ways, feeling is formal first and foremost.
This transparent glass pale yellow ashtray, tender in both its color and placement, rests on a dark wooden surface. Inside, a joint seemingly at the end of its life still burns, a small trail of smoke in a dance just above the ashtray. I don’t smoke, but I do understand how ceremonial it can be, how necessary it feels to some people: the appeal of stepping away for a moment, engaging in the ritual, slowing everything down. Relief.
Since I don’t smoke, I think instead about my own rituals that involve smoke and ashtrays: lighting incense at home and letting the smoke move through a room, then through the entire house depending on its length and my intention with lighting it, doing what it wants. I always let the smoke lead the way. The way smoke can both fog and clear fascinates me. I’m all or nothing with everything, and so that tension, clarity and cloudiness, comfort and disorientation existing all at once, feels good to me, unpredictable yet intentional in a deeply spiritual way.
I know this is a lot to place onto such a quaint still life, but I find so much peace, stillness, and comfort within this painting, and that is no small task. The work feels meditative. It doesn’t overexplain itself, yet nothing feels missing either. If you know me, you know this is something I am still working on and getting better at. For a painting so modest in scale, it somehow encompasses so much sensory weight.
Even the reflective object tucked quietly into the corner, barely entering the frame, is intentional in its restraint. Off-center, but necessary. That feels true to life too. The things slightly outside of focus often shape us the most.
I’ve always been drawn to extremes in scale, works that are either overwhelmingly large or intimately small. There’s something compelling to me about the presence of a massive piece, and then the opposite: the tangibility of a smaller work, the feeling that you could carry it with you, hold it close.
Exhaust & Reflect falls into that second category for me and its intimacy makes it feel deeply personal.
Updating.
Jenny Holzer. "It is in Your Self-Interest to Find a Way to Be Very Tender" (installation on movie theater marquee in Chicago, ca. 1983–85). Part of Holzer's 1983–85 series "Truisms For Survival."
Jenny Holzer. "It is in Your Self-Interest to Find a Way to Be Very Tender" (installation on movie theater marquee in Chicago, ca. 1983–85). Part of Holzer's 1983–85 series "Truisms For Survival."
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