Elinor Nauen

I've taken an interest in this wonderful collaboration between Joe Brainard & Frank O'Hara. Isn't it terrific? Lately these poets & others long dead have been filling up my life, due to renewed interest, new books & interviews, & the like. This is one of my favorite Brainards. Not much more to say except: Enjoy.

Joe Brainard: A Box of Hearts and other works is the latest show of his work at Tibor de Nagy. It runs from October 22 to December 3 & shows more than 50 works that are various enough to be by half a dozen different artists: paintings, collages, watercolors, cutouts. Fabulous as he always is. 

This "Make Your Own Brainard" is totally great & makes me realize (1) how really good at this Joe was & (2) how impatient & unimaginative I am when confronted by directions, let alone images rather than words. 

One of my favorites of the dozen—dozens?—we have in our house of the great artist Joe Brainard. It's fun to have people come over to look at them because then I look at them again. Johnny just put up another 2 or 3, which is also fun.

Suddenly I love art again.

I love my little home because of all the art. It's Johnny's for the most part, although I suppose that makes it ours. He bought a work Joe made in 1962, which has to be one of the earliest in his oeuvre, doesn't it?

God, it makes me love Johnny so much.

Although if I'd been his wife with two little kids & he spent some windfall on art, I might have not been so happy. Or maybe I would have been. I was never anybody's mother so I never had to think unselfishly into the future.  Read More 

In his storage space, Johnny found this amazing never-sent letter Ted Berrigan wrote to Joe Brainard back in 1982, so beautiful & heartening about poetry, art, & love, & it made me miss not just Ted but that whole era so much. Feels suddenly like so much is ending & that there's almost no one left from the really  Read More