Time Sensitive

Daniel Brush’s acute eye for detail, as well as the rigor and vigor he brings to his craft, comes through loud and clear in all of his creations. A poet of materiality, he is at once a metalworker, a jewelry-maker, a philosopher, an engineer, a blacksmith, a painter, and a sculptor. The late Dr. Oliver Sacks, a friend of Brush’s, once said that Brush’s work is “the result of years of incubation, years of isolation and complete immersion, which have produced his unique and mysterious objects—they are made objects, and yet they seem found.” Sacks was not exaggerating when he said years. Brush’s oeuvre—on full display in the new Rizzoli book “Daniel Brush: Jewels Sculpture”—is the accumulation of four-plus decades of steadfast, heads-down, solitary work in his Manhattan studio, alongside his wife and accomplice, Olivia, allowing for only select visits from his closest friends and certain patrons, scholars, and students.

Brush’s imagination has always run wild—from his beginnings as a concert pianist in his youth, through his early years as a painter, to now, he has always demonstrated a rare intensity. For those who have laid eyes on his intricate cuffs, brooches, necklaces, and other pieces, it may be somewhat surprising to hear that it wasn’t until making a wedding ring for Olivia, in 1967, whom he had known for just three days before marrying, that he became interested in jewelry-making. Now, his work—colored by influences from a life of painting and drawing as well as his astute interests in Japanese Noh theater and Asian art—centers around jewels and objects made from a vast assortment of materials, including Afghan lapis lazuli, aluminum, amethyst, gold, Madagascar sapphire, malachite, steel, tektite, topaz, and tourmaline.

Brush, not surprisingly, also has a deep appreciation for history and collecting. His own made objects, as well as a large library of books and found objects, are stowed or situated around his home and studio, serving, for him, as a record of passing time. Given that his pieces are not traded on the market and rarely available to acquire, Brush’s work decidedly has, as he puts it, “no value.” Instead, he suggests that the value he derives from his work comes from the connections he has developed with patrons and peers who show respect for the complexity of it all. For Brush, it is the most minute connection—the tiniest detail—that so often reveals the largest truth.

On this episode of Time Sensitive, Brush’s use of language and storytelling approaches the poetic. He and Spencer Bailey talk about memory (and interpretations of memory); his deep, monkish engagement with a wide variety of materials; and some of his most valuable tools—breathing, language, and light.

The London-based artist, master potter, and author Edmund de Waal has an astoundingly astute sense for the inner lives of objects. Each of his works, whether in clay or stone, is imbued with a certain alchemy, embodying traces of far-away or long-ago ancestors, ideas, and histories. This fall, two exhibitions featuring his artworks are on view at Gagosian in New York (through October 28): “to light, and then return,” which pairs his pieces with tintypes and platinum prints by Sally Mann, and “this must be the place,” a solo presentation displaying his porcelain vessels poetically arranged in vitrines, as well as stone benches carved from marble. As respected for his writing as he is for his pots, de Waal is the author of 20th Century Ceramics (2003), The Pot Book (2011), The White Road (2015), Letters to Camondo (2021), and, perhaps most notably, the New York Times bestseller The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010). All that de Waal does is part of one long continuum: He views his pots and texts as a single, rigorously sculpted body of work and ongoing conversation across time.

On this episode, de Waal talks about his infatuation with Japan, his affinity for the life and work of the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), and the roles of rhythm and breath in his work.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:28] Edmund de Waal

[03:43] Paul Celan

[08:12] 2023 Isamu Noguchi Award

[08:17] Gagosian

[08:20] “this must be the place”

[08:22] “to light, and then return”

[09:09] Twentieth-Century Ceramics

[09:20] The Pot Book

[18:23] “Letters to Camondo” Exhibition

[20:32] Sally Mann

[20:48] The Hare with Amber Eyes

[28:00] “The Hare with Amber Eyes” Exhibition

[30:56] “Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto” Exhibition

[40:24] Dr. Sen no Sōshitsu

[52:48] The White Road

[52:49] Letters to Camondo

[01:06:33] In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials

To the landscape designer Edwina von Gal, gardening is much more than just seeding, planting, weeding, and watering; it’s her life calling. Since starting her namesake firm in 1984 in East Hampton, on New York’s Long Island, she has worked with, for, and/or alongside the likes of Calvin Klein, Larry Gagosian, Frank Gehry, Maya Lin, Annabelle Selldorf, Richard Serra, and Cindy Sherman, creating gardens that center on native species and engage in other nature-based land-care solutions. In 2008, von Gal founded the Azuero Earth Project in Panama to promote chemical-free reforestation with native trees on the Azuero Peninsula. Stemming out of this initiative, in 2013, she then founded the Perfect Earth Project to promote chemical-free, non-agricultural land management in the U.S. Her most recent effort, Two Thirds for the Birds, is a call-to-action to plant more native plants and eliminate pesticides, thus creating a greater food supply for birds.

On the episode, she discusses the meditative qualities of gardening; reframing landscaping as “land care”; and why she sees herself not as a steward of land, but rather as a collaborator with it.

Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Edwina von Gal

[15:32] William Cronon

[15:32] Changes in the Land

[15:32] Tiokasin Ghosthorse

[24:04] Carl Sagan

[24:04] The Demon-Haunted World

[26:07] Perfect Earth Project

[40:37] Two Thirds for the Birds

[42:41] John Fitzpatrick

[42:41] Cornell Lab of Ornithology

[42:41] Merlin Bird ID

[47:01] Garden Club of America

[50:21] Diana Vreeland

[51:09] Peter Sharp

[51:09] Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center

[54:46] Frank Gehry

[54:46] Biomuseo

[54:46] Bruce Mau

[56:32] Azuero Earth Project

[1:00:37] Doug Tallamy

[1:02:01] Nature’s Best Hope

[1:05:12] The High Line

[1:05:12] Brooklyn Bridge Park

[1:05:12] The Battery Conservancy

[1:05:12] Brooklyn Museum

Three years ago, at age 66, the Belgium-born writer and critic Lucy Sante—known for her award-winning essays, criticism, and books, including Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991)—announced to a few dozen close friends that she was transitioning to womanhood. This news came following nearly four decades of publishing her work under the byline Luc Sante. In her new memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name (Penguin Press), which she discusses at length on this episode of Time Sensitive, Sante writes about the first six months of her recent transition, the decades-long silence that preceded it, and various piercing moments from her life that led up to it. She is also the author of books such as Nineteen Reservoirs (2022), The Other Paris (2015), and Folk Photography (2009), and her writing has appeared in publications including The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Artforum, and Vanity Fair. Across all of her work, Sante brings a searing, no-nonsense clarity and a photographic eye for detail.

Also on this episode, Sante talks about why she thinks of the 1960s as “a kind of magic time,” her life-transforming literary journey, and her decision to open the floodgates of her womanhood.

Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

[3:49] Lucy Sante

[3:49] I Heard Her Call My Name

[3:49] The Factory of Facts

[6:27] Nineteen Reservoirs

[6:27] Low Life

[9:28] Histories of the Transgender Child

[9:28] Jules Gill-Peterson

[22:11] Tintin

[24:07] Terry Southern

[24:07] Writers in Revolt

[24:07] Alexander Trocchi’s Caine’s Book

[24:07] Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”

[24:07] Peter Orlovsky

[24:07] William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch

[24:07] Curzio Malapart’s Kaputt

[29:05] The New York Review of Books

[34:23] Folk Photography

[36:55] The Other Paris

[38:04] Walker Evans

[38:04] Robert Frank

[46:10] Maybe People Would Be the Times

[49:52] “The Invention of the Blues”

[51:41] The Velvet Underground

[51:41] Lou Reed

[51:41] Andrew Wylie

Growing up in the 1950s in the only Chinese family in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Billie Tsien always felt like an outsider. She would seclude herself in the shower of her family’s home’s master bathroom, behind closed doors, escaping into books for hours before her parents, who had originally moved to America from Shanghai to study at Cornell, would find her. Through this Tsien developed a deep understanding of the value of a rich interior life—a concept she has gone on to apply to her work at the New York–based architectural practice Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Partners (TWBTA), which she co-founded with her husband, Tod Williams, in 1986.

The ethereal craft inherent in TWBTA’s structures, which include parks, libraries, museums, and other people-focused places, emanates from Billie and Tod’s belief that architecture is an act of service, and an opportunity to create quiet moments where visitors can indulge in the simple yet powerful emotions that can be stirred when encountering beauty. When Tsien, now 72, reflects on her firm’s philosophy—which entails making buildings that transcend solutions, that respect the earth, and that are measured by the lives lived within them—it’s clear that she profoundly, even poetically, shapes each project’s awe-inspiring energy.

Tsien’s deliberate, unhurried methodology is apparent in everything she does. She advocates for listening and community engagement—a central part of her firm’s high-profile, often controversial public works, such as Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation (2012), Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art (2019), and Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center, which is slated to break ground this fall. Tsien and her staff spend time with the craftspeople who create many of their materials—including Dutch textile artist Claudy Jongstra, whose vibrant felt paintings grace the walls of New York’s David Rubenstein Atrium (2009), and Danish brick-makers whose product features on the facade of dormitories at Pennsylvania’s Haverford College (2012)—and select them according to the emotional responses they elicit. She gives the same focused attention to the holistic experience of a building as she does the handrails that will go inside it. When it comes to the planet, Tsien thinks buildings should embrace measurable ways to minimize their environmental footprints as well as immeasurable ones, such as the meandering pathways of the LeFrak Center (2013), in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, that invite people to appreciate the natural wonders around them.

On this episode, Tsien details the origins of and rationale behind her approach to the built environment, talking with Spencer about designing structures as containers for life, why history doesn’t unfold in a straight line, and architecture as both an honor and a responsibility.