I'd like to blame my tenant for my muck situation, but it's on me. I let the tub of muck she left in the driveway sit for months. It's gone now, but I'm thinking about muck we let sit, muck we make art from, muck we're ashamed of …and the US's 250th. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-parabl...

William Evertson has prints now at Brickbottom Artists Association, WaterFire Providence, Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, and the Florence Griswold Museum. Here's how he made "Consumed by the Never Was," a woodcut about nostalgia as narcotic. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/yearning-f...

Mark Cooper and Joel Janowitz team up at Jane Deering. Mark’s work is a big party to which he has invited brilliant people. Joel paints spaces like mirages, impossible to grasp but delightful to bask in. The show has a rhythm of activity and release. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/come-to-th...

Avital Sagalyn went to Provincetown in 1945 to study with Hans Hofmann. He said, "You don’t need to take my classes... There’s nothing I can teach you.” She was 20. "Avital Sagalyn: Mid-Century Provincetown" is now up at Provincetown Art Association and Museum. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/10/a...

Jackie Reeves made "Big Plans," a 13.5' painting, as she studied for her U.S. citizenship exam. It became an allegory of creation – plan, messy process, product – that applies to democracy and art. It's in her show at Provincetown Art Assoc. and Museum. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/a-more-per...

I was seduced by righteousness. Then it knocked the creative spark right out of me. I used to think righteousness was a horse to ride through life, but sometimes you have to put aside your outrage in order to keep moving. That's in today's Ocean in a Drop. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/just-a-dri...

Suzi Grossman had a toxic relationship with an invasive weed, so they brought it into their studio and made "Black Swallow-wort Entangled," now at MassArt x SoWa in the 2026 MFA thesis show through this week. Here's how Suzi made the sculpture. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/making-hat...

I visited several Boston galleries for an old-style roundup. In this week's Ocean in a Drop: Suara Welitoff at Anthony Greaney, Jennifer Liston Munson at Kingston Gallery, Dana Clancy at Alpha Gallery, and Crystalle Lacouture at Praise Shadows Art Gallery. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/pathways-t...

Reading Katrine Hildenbrandt describe artmaking, I saw how the details set the stage for the transcendent to occur. If you have patience and set your ego aside. Katrine dyes and burns paper, matching pattern to chance. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/artist-as-...

I've avoided having parties. They make me anxious. Now I'm renovating, and imagining all new light and energy here. When I read this chapter of my memoir, Communion, I recognized it as the origin story of my hosting phobia. And I saw just what the lesson was. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-perils...

I'm not a solid structure sitting in space. Why should I assume a sculpture is? Roberley Bell's show Almost Knowing opens at Cove Street Arts in Portland Thursday. She disrupts notions of solidity with appendages and color. Here, she relates making Lipstick. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-volati...

Who's control? What does play have to do with it? Young people feel increasingly at the mercy of fate. In the 1960s, kids who played autonomously grew up with a strong sense of agency. Play is central to making art. Agency is central to making a democracy. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/who-is-in-...

Barbara Ishikura's paintings reflect on women's constrictions through art history. Her work is also a legacy of touch, gesture, and pattern that culminates in reclamation. Barbara’s show In Plain Sight is up at Gallery 1832 at LabCentral. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/were-here-...

Walls are coming down in my home. In a fog of demolition dust, I visited Elizabeth Alexander's show at Overlap Gallery. In her work, chaos pierces a flowery domestic interior – we posted about it Tuesday. Only then did I connect her art to my life. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/down-to-th...

Elizabeth Alexander's installation "and you did not even know enough to be sorry" at Overlap Gallery in Newport, RI is a delicate, violent work at the crossroads between safety and threat. She writes about how she made it in today's Ocean in a Drop. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/home-peril...

Heidi Whitman's "Ahab's Head: American Vengeance" installation at the New Bedford Whaling Museum inevitably prompts a comparison: Is Captain Ahab like another, more contemporary vengeful leader? www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/31/a...

Don Draper appeared in my dreams, first time I'd had patriarchy symbolized in a discrete dream character, meaning that power system is less inside of me. Trump, Hegseth, etc. are caricatures of toxic masculinity. Maybe society is disidentifying from it, too. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/why-donald...

When you get lost in work or fear, how do you return to yourself? Do you see your pattern? For me, one of those lessons came from secrets at home. Ignore what's in front of you, and you ignore yourself, too. Today in Ocean in a Drop, the next chapter of my memoir, and a video reflection.

Due to a crop of this painting by Sarah Meyers Brent, you can barely see the figure below, gamely holding a bouquet of sheer wildness. I met with Sarah last week to find out how her experience with cancer has affected her practice. It's not a simple answer. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/what-were-...

Elena Peteva has an exquisite hand with charcoal. That’s reason enough to see her show at Rhode Island College’s Bannister Gallery. Her drawings are pregnant with consciousness of mortality. It's ash, she writes: “what is left at the end of all things.” catemcquaid.substack.com/p/at-the-end...

At work, Scott Tulay desigs spaces; in his studio, he deconstructs them. Scott's show "Merge" is at the UMass Amherst Olver Design Building Gallery. He writes about how he he merges two finished drawings into one. in today's Ocean in a Drop. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/armatures-...

Three feet of snow brought the world to a standstill here. I hunkered down with my boyfriend. It was yummy… and then came the nightmares. Here's a little post about falling … into sleep, in love, out of your head, even letting go into an epic weather event. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/dreams-of-...

Jodi Colella's sculptures hold histories of handwork. They honor makers long gone and poke holes in grindingly eternal power dynamics and gender codes. Here's how she made "Buckets of Swill" in her show "Dangerously Close to Home" at Boston Sculptors Gallery. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-point-...

"Fire Pit started like all my paintings, using color, pattern, and form to create an abstract underpainting reflective of my life energy," writes Andrew Fish. "I didn’t know what it was about or that my relationship was even a factor." But it was. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/painting-i...

How do we cede our sense of superiority as humans and turn to more Indigenous cosmologies? How do we open? Through our senses and our dreams. In A Sentient Land at Emerson Contemporary, artists collaborate with beetles, forests, clouds, and salt. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/milk-and-h...

Linda Pagani's delicate works cradle change. They're like sand slipping through fingers. She has work on view in Caira Art Editions’ show at MO Gallery in Newburyport through Feb. 13. Her monoprints "Traces (fleeting)" started when she burned her journals. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/from-silen...

I've had, at times, a romantic draw to men of the cloth. So did my mother. And hers. In Ocean in a Drop today, chapter four of my memoir, in which my mother initiates an affair with a Catholic priest. What patterns spiral through generations in your family? catemcquaid.substack.com/p/violating-...

"I can empty myself and allow things to come to me," Patti Smith told Anderson Cooper on All There Is. "Ritual Practice | Sacred Space," Robin Hauck's exhibition at The Beehive, evokes the sustenance ritual and retreat provide amid relentless productivity. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-vessel...

Good new year. As we look into the face of what's to come… how do you ground yourself and begin (or even continue?). For today's Ocean in a Drop, I asked Adria Arch, Matt Brackett, Jamaal Eversley, Julia Shepley, and Zainab Sumu how they begin a new project. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/jumping-of...

You’ve heard of resting bitch face? I have resting stern face. It can be an armor. So much disappears behind it! Joy, goofiness In an era of social performance to the point of caricature, how do we remove our masks? Slowly, kindly. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/resting-st...

Most of her career, Prilla Smith Brackett has focused on depicting what she sees. Recent pieces made during her husband’s decline and after his death are less about seeing and more about being. New work in "The Long View #2" at Suffolk University Art Gallery. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/flying-int...

Haley Wood's tufted rugs are vessels of grief and magic. Her show Hawthorn is at Abigail Ogilvy. Her rugs could easily adorn the floor of your baby’s nursery. In today's Work in Progress in Ocean in a Drop, she takes us through her process with Hawthorn 8. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/lost-into-...

Dating, avoid profiles of folks wearing their wounds. Some list the qualities they're not looking for. A lot of men don’t want "crazy" women. They're sane as salt, though. If we make space what we avoid in ourselves, it's a different picture. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/seeing-eac...

Ellen Shattuck Pierce's doll The Assholescent is soft, bendable snarky, and everything you can imagine in your beloved but unbearable teen. Small children use dolls as transitional objects to help develop independence. Now parents can, too. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/teenage-di...

We met up with Donnell Patterson at a Millennium Gospel Choir rehearsal last Sunday at Saint Paul AME Church in Cambridge. They rocked the house down prepping for concerts at Museum of Fine Arts Dec. 12-20. He's this week's Working Artist in the Globe. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/17/a...

Poet Elizabeth Bishop's In the Waiting Room recounts the moment as a child that she recognized she was a separate self. What's your earliest memory and how does it reflect who you are now? And chapter 3 or Communion: A Memoir of Family, Secrets, and Love. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/whats-your...

Marty Epp-Carter started dating, connected with someone – and was ghosted. They turned to the studio. Marty wrote about "A Fail-Safe Way to Navigate Dating Apps in 2025," the first piece in their dating series, for today's Work in Progress. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/what-to-do...

Mothers have been trapped in an ideal. They’re asexual, selfless founts of nurture. When we turn a person into a sentimental icon, there’s something we fear in her. Why are we afraid of mothers? Motherhood as Muse at Concord Art offers up some suggestions. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-opposi...

Collage artist Jane Maxwell's show "In Your Face" at Lanoue Gallery examines the push-pull between the feminine ideal and a messier internal reality. Now she's upping the ante with sculptural pieces made of Botox vials. She calls the show "a no judgment zone." www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/14/a...

How did your parents meet? It's an origin story that can be sweet or sour. Sometimes it's both. The story can seem written in stone when we're young. Has your perspective on your parents, and how they came together to make you, changed? Mine has. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/pray-pay-a...

As cultural spaces dwindle in Boston, artists get creative, founding galleries in a V-nosed trailer in a suburban parking lot, in a spiffed-up shed, in a dining room, in a studio, on a fridge. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/01/a...

Painter William Collin aims to show the tension between what is seen and what is felt. "I See Myself in You," at Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery at Bristol Community College in Fall River (through Oct. 16), features his paintings of Black young men and boys. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/standing-i...

Here's your periodic "what the hell is going on?" update on the federal government and the arts. But also! Putting Disney in its place, how hubris leads to downfall, the force that bridges divides, and how societal upheaval parallels studio practice. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/cracking-o...

Meet illusionist Jeanette Andrews, visiting artist at MIT Center for Art, Science, & Technology interested in metacognition. Her October show at MIT, "The Attestation: A Performance of Illusions” uses magic to examine how polarized beliefs work. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/22/a...

Susan Jane Belton has spent her career avoiding the figure. Until now. For her show at Anderson Yezerski "Familiar Strangers" she painted people she found in snapshots. "In the spirit of 'if not now, when?' I decided to make a radical change," she writes. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/susan-jane...

I have house shame. I don’t invite people over. I bought my house 20 years ago, and mostly I’ve treated it like a burden. Recently, I sat with those feelings. Now, my iceberg of house shame is thawing – which is good, right? But it sure stings. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-iceber...

Alaina Mahoney fell in love with metal at MassArt. Now she's a blacksmith at AM Design and Fabrication, doing ornamental iron work and fabrication for artists. Alaina has a painting studio right next to the metal shop. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/08/a...

Conny Goelz-Schmitt resurrects vintage books into collages. The stories are gone. The bones remain, and they rise and dance. This may be a new language, but in it old books speak – if you’ll permit a pun – volumes. How she does it in today's Ocean in a Drop. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/patience-b...