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Brian

@sholis.com
301 followers 327 following 194 posts

Chicagoan in Toronto, art worker, autodidact, dad. This is mostly a read-and-reply account. More about me at sholis.com; I’m also building valise.works for artists.

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Brian @sholis.com · 30/01/2026
Thanks for the tip!
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Brian @sholis.com · 29/01/2026
I’m looking forward to trying it, but the version downloaded from the App Store opens Safari to authenticate, despite Firefox being my default browser. Safari is borked on my machine ("Application Not Responding" at launch), so I can't use it. Can you share a URL for authenticating?
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Brian @sholis.com · 17/06/2025
Last point before I return to my unplanned social-media sabbatical: do not buy this book at Amazon if you can avoid it. Try: In Canada: www.indiebookstores.ca/book/9781804... In the US: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
indiebookstores.ca
Single Book - IndieBookstores
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Brian @sholis.com · 17/06/2025
You know it’s good just from the groups she surveys: the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), ACT UP, Top Value Television (TVTV), Agnes Denes, Edgar Heap of Birds, Dyke Action Machine!, fierce pussy, Project Row Houses, Nan Goldin’s PAIN.
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Brian @sholis.com · 17/06/2025
Mine is not the only event, and here’s a list of where she’ll be talking about it sooner: laurenoneillbutler.substack.com/p/new-book-a...
laurenoneillbutler.substack.com
New Book and Upcoming Events
The War of Art: A History of Artists' Protest In America - available June 17 from Verso and your local bookstore
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Brian @sholis.com · 17/06/2025
I am speaking with Lauren at Type Books in Toronto at the end of the summer! We’ve been friends for 27 years and this is our first public event together! I am excited, as the exclamation marks suggest.
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Brian @sholis.com · 17/06/2025
Today is publication day for my dear friend @laurenoneillbutler.bsky.social’s new @versobooks.bsky.social book “The War of Art.” It is great! You should click this link and learn more and then buy it or order it from your library! www.versobooks.com/en-ca/produc...
versobooks.com
The War of Art
Artists in America have long battled against injustices, believing that art can in fact “do more.” The War of Art tells this history of artist-led activism and the global political and aesthetic debat...
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Brian @sholis.com · 08/06/2025
Funnily enough, I’m also in Canada and found your feed via a search for “TWSBI 580.” I’m navigating my midlife crisis with notebooks & pens, and in the past month have settled on a regular-size TN and yesterday I bought my third pen, a TWSBI 580 Diamond AL R in “nickel" (EF nib). 🤝✒️📔🇨🇦
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Brian @sholis.com · 07/06/2025
I’m likewise earnest enough to drop in my favorite guide: www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citati...
chicagomanualofstyle.org
The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition
Find it. Write it. Cite it. The Chicago Manual of Style Online is the venerable, time-tested guide to style, usage, and grammar in an accessible online format. ¶ It is the indispensable reference for ...
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Brian @sholis.com · 01/06/2025
First pen, a LAMY Safari Dark Dusk (EF), purchased May 15. Second pen, a Kaweco AL Sport (Anthracite; F), purchased May 31. 😬🫣
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Brian @sholis.com · 31/05/2025
👂🏻👂🏻 thanks! I hope these past few weeks you’ve been getting the responses you hoped for!
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Brian @sholis.com · 30/05/2025
New albums from Al Wootton, Abul Mogard, Deaf Center, Warmth, Heinali, Ellen Arkbro, and Laura Cannell—it’s an ambient/experimental lover’s dream week. Plus Sonnyjim, a Keith Jarrett live set, Andy Shauf’s Foxwarren, Budos Band, Alan Sparhawk … it goes on and on. So much to savor. 🎶
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Brian @sholis.com · 30/05/2025
Every Friday morning, I set aside time to open @mactanaka.bsky.social’s wonderful app MusicHarbor, which is like an RSS reader for Apple Music, and sort through new releases from the 1,000+ artists I follow. This morning I feel especially blessed.
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Brian @sholis.com · 30/05/2025
I’m about two weeks ahead of you and have a growing list of pens to buy next …
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Brian @sholis.com · 29/05/2025
I don’t think so! I opened it up and tried to share an article and it copied the URL to the clipboard. GL parses text and images, so you could conceivably manually copy-and-paste to get that back out. But it’s not like a .webarchive / full copy. I'm a RR user, so you might want to sniff around more.
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Lauren O'Neill-Butler @laurenoneillbutler.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
!!! Thursday, July 17, 2025, 6pm !!!
nypl.org
Lauren O'Neill-Butler with E.C. Feiss and Ciarán Finlayson: The War of Art: A History of Artists' Protest in America
What do artists' protests reveal about the possibilities for protest in our democracy? Lauren O'Neill-Butler's "The War of Art" invites us to learn, imagine, and mobilize, which we'll do together at t...
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Brian @sholis.com · 28/05/2025
– Readwise Reader is the power-user’s tools, with good parsing, many integrations, customization – Matter is the best–designed, but a little too heavy on AI & recommendations for my taste – GoodLinks is great if you're Apple-only and don’t need to easily get highlights out
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Brian @sholis.com · 28/05/2025
Here’s a new iteration your followers in NYC might want to sign up for, if they missed the first round (from @laurel.bsky.social): ultralight.school/classes/walk...
ultralight.school
Walking the Internet
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Brian @sholis.com · 26/05/2025
Don’t know if this is exactly right, but I was recently looking at pen cases on Galen Leather’s site. Here’s its Field Notes covers: www.galenleather.com/collections/...
galenleather.com
Field Notes Covers
Whether you're out in the field, at work, home or school, our Leather Field Notes Covers will keep your notebook safe from the elements in one stylish cover.
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Brian @sholis.com · 25/05/2025
I've just arrived at the standard TN after a very long journey over two decades (Moleskine → L1917 → Stalogy → Hobonichi →). About a week in and very happy thus far …
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Brian @sholis.com · 21/05/2025
That’s a lovely drawing! I saw it because I follow the Hobonichi feed. By coincidence an artist friend of mine was on Dutch TV a few days ago talking about his new book, which focuses on butterflies: m.youtube.com/watch?v=hCcD...
m.youtube.com
What we can learn from a painted lady butterfly | Lucas Foglia | Buitenhof
YouTube video by Buitenhof
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Brian @sholis.com · 20/05/2025
archive.is/h16MV 🤝🏻
The War of Art: A History of Artists’ Protest in America by Lauren O’Neill Butler

Walk through New York’s gleaming gallery neighborhoods and the notion that art (or artists) could be considered edgy, provocative or dangerously political seems like a fantasy. But in the not-so-distant past, dedicated artists used their work to fight for everything from housing rights to AIDS awareness. Butler, a former editor at Artforum, has structured the book around oral histories from several key figures, charting their work from the 1960s to the present. June 17
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Ido Radon @idoradon.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
We are launching a new exhibition project for art, its discourses, and histories in Portland Oregon above Mother Foucault’s Bookshop. societysocietysociety.com
societysocietysociety.com
SOCIETY
SOCIETY is a space for art and its histories and discourses above Mother Foucault's Bookshop in Portland, Oregon
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Brian @sholis.com · 20/05/2025
Happy to recommend bookstores and coffee shops and bakeries and the like in Toronto, to round out your trip!
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Brian @sholis.com · 16/05/2025
The Lamy Safari Dark Dusk special edition got me yesterday, after years of lurking …
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Brian @sholis.com · 16/05/2025
So far as I can see in these roundups, there wasn’t a single photograph on view at Independent, NADA, or ESTHER in New York last week: artviewer.org/independent-... artviewer.org/nada-new-yor... artviewer.org/esther-ii-ne...
artviewer.org
Independent New York 2025 – Art Viewer
Featured Artists: Nooshin Askari, Adam Higgins, Douglas Coupland, Nana Wolke, Zoë Carlon, Amel Bashier, Ada Patterson, Suyi Xu, Sam Mattax, Wendy White, Tincuta
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Brian @sholis.com · 16/05/2025
Toronto: @billorcutt.bsky.social (!) and Aidan Baker (!!) at Allan Gardens Conservatory (!!!) on August 9. I got tickets for me & Julia. See you there? dice.fm/event/7daneb...
dice.fm
Bill Orcutt Tickets | CA$50.48 | 9 Aug @ Allan Gardens Children's Conservatory, Toronto | DICE
As one of experimental music's most influential guitarists, Bill Orcutt weaves looping melodic lines and angular attack into a dense, fissured landscape of A...
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Brian @sholis.com · 16/05/2025
Every year I think to myself: “Why don’t they just publish all of these books?” Looking forward to seeing which of these they _do_ publish.
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Brian @sholis.com · 15/05/2025
If you’re in Toronto, consider joining us! Julia and our friend Rhiann helped our neighbours make their papier-mâché sculptures, and a similar parade along the rail path last year was lots of (family-friendly) fun. spacing.ca/toronto/2025...
spacing.ca
The Junction Triangle Parade - Spacing Toronto
Two dedicated community organizations, Friends of West Toronto Rail Path and Angry Locals, are coming together to host a vibrant and meaningful parade on May 29th, 2025 in Toronto’s Junction Triangle ...
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Brian @sholis.com · 13/05/2025
🤔🧐
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Brian @sholis.com · 13/05/2025
Congrats! When we spoke I didn’t really get onto the parallel track of project-based education (rather than work projects). I like this, and look forward to watching you evolve it!
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Jordan S. Carroll 🌹 @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
one of the fundamental problems of our culture is that we treat the time from college graduation to retirement as homogenous and undifferentiated. a saner society would break it up with age-based sabbaticals, holidays, retreats, initiations, and educational interludes.
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Brian @sholis.com · 10/05/2025
Hard same. Have it off globally and so I still don’t think Bsky has the juice (even if it probably does—I just can’t see it).
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Brian @sholis.com · 08/05/2025
“Different Rooms is meant to meet you where you are. It’s a decidedly urban album. The field recordings were captured on train platforms, in city streets, in rooms at home …” The lead single off Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer’s new album is enticing: intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/differ...
intlanthem.bandcamp.com
Different Rooms, by Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer
10 track album
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Brian @sholis.com · 05/05/2025
Not AI, but this is an early-2010s classic: smartquotesforsmartpeople.com
smartquotesforsmartpeople.com
Smart Quotes for Smart People
Smart Quotes for Smart People
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Brian @sholis.com · 04/05/2025
Really glad I let my 9-year-old stay up to watch. He got a Rantanen card in his first-ever pack and has cheered for him since …
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Brian @sholis.com · 04/05/2025
Jim Nill trying to single-handedly make DFW feel better about Nico Harrison and, for tonight at least, succeeding.
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Brian @sholis.com · 03/05/2025
If you see this Post your getaway vehicle
Damián Ortegas’s 2002 sculpture, “Cosmic Thing,” a VW bug taken apart into dozens of pieces and suspended by cables in a warehouse-like setting
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Brian @sholis.com · 02/05/2025
As long as I’m at it and it’s still a sunny Friday, let me add that Moss’s 2022 release on Modern Love is still on heavy rotation here, especially “Poisonous Effects”: boomkat.com/products/tha...
boomkat.com
JAMAL MOSS - Thanks 4 The Tracks U Lost
Gnostic Chicago house virtuoso Jamal Moss unleashes the spirits of angular and rampant warehouse music on a powerful clutch of bangers for Modern Love - the first issued under his own name for five ye...
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Brian @sholis.com · 02/05/2025
Can’t see this record falling out of my top ten during the rest of the year. Jamal Moss is so, so good. Chicago represent! Smalltown Supersound keeps nailing it as it increasingly reaches beyond Norway for new artists to add to the roster. hieroglyphicbeingsts.bandcamp.com/album/dance-...
hieroglyphicbeingsts.bandcamp.com
Dance Music 4 Bad People, by Hieroglyphic Being
8 track album
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Brian @sholis.com · 02/05/2025
This might be of interest: bsky.app/profile/jane...
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Brian @sholis.com · 01/05/2025
Love Emily Braun’s idea to have twenty-four writers each describing an hour spent with Christian Marclay’s “The Clock.” I’m going to dole these out to myself, one per day: brooklynrail.org/2025/05/crit...
brooklynrail.org
Keeping Time with Christian Marclay’s The Clock | The Brooklyn Rail
There have been many single-author pieces on The Clock, but I wanted to juxtapose different voices, expertise, and ages (spanning six decades) in response to its montage fabric and temporal structure....
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Brian @sholis.com · 30/04/2025
More on this project from the wonderful website HIC Arquitectura: hicarquitectura.com/2025/04/baro...
hicarquitectura.com
Barozzi Veiga > Abby Kortrijk | HIC
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Brian @sholis.com · 24/04/2025
For a sample, here’s the page on my site dedicated to the big show I did with him in 2015: www.sholis.com/work/jochen-...
sholis.com
Jochen Lempert
While I worked at the Cincinnati Art Museum, I presented the first major US museum exhibition devoted to German artist Jochen Lempert. Titled “Field Guide: Photographs by Jochen Lempert,” ...
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Brian @sholis.com · 24/04/2025
For years I’ve waited for a New York gallery to give the German photographer Jochen Lempert a solo show. I love his work (and live with examples of it) and I’m excited that Anton Kern is opening a show on May 6. It’s not on the gallery website yet, but it’s at their main 55th St. space. Recommended!
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Brian @sholis.com · 24/04/2025
Good luck! I admire your writing where and when I catch it, and hope the “something kinda big” is more of it, or more of you bringing others’ creative work into the world. 💪🏻🤞🏻
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Brian @sholis.com · 23/04/2025
Funnily enough, we’re starting a Sholis Family Run Club on Friday because my six-year-old is desperate for one and no one lets kids that young join. We’re waking him at 6:30 a.m. God help us.
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Brian @sholis.com · 22/04/2025
Jamie talks about a chair prototype that caught his eye while in Milan: www.theglobeandmail.com/life/style-a...
theglobeandmail.com
This is what caught five Canadian designers’ eyes at the Milan furniture fair
Every spring, Milan’s Salone del Mobile attracts more than 250,000 visitors to see the latest in design. Here’s what our own pros thought about the lineup
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Brian @sholis.com · 18/04/2025
Was it Scurr’s? I had one when I was there in September and it was pretty good. Didn’t have to wait that long. Surprised to see, via my local library branch, that they have a cookbook now …
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Brian @sholis.com · 18/04/2025
I don’t know what’s going on with this Eva Kot’átková exhibition in a palace in Vilnius, but I’m definitely intrigued … Images via: www.contemporaryartdaily.com/project/eva-...
A figurative sculpture composed of a wooden pallet, 40kg bags of concrete (I think), and a spherical head sewn together out of bits of fabricPhoto of a large wooden structure with ramps in front of a series of arched windows. Large heads made of sewn-together fabric, all with mouths apage, rest on and around the structure, as do pieces of clothing or cloth.Dozens, if not hundreds, of small quasi-figurative elements—are they bits of paper? are they little sculptures?—dangle on strings hooked onto rows of white wire.
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