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...

On Friday night on Boston City Hall Plaza, artist Adela Goldbard returned us to a first encounter between Europeans and Indigenous people, usin pyrotechnics to burn a quarter-scale replica of a Colonial-era ship. More in Ocean in a Drop. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/whose-home...

Part of the statement from the @transjournalists.org on reporting details of the the Charlie Kirk shooting investigation. Full statement here: www.transjournalists.org/tja-urges-ca...

Sophia Ainslie's process for her "Woven" exhibition at Gallery NAGA entails dancing between stream of consciousness mark-making and appraising with a keen eye to complicate the image. Right brain, left brain, right brain, left brain. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/but-what-h...

Fear causes tunnel vision. Painter Andrae Green's "Paradise/Mash-up" at Boston Center for the Arts widens the lens. Green is from Jamaica, but it's not his immigration story that refutes the Trumpian world view. It’s the breadth of his imagination. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-best-d...

Mélieajade Tremblay-Bouchard went to circus camp when she was five, and a teacher there told her she had the body of a contortionist. Today, at 28, she's in the Montreal circus collective 7 Fingers, performing "Passengers" at American Repertory Theater. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/a...

Iwalani Kaluhiokalani's multidisciplinary installation The Radiance Chasers at Emerscon Contemporary explores light as creator and destroyer. She writes about making it – with painting, paper cut-outs, video mapping, sound, and AI – in Ocean in a Drop. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/renewal-in...

“I call myself a wiggler,” popper Alanna Logan said. “My movement is a bit awkward, I have a hip-hop pocket. I’m more bounce oriented.” She took second place at Red Bull Dance Your Style East USA. She'll be in @bostonarts.org Arts HellaBlack Vol. 7 on Oct. 3. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/25/a...

Last week I introduced "This is not my story" in Ocean in a Drop – a memoir with video commentary reflecting on the limitations of childhood keep falling away. Here's Chapter 1: Midnight Mass, in which my father receives Holy Communion from my mother's lover. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/midnight-m...

In Andromeda Lisle's art, animal forms cascade with patterns referencing cellular structure and Indigenous mythology. She designed a mural of a humpback whale and calf at the new Tobin Montessori and Darby Vassall Upper Schools and Community Complex in Cambridge. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/18/a...

I wrote a memoir, "Communion: A Memoir of Family, Secrets, and Love." I resisted posting on Substack; I am fueled by writing about what’s happening today. Now I see I can tie it to today with video. There's no paywall. Come take a look. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/this-is-no...

Jerome Greene's art taps Ptown's wellspring of beauty, community, and music. He's a plein-air painter and he sketches musicians as they perform around town. Provincetown Public Art Foundation invited Jerome to paint a trap shed mural on MacMillan Pier. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/the-lifes-...

At the White House, the Rose Garden has been paved over with concrete and the Oval Office has been adorned with Rococo gold gilding. Then there's the more insidious rebranding we can track by watching federally funded institutions. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/state-of-t...

At a 2021 residency, Carly Glovinski came upon the foundation of Wild Knoll, the house writer May Sarton's described in "The House By the Sea" back in 1977. She resurrected the garden. She still tends it. Her career is flourishing, too. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/04/a...

“Soul of a Nation: Voices of Resilience in Ukrainian Folk Art” at Fuller Craft Museum celebrates traditions kept alive by artists often under siege: Ukrainian Easter eggs, intricately patterned ceramics, wood carvings, embroidery, and more. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/06/a...

Twice last week, I looked at someone dear going having a hard time and thought, “I don’t have to take this on. They know how to take care of themselves.” It felt odd. I’ve always tuned into a friend's distress and sent my soul out of my body to tend to them. catemcquaid.substack.com/p/on-letting...

When Rachel Sumner was 18, she volunteered at the Telluride Blue Grass Festival. Last month, the Boston-area musician went back for the first time. Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light, and took home first prize in the Telluride Band Contest. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/28/a...

I was at ODD-KIN last week minding my own business when one a sculpture nudged me from behind. This is the first show of the Tory Fair's kinetic flowers – and they're amazing. Playful, sad, weirdly human. Here, Tory writes about making "Grief." catemcquaid.substack.com/p/jiggles-sw...

When so much feels beyond repair, why is art is more about comfort and joy? "A Gathering," curated by Olivia Baldwin at Brandeis's Kniznick Gallery, accepts that loss is inevitable. And still isn’t it glorious to be a living human who can love and express? catemcquaid.substack.com/p/arriving-i...

Jay Hungate has two creative deadlines looming. As a stone carver, he's working on 5½ tons of granite for a commission for the Lowell Cemetery. he said. Then there’s a giant snail on wheels — Hungate’s entry in the Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race on Sept. 20. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/21/a...