JOHN DIAMOND-NIGH

Evolving aria on art and life

On my lap sits a packet of carrot seeds. In lieu of a handy notebook the packet is covered with scribblings–painters' names, possible first lines, addresses, existential question marks. Tomorrow I'll plant the seeds.

John Diamond-Nigh

6 days ago
3 min

#Downshift

The world has #slowed. How many friends have observed that, subtracting the perils of the #virus itself, the whirlpool skirts of #anxiety, and the toll confi...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Mar 28
3 min

The #consolations of #art

Many devout N Carolingians I bump into think the #president talks too much but otherwise is an honorable man. Ethical, pure, muscular, crusader against the s...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Mar 21
3 min

In praise of shadows

Near the top of every list of all-time best design books is a slim volume by a Japanese novelist called In Praise of Shadows. I had tried to obtain it in the...

30 views2 comments

John Diamond-Nigh

Mar 14
2 min

min (one syllable will do)

Nothing, says novelist Julian Barnes, dates faster than excess. He is writing about the Paris painter Gustav Moreau, a fantasist and pictorial technician of ...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Mar 7
3 min

Radiant #women, #spaces to match

At the end of a solo day in #Paris, I’ve turned my feet into whining adversaries, eaten too much chocolate, seen some fine galleries, some resplendent archit...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Feb 29
3 min

#Streets of #incense, streets of #stone

An old street in a #European city can feel a lot like the nave of a church. Breezy diagonal lines of wash hang high overhead like rib vaults, cross-streets l...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Feb 8
3 min

Black globes and Disney fairies

Global or local? Native or universal? Funny, but the topic came up several times this week, once in a chat about art (that usual café trinity of latte, crois...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Feb 1
3 min

The thorny embrace: art and religion

Makoto Fujimoro is a painter of startlingly beautiful abstract paintings. As far as I can tell, he’s not just an inventive painter but a wonderfully exemplar...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Jan 25
3 min

The great shark/missile splashdown

My 3-D class is making #boats, or rather some original water-borne invention that will float them across the pond on campus. Yoshi and Carla, using PVC pipe ...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Jan 18
3 min

On #rudeness

Whenever we move, I pack a small set of six or seven words with the care I’d devote to ancestral Meissen porcelain. To friends who visit, to those who attend...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Jan 11
3 min

The #Gaiety of Vincent #Van Gogh

On a clear winter morning, like some cinematic delirium, aurora borealis ganged and flaunted ahead of us in the starry darkness. By daybreak we had arrived, ...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Jan 4
3 min

#Madison County (2)

Grapevine Road winds skyward, twisting back on itself like a fistful of crumpled wire. At the crest, a row of broken tombstones juts from the earth in archeo...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Dec 28, 2019
3 min

6 1/2 weeks in #Florence

Always April. Sometimes by train. Snaking into Florence by the grim, industrial conduit that drew us from the outlands to the exquisitely moderne, toffee-sto...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Dec 21, 2019
3 min

#Love (is Z)

#"Habitation" by Margaret Atwood Marriage is not a house or even a tent it is before that, and colder: the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert the unp...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Dec 14, 2019
3 min

In praise of #books

A book–rare, hard-covered, tip-top shape by an author you love. And signed. Slim, infinitely delicious, and yes, of course, expensive. Or maybe a lucky find,...

39 views1 comment

John Diamond-Nigh

Dec 7, 2019
3 min

(Travel is X) Work is Y

Lynne talks often about the miracle of her junior high and high school on Long Island. Better by far than university would ever be. She speaks with nearly ep...

18 views1 comment

John Diamond-Nigh

Nov 30, 2019
3 min

Flamingos in the museum

Museums are funny places. You take something as inherently unruly, juicy and impious as a work of art should be, and place it in a home of immaculate manners...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Nov 23, 2019
3 min

The #Asheville Art Museum: glowing and new-made

The first art museum I remember visiting was the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. My father took me there to meet Rembrandt. He made a big impression. To this day a...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Nov 16, 2019
3 min

Travel is X

A friend asked me recently, for purposes of a piece he was writing, to list three life principles that have worked especially well for me. I started with tra...

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John Diamond-Nigh

Nov 9, 2019
3 min

Heavenly hell

I thought I’d be sent to my bedroom for heresy. Perhaps I was kicking back against some parental remonstrance–I hadn’t mown the lawn, or had been less than i...

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