" title="Notes from an Accidental Scholar"> Notes from an Accidental Scholar

Today was my last day of “work-cation.” The Mr. was invited to tour the Cap­i­tal build­ing (look at that view!) with the Cap­i­tal Archi­tect today, but it was an archi­tects only kind of thing so I took the kiddo to the National Gallery to point at col­ors and say, “woooooow!”

There’s a Mel Bochner exhibit at the National Gallery and while it wasn’t really the kid’s cup of tea, I was reminded of how much I love his work. He’s con­sid­ered the prog­en­i­tor of Con­cep­tual Art and would “draw” or “paint” por­traits with words. I used to paint, in fact, I was an art major in col­lege and kept up with it until grad school took over. But see­ing the Mel Bochner reminded me of the inter­pre­ta­tive act of putting words on the page. Usu­ally I just stamp them out on my key­board, ren­der them dig­i­tally with­out giv­ing the words them­selves much thought. They are a means to an end of the dis­ser­ta­tion. But when you paint words, you spend time with them, you’re thought­ful in a visual way that would oth­er­wise go ignored. I won­der what this kind of thought­ful­ness and time with words might look like for me now?