The Lonely Palette

"It's the close focus that draws me into a sound. And then it sort of spreads out and spreads through my body. And I let that happen, and I'm listening in a different way." - Annea Lockwood The artist and composer Annea Lockwood is not just any musician. She is an artist of sound. She is a composer of art. Her music is performance art, and her art is always, always audio-rich and musical. She sends her microphones into the elements – fire, here, and rivers, in a recent series called Sound Maps, where she captures, among other things, the tonality of the different depths of the water. She loves chanting, tones, drones. She loves what sound does to our body, how we respond to it, how we visualize it. How sound breathes. How we breathe differently around different sounds. And for me, as an art historian who fell in love with sound, I get it. I think I get it. And this is what today’s conversation is about. Annea joined me to talk about what it means to listen with your body, to experience the silence in all the noise, and the noise in the silence. We talk about the value of musical training versus musical instinct. We talk about how rivers sound different from one another (they really do!). And we explore what an artist from New Zealand who gained prominence in the 1960s burning pianos can teach us about the art of sound, and what she can learn from her 85-year-old self, today. Episode webpage: https://www.thelonelypalette.com/interview/2025/2/27/annea-lockwood-composer-and-artist Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, "Brer Rhetta," “A Common Pause,” "Tanguedo" Episode sponsors: Art of Crime The Seattle Prize Visual Arts Passage Support the show by becoming a patron or by just sending us a tip.

"The only thing permanent is change." - Felix Gonzalez-Torres There is no way around it. The work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a gay, Cuban-American artist who responded to - and died during - the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s, is sad. His work is a memorial, both to a lost generation and to his own partner, Ross. Yet it is through these seemingly banal, industrial, or every day materials, and the powerful metaphor that they represent, that we can best get to the root of what loss can mean. And, maybe, healing as well. See the images: https://www.thelonelypalette.com/episodes/2025/2/10/episode-68-felix-gonzalez-torres-untitled-march-5th-2-1991 Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “A Little Powder,” “Lerennis,” “Taoudella,” “The Melt,” “Rafter” Open Book, “Second Chance” Episode sponsors: Art of Crime The Seattle Prize Visual Arts Passage Smartist App With extra special thanks to Martin Young.

“In the end, what interests me is the way art connects with life. Because otherwise, I don’t quite understand what it’s for.” - Sebastian Smee Sebastian Smee has been the art critic for the Washington Post since 2018, but has written extensively about art for every publication you can think of, from here to his native Australia, and winning a Pulitzer prize for criticism along the way. Both his prose and his love of the work leaps off the page and into your lap, offering a guiding hand past the velvet rope, not just for his readers, but for himself: he’s a critic who is constantly looking inward, curious about his own responses to artworks, and what it can teach him about teaching us. Sebastian joined me to discuss his latest book, “Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism,” as well as writers on writing, becoming an expert about a movement on deadline, how looking back at the muddiness of a historical moment can help us understand the muddiness of ours, and what happens when art critics are themselves at a loss for the words to express why they just love this or that painting so darn much. See the images: https://www.thelonelypalette.com/interview/2025/2/6/sebastian-smee-art-critic Music used: The Blue Dot Sessions, “Town Market,” “Night Light,” “Brass Buttons” Episode sponsor: The Art of Crime Podcast

"My line does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization." - Cy Twombly Critics have described the work of consummate scribbler Cy Twombly as at once "barely there" and overly academic, but what about us art civilians? What is it about these half-baked scraps, scratch, and scrawl that speaks to our own creative impulses, our own inner children dying to grab the crayon and crush the tip in an ecstatic series of fat, juicy loopdeloops? See the images: https://www.thelonelypalette.com/episodes/2025/1/22/episode-67-cy-twomblys-second-voyage-to-italy-second-version-1962 Music used: The Andrews Sisters, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" The Blue Dot Sessions, “Inessential,” “Tiny Putty,” “A Burst of Light,” Palms Down,” “Parade Shoes,” “City Limits” Episode sponsor: The Art of Crime Podcast: https://www.artofcrimepodcast.com/

**Update! Norovirus has entered the chat. The episode will be released on Monday, January 27. Thank you for your patience! Mark your calendars! The new season of The Lonely Palette drops Thursday, January 23rd! This season, we've got a stellar line-up: Cy Twombly, Lawren Harris, Käthe Kollwitz, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, to name just a few. We've got interviews with the Washington Post's Sebastian Smee, the artist and composer Annea Lockwood, and more. We've got a whole National Gallery residency! So listen and subscribe, rate and review, and fire up your earbuds for another season of looking with your ears.