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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Suzan-Lori Parks was born on May 10, 1963 in Fort Knox, Kentucky, the daughter of an army colonel. The family moved around a lot, including a time in Germany during...
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Anton Chekhov was born in the Russian seaport town of Taganrog, near the Black Sea, on January 29, 1860. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov began writing comic short stories to support himself and his mother...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 and grew up in Chicago, Illinois—the daughter of a real estate broker when segregation and restrictive covenants meant that...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 20, 1905. She spent her early days moving back and forth between New Orleans and New York. She studied at New...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan García Lorca was born Federico García Lorca on June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros in the Spanish province of Granada. As a child, he expressed his creativity and vivid...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Camille Claudel was born on December 8, 1864 in Fère-en- Tardenois, Aisne, in northern France, and moved with her family to Paris in the early 1881. At an early age...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Constantin Brancusi was born in Pestisani, a village in Southern Romania, on February 19, 1876. He studied at the Craiova School of ArtsCrafts, the Bucharest School of...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois and grew up there—the youngest of ten children. As a student he was placed in vocational courses, but drawing...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Maya Lin was born and raised in the small college town of Athens, Ohio on October 5, 1959. Her parents fled China in 1949, just before the Communists took over. They...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Marisol Escobar was born on May 22, 1930 to Venezuelan parents in Paris, France. She spent her childhood in Europe, Venezuela, and the United States--obtaining American...
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Illustration by Maria Manhattan Richard Serra was born in San Francisco on November 2, 1938. While he was in college at the University of California he supported himself by working in steel mills. In...
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Roseline Delisle A Closer Look Octet 2 Blue is an abstract form, but it could almost be a twirling dancer in a billowing skirt. Roseline Delisle calls her sculptures "humanistic." She imagines that...
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Robert Arneson A Closer Look What do you like about Robert Arneson's Up Against It? Is it the texture that defines the balding man or is it his expression? Notice how the details in this ceramic...
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Georgia Blizzard A Closer Look Form is a primary consideration in Georgia Blizzard's ceramic artwork Lola. Look at the rounded figure of this woman. Every feature of her body is voluminous. While the...
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Anonymous A Closer Look You might wonder what this man is thinking. His expression is ambiguous. Does he seems sad, worried, or do his lips indicate some sort of pleasurable thought? Only the artist...
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Anonymous A Closer Look What elements of design do you think about when you look at Bust of a Warrior? What shapes do you see? Can you see how the artist has turned flat shapes into forms? The two...
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Anish Kapoor A Closer Look Look at the enormous bright red form that Anish Kapoor has built! Form is the three dimensional representation of an object. Notice the sleek form of Kapoor's artwork. It...
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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen A Closer Look Spoonbridge and Cherry is an excellent example of proportion in sculpture. It is a gigantic version of a spoon that you would use to eat an ice...
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Dale Chihuly A Closer Look Can you imagine swimming in a lighted sculpture of colorful glass? Look at the richness of the colors as the swimmer floats over the glass forms. It's as though she is at...
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Robert Smithson A Closer Look The movement of Spiral Jetty takes off from the shoreline to the center of the spiral. Smithson used black rock and earth to make this piece. The consistency of the...
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Andy Goldsworthy A Closer Look Look at the beautiful form Andy Goldsworthy has created using icicles. What an unusual material! It looks just like its name, Icicle Star. Each icicle is a straight line...
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Takashi Murakami A Closer Look The double helix is the structure of the DNA molecule, a twisted ladder-like stack of building blocks called nucleotides. Our DNA makes us who we are. Why do you think...
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Duane Hanson A Closer Look Queenie II was in an exhibit once at the Nevada Museum of Art. The night before the show opened a false fire alarm went off. When the firefighters arrived they were...
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Frederic Remington A Closer Look Look at the movement in The Bronco Buster. It seems to jump right out of the metal cast. The horse rears up on its hind legs, pushing the cowboy into the air...
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Louise Bourgeois A Closer Look Line is one of the main elements of design in Spider. Look how the lines lead up from the ground to the body of the spider. This is such a simple sculpture, yet its...
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Auguste Rodin A Closer Look What expression has Auguste Rodin given his Monument to Balzac? What does it tell you about the writer? Rodin was an Impressionist, interested in how light affected an...
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So, Tom used simile and metaphor in his poem. He even gave it a name! Small Victory Like enormous snails a bunch of munching cows cross the road, chewing their cuds as green, gloppy paste drips from...
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Michael Carey's two most basic tools for saying more with less are simile and metaphor. Michael teaches that these tools of comparison add even more meaning to a poem. A simile is a comparison that...
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Rhythm and Line Breaks There are even more ways that Tom Slack can improve on his word "painting." Michael Carey teaches that rhythm and line breaks are basic tools that add meaning to poems. Like a...
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Begin with the Basics, Not Rhyme, Part 2 By avoiding the immediate urge to rhyme, the author of a poem can concentrate on its meaning. Enter Tom Slack... This morning, Tom was later to work than usual...