COLLABORATION BY JONATHAN RANDALL GRANT AND WILL JOHNSON
Culture Keeper is all about collaboration, and this whimsical impromptu photo shoot by Jonathan Randall Grant, Culture Keeper’s founder and creative director, and photographer Will Johnson embodies this Culture Keeper ethos. For creatives, space to improvise and play is fertile ground for new projects! (For more creative projects that emerged from an artist’s playing, check out our MADE column.)
STORY BY JANE POTTHAST
This week’s writer illustrates the power of art for guiding us to new places. For her, two paintings in a Vatican gallery thrust her into a spiritually profound encounter.
These, the “Pope’s paintings,” cried out to God more than any others as we wound through masterpieces in the sad, vast Vatican.
We were plodding through the quarters and it was less crowded than the other museums, as it was not on the path to the Sistine Chapel.
I started to tremble when we saw a Raphael, his last before death. A secrecy pervaded the image, forcing me to a craggy edge of longing at which my eyes watered.
ARTICLE BY HEATHER M. SURLS
Our resident contributor in Amman, Jordan, takes us into the world of #hijabfashion, a commonly used hashtag for this burgeoning corner of the fashion world in which social media is a large part of the marketing strategy.
Contributor Joanna Marsh introduces us to a composer who taught her how to be free of the notes on the page.
STORY BY DONNA FORD AND PHOTOS BY JOHN FORD
When traveling, Culture Keeper contributor Donna Ford discovers plenty of inspiration for her home’s interior. Here, she shares with us some of the style ideas she picked up as souvenirs in Morocco that are years later still showing up in her home design. From the decor of a luxury hotel to the energy of the medina, inspiration abounded during this North African getaway with her husband.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY HOLLY WREN SPAULDING
MADE: A series of conversations with artists about how they navigate impasses and discover breakthroughs in their work.
To reach Karen Dolmanisth’s studio, I must first navigate a series of stairs, metal doors, and maze-like corridors in an old mill building in Florence, Massachusetts. Then follows a tunnel of books, artwork, costumes, and other ephemera gathered and carefully placed over the twenty years she has worked in this space.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY ARMON A. MEANS The image of the biker as established by documentary photographer Danny Lyon in The
BY JONATHON GEELS
Design processes, especially in the built environment, tend to progress on very similar trajectories: a client with an idea engages a designer to turn that abstract idea into a concrete product (sometimes literally concrete). Many problems with this approach come to mind, but the one I would like to focus on is the notion of genius and where good ideas come from.
PHOTOS AND TEXT BY LAURA ROCKETT
When a wedding photographer becomes an elopement photographer, blending in becomes impossible. Read how Laura Rockett took on the role of chronicler and tour guide for one couple’s big day in New Orleans and peak inside their luscious wedding album.
BY JOANNA MARSH
When Jennifer Trafton started thinking about her next children’s novel, she began picturing a young Don Quixote who saw the world a little differently from everyone else. And like Don Quixote, this character—an eight-year-old boy named Henry—would have a quest to fulfill: to share his vision and his artistic gifts for the benefit of the wider community.
