What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Ben E. King's recording of the R&B classic "Stand By Me" captured me as a high school freshman in 1961. The song was a haunting interracial partnership of artists that rose above the segregation of culture and politics in that era. It inspired me [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
Michael Cataldi did two installation series in Baltimore several years ago called Tire Swings and Flower-Pot-Holes. He would carry a spool of rope with him as he wandered through the city, and wherever he found an abandoned tire by the side of a road [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
I went to high school in Springfield, Illinois. It’s kind of the center of the U.S. with very Midwestern values. My friends were getting into punk rock and new wave at a time when I felt pretty alone at my school. I felt especially [...]

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What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
As the child of a painter, the visual arts were part of my consciousness even before music.  And the work of art which molded me was my father’s own Fulbright Triptych, a work in three panels measuring 14 feet by 8 feet, showing his [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

I didn’t see it this way at the time, but, in retrospect, I think Fiddler on the Roof changed my life. My mom used to take my sisters and me to the musicals at Painters [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
I guess I was twelve when Neil Young came into my life. So I have to honor him, even over all the other renegades in music, art, and film that changed my life because he was the first, the first real iconoclast.  There was [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
.... the moments of art  that calmed my madness or inspired me to inhale texas and live or to open my heart so wide, and wider and wider that it surrounded jupiter and stood standing nearly proudly even when the other planets laughed... this [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

First time I saw a real Jackson Pollock in Paris in the early 80's, it literally knocked the wind out of me. It assaulted me and had me riveted to the spot. One of the greatest moments of clarity I've ever had.
Vernon Reid and [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

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For me, it would be seeing The Who in 1977. I had grown up listening to records and reading about rock stars, but to be in a place that was so charged and so exciting [...]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?
I was motivated a lot by watching Missy Elliott videos. Living in the city is hard, and there's no hope, but she made me feel like I could do something. There was no one teaching me step by step, but, watching those videos, [...]