Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis

By Jarrod Shanahan and Abby Cunniff

SEPT 2022 | Field Notes

A crumbling strip of asphalt winds through the craggy countryside of eastern Kentucky, striated with power lines sagging in every direction. Wobbly pavement markings and errant skidmarks vanish at a hairpin bend buffered by low guard rails framing a rolling, sparsely tree-spotted expanse of hills. On one side of this road stands a roughly chiseled open coal seam, marking the remnants of a former mine. On the other, a bowed chain link fence capped in razor-wire announces the outer periphery of Otter Creek Correctional Facility. This remarkable image by photographer Jill Frank adorns the jacket of prison scholar Judah Schept’s Coal, Cages, Crisis (New York: NYU Press, 2022), confronting the reader with the book’s central preoccupations.

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By Bianca Stone

MARCH 2022 | Poetry

Bianca Stone is author of The Mobius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else's Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014); the children’s book A Little Called Pauline, with text by Gertrude Stein, (Penny Candy Books, 2020). Her newest poetry collection is What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022). She teaches poetry and hosts a podcast as Creative Director at the Ruth Stone House in Vermont.

Jennie C. Jones with Ann C. Collins

APRIL 2022 | Art

Perception comes gradually, when the mind is quieted enough for awareness to seep in, and even then, it is never fixed. Mingling visual and aural work, lineage and legacy, Jennie C. Jones: Dynamics infuses the Guggenheim Museum with minimalist abstractions and tonal callings. The first Black woman to have a solo exhibition in Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic rotunda, Jones throws open long-held narratives of art history, expanding the tracings of inspiration and influence to include both Black and female histories. Mining a vein of work in which paintings stand as sculptures, music is rendered in graphic statements, and color becomes a source of light, Jones’s work throws us off balance, requires us to shift and reposition ourselves in response to her slow reveals. As her gentle harmonics roll down from the oculus, the space itself seems to sway and expand.

85. A Rooftop in SoHo

By Raphael Rubinstein

DEC 21-JAN 22 | The Miraculous

A British sculptor known for her casts of architectural spaces is invited to create a public artwork in New York City. After traversing the city in search of inspiration, she notices the “weird wooden barrel-like objects” that sit atop many Manhattan buildings.