COVER STORY
Artists’ Worlds
Kurt Andersen and filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn talk about the physical spaces artists build -- to feed their creativity and to hide from the rest of the world.

Mario
Thirty years ago in Oakland, California, Mario Carrillo and his wife Dixi bought an abandoned building that had once been a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. Mario worked alone over the years to convert the dilapidated shell into a home, and his most ambitious sculpture. Ave Carrillo tells how her father turned their environment into an unending art project.

Bishop in Brazil
In November 1951, the American poet Elizabeth Bishop was 40, and already one of America’s most important poets. But she was lonely, drank a lot, and was often ill from asthma. So she booked a voyage to Brazil, and there she met the love of her life and the home of her dreams. For the next sixteen years, Bishop lived in a mountaintop villa that was the setting, and subject, of some of her greatest poetry-- both joyful and dark. Produced by Pamela Renner.
Go to the Vassar Archive website on Elizabeth Bishop
Go to the Voices and Visions Spotlight on Elizabeth Bishop
Go to a transcript of Elizabeth Bishop’s Poem, “The Fish”
Go to a transcript of Elizabeth Bishop’s Poem, “One Art”

Arcosanti
In 1970 the visionary Italian architect Paolo Soleri and a team of volunteers broke ground on the city of the future. It was called Arcosanti, and it was intended to change how we Americans live. In Soleri's dream, Arcosantians would sleep and work in 15 story towers on an area no larger than a baseball field, in the middle of the Arizona desert. Tamar Brott finds Soleri’s plans far from fulfilled, but creativity is springing up in his desert settlement.
Go to the Arcosanti website

SPECIAL GUEST
Nathaniel Kahn
Nathaniel Kahn is a playwright and filmmaker. He grew up in Philadelphia, and his father is the renowned architect Louis Kahn. His documentary about Louis Kahn's architecture and his family relationships, My Architect, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2003, and is still in theaters around the country. An avid environmentalist, his other films include My Father's Garden, a portrait of two farmers that aired on the Sundance Channel, and Wilderness: The Last Stand, about the US Forest Service, which was broadcast on PBS.
Go to My Architect website

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Commentary
Ring My Cell
Read the full Text

War of the Californias
Earlier this year a movie was released on DVD telling the story of a forgotten American war -the civil war between the people of northern and Southern California. The movie imitates a Ken Burns documentary, but it’s obviously fictional. The premise and the visuals are based on the work of an artist named Sandow Birk. Birk explains why he felt San Francisco and Los Angeles were destined to come to blows. Produced by Neda Pourang.
Go to the In Smog and Thunder website

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