On Solitude

“Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.” –John Berger

Like late summer, telling your story is a quiet reckoning. As the days thin and the light begins to slant, we turn inward—not to recount, but to remember. There’s a particular solitude to writing one’s own story, a feeling of standing slightly apart, sifting through memory for meaning.

Tony Huynh joined us to talk about Magical Thinking, his show at Pablo’s Birthday Gallery that closed on June 13. We get into the details of this show, including the high level view of the show, in which the works are all quite random and unrelated. This is a hallmark of Huynh’s work, which generally depicts whatever he’s going through at the time. To learn more, including how the band The Police have influenced him, listen to the complete interview.

Abby Lloyd sat down to discuss her recent show, On Display, which ran until June 15 at Ptolemy Gallery. Following the passing of her mother in 2020, and with her father needing to vacate the family home, Lloyd found herself facing the daunting task of cleaning out generations of accumulated belongings. It was in this headspace that she began conceiving the work in this show. To hear more about this dramatic time in the artist’s life and the work that emerged, listen to the complete interview.