Brian
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sholis.com
Brian
@sholis.com
290 followers 330 following 190 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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🤝🏻
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
May 20, 2025 at 4:43 PM
sholis.com
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
May 3, 2025 at 5:38 PM
sholis.com
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 fabric Photo 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.
April 18, 2025 at 7:36 PM
sholis.com
My friend Lucas Foglia has just released a beautiful new photobook, “Constant Bloom,” which tracks the migration of Painted Lady butterflies across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. A week from today he opens a show of the photos at Fredericks & Freiser in NYC. Links below 👇🏻
A mockup depicting a book with a purple cover against a light-blue background. The cover features words in small type and a large black print of butterfly wings. Spread from a book with a large photograph depicting a Painted Lady butterfly resting on a large skull sitting in the sand or dirt. Spread from a book featuring a large photograph of a man with a butterfly net standing atop a rock in a green and mountainous region.
April 17, 2025 at 4:09 PM
sholis.com
This 1842 cottage an hour north of Hobart, Australia is for sale. I’m in Canada, so I’ll need a partner who can put up some money and time-share it with me. Anyone in?

thedesignfiles.net/2025/04/on-t...

More images & plans: www.are.na/brian-s-arch...
Photo of an elderly gentleman sitting on a ledge built in to a large new window in a renovated 1840s cottage in Australia. The interior is dark and moody, with brick and wood, despite the light coming in from outside. A view of a renovated kitchen in an old stone cottage. Wooden shelves line one wall; a modern countertop runs beneath a window.
April 14, 2025 at 1:07 PM
sholis.com
Last week, driving into Montreal, @rosszurowski.com and I noticed vibrant Club Piscine signage along a busy road. This morning I realize that brand is getting an update from Caserne, perhaps Canada’s hippest design studio. Interesting to see the firm doing more straightforward/corporate work.
Three photographs of Club Piscine signage, featuring a yellow smiley face and the brand’s name in bubbly red and blue letters
April 14, 2025 at 11:56 AM
sholis.com
New goal: a flower garden of TestFlight apps …
Six app icons, four of which could be described as flower-like …
April 9, 2025 at 11:48 AM
sholis.com
Making a second pass on the typesetting of this book and encountering accidental life advice …
Image of a sticky note superimposed over text. The note reads: “aim for / self- / reflection”
April 8, 2025 at 4:17 PM
sholis.com
Last weekend, the city of Kortrijk, Belgium, opened a renovation and extension of its municipal museum designed by one of my favorite firms, Barozzi Veiga.

Info: barozziveiga.com/projects/gro...

Opening photos: www.instagram.com/p/DH2-2cIIBkg/
A crowd of people, with one person pointing toward the ceiling, in a high, red-painted room Aerial view of a picturesque town square with a block-shaped stone building jutting into the frame in the foreground and a church spire in the background A tall, monolithic gray form, with the sun peeking over its topmost edge, stands next to an older, enclosed stone passageway with newly installed windows; two people, one with a mobility aid, stand in the foreground An in-progress construction photo depicting a large monolithic stone form with a large window at ground level that is not yet fully installed; a mount of dirt rests in the foreground. The in-progress building is connected to an older brick building by an enclosed passagway.
April 6, 2025 at 11:34 AM
sholis.com
Art historian Georges Didi-Huberman has a “working file” of 148,000 notes: writingslowly.com/2025/03/20/t...
Georges Didi-Huberman’s hands viewed from above, writing notes and arranging them on a table
April 4, 2025 at 8:13 PM
sholis.com
I don’t say this often enough: my friend Ross and I are building Valise, the best inventory software for artists. We want it to be easy to keep track of your work; the admin side of running a studio shouldn’t be difficult, and information is power. Please share with artists you know!

valise.works
Screenshot of Valise depicting a grid of Ellsworth Kelly artworks set in a clean digital interface Screenshot of a "collection" in Valise, showing a grid of works under the heading "Works on Paper for the NYT" (yes, it includes one work that is not a work on paper) Screenshot of an artwork record in Valise. Everything is very small, but if you squint you can see how we record an artwork's details, price, images, editions, collections, consignment history, presentation history, expenses, and miscellaneous other documents.
April 2, 2025 at 3:03 PM
sholis.com
Promise not to belabor the point, but I will say that Feedbin allows you to see emails in their original HTML form (see attached). I'm responding so much b/c I know the pain—I’m apparently just shy of 2,000 "feeds" in my account.
April 2, 2025 at 1:24 PM
sholis.com
Twelve years ago, while working at Aperture, I went to Vija Celmins’s studio to see about doing an article (or a book, or a show) about her relationship to photography. Nothing came of it, as happens, but finally there’s an article in the Spring 2025 issue—an interview with Richard Learoyd.
A photograph of piles of black-and-white newspaper and magazine clippings and photographs, often frayed or marked on, including some in an shallow, open cardboard box.
March 28, 2025 at 5:33 PM
sholis.com
Today 4AD releases an expanded thirtieth-anniversary edition of one of my desert-island discs: Unrest’s “Perfect Teeth.”

I can’t count the number of hours this record has accompanied me, or the varied moods it’s suited. 🖤

Ordering on vinyl now …

4ad.com/releases/1065
On an orange background, the cover of a vinyl edition of the Unrest album “Perfect Teeth,” which features a close-in black-and-white portrait of a woman with short hair and a jaunty hat. The record is pulled halfway out of the packaging to reveal an inner sleeve and its label.
March 28, 2025 at 1:43 PM
sholis.com
@jonas.do Big fan of HW4! FYI: In the last few weeks, my icon has had a hairline stroke on the right-hand edge. Currently v4.0.37 on iOS 18.1.1 on an iPhone 14 Pro. Not sure which update caused it, or if it’s replicable. Anyway, thanks for a great app! Sorry to everyone else who sees this.
Close-up screenshot of the Hello Weather iOS icon with a red circle highlighting a stroke of white on its right-hand edge
December 9, 2024 at 3:59 PM
sholis.com
Ahhh! A day I’ve been waiting for, in one way or another, since 2007, when the first “Xerrox” album was released—or maybe 2009, when I realized the covers fit together and more were coming. Setting aside an hour tonight with my headphones. 🎧
A photo of five white “tiles” (CD covers) with a design that spells out XERROX across them
November 29, 2024 at 12:04 PM
sholis.com
Just learned about “Old Brass Brains,” a machine in use by the US Coast and Geodetic survey from 1910 to 1965 to calculate high and low tides, and the wonderful pictures on Wikipedia scream “math” and ”engineering” to my arts-and-humanities brain:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-Pr...
View of a large (seemingly room-size) machine with an asterisk-shaped body; dozens of gears are appended to its face, and a chain runs between them
November 21, 2024 at 2:41 PM
sholis.com
Looks great! FYI: the embedded video on the Snakes of Wrath page is throwing up a “video unavailable” error:
November 18, 2024 at 9:22 PM
sholis.com
From a recent @nybooks.com interview with Verlyn Klinklenborg (the quote is his, not Bowen’s). Learning new words is my favorite part of editing. I get to expand my knowledge and marvel at others’ aptitude for and precision with language.

The interview is here: www.nybooks.com/online/2024/...
A quote shot of the following text: “English is enormous, beautiful, complex, fascinating. Language is the most sophisticated thing humans have ever used. Why wouldn’t you want to look up a word you don’t know? It’s never ever been easier to look up the definitions of words—and their etymologies. So why not do it? Who knows what you might learn?”
November 18, 2024 at 1:57 PM
sholis.com
Katelyn Eichwald, ”Waiting for You in the Garden” (2024). Recently on view in the group exhibition “Pluck” at Pangée, Montreal:

pangeepangee.com/pluck
A small, square-format painting on rough burlap. Against a dark, seemingly nighttime background, there are a few branches of a berry bush, its red and dark-blue fruits gleaming from an unseen source of light.
November 18, 2024 at 1:52 PM