For Artists & Galleries · Clarity for Complex Work

№ I — My Approach

Language that speaks to the artwork, it turns out, is already the language of the public.

Too often, artists and galleries make the same two errors. They lose the work and their audience in jargon and international art English that make the work sound important, sure, but communicate to few, if anyone at all. Or they slot the artwork into broad political categories — feminist, postcolonial, posthuman — that try to make it relevant, but end up masking what made it unique.

There’s another way. We can find clear, authentic language for talking about artworks and their artists that stays grounded in shared experience. In fact, when it comes to art, authenticity and public relevance aren’t at odds with each other, but one and the same. Art may invent its own language and expression, but this language doesn’t come out of a vacuum. Rather, it belongs to our shared experience and a particular place and time.

My job is to find the artwork’s shared language. Drawing on my academic background and ongoing work as an art critic and journalist, I pay deep attention to both works and their artists, helping artists position themselves better and galleries engage the public. At its best, it can offer insight into the artwork itself. Because art speaks for itself. I help it be heard.

№ II — The Clarity Sessions

Excavating your core narrative.

A short, intensive engagement to do exactly what the approach above describes: finding authentic language for an artwork, a practice, or a curatorial vision that speaks to its public. You leave with both the vocabulary for your audience and a sharper sense of what makes the work matter.

Standalone, or as the foundation for further work. Whether before a show, alongside a website, or as the start of a longer engagement, these sessions give downstream work something solid to stand on.