Thomas Lawson is an artist, educator and writer. For the first time in the prize’s history, the Rabkin Foundation commissioned portraits of the winners in the spaces where they write and conducted interviews with them about their lives and ideas. Here is Mary Louise Schumacher, a longtime journalist and the foundation’s new executive director, in conversation with Thomas. It has been gently edited for length and clarity.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton (Scribner, January 1925)
Sayre Gomez
Jack Goldstein
The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom (Oxford University Press)
“The Allegorical Impulse: Toward Theory of Postmodernism by Craig Owens” (October, Spring 1980)
East of Borneo
Susan Morgan
REALLIFE magazine
Mark Lewis
Rosalind Krauss
Robert Pincus-Witten
“Outside The Box: Unpacking Craig Owens’s Slide Library” by James Meyer (Artforum, March 2003)
Rose Hobart by Joseph Cornell (1936)
Diva Corp
Travis Diehl
John Waters: Pope of Trash, exhibit at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, 2023
“Remembering Jack Goldstein” by Jennifer Bolande (Afterall 7, Spring/Summer 2003)
”PST ART: Art & Science Collide,” project at Getty museum
“All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” exhibit REDCAT Center CalArts (2024)
Roy Cohn & Jack Smith by Ron Vawter (April 1994)
The Comet / Poppea, by George Lewis
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument
“Time Bandits, Space Vampires” by Thomas Lawson (Artforum 1988)
El Anatsui: Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta, exhibit at Talbot Rice Gallery of the University of Edinburgh (2024)
Christ of St. John of the Cross by Salvador Dali (1951), Glasgow Museums
Joseph Beuys
Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader edited by Susan Morgan (East of Borneo Books, 2012)
This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer, and Johnathon Olsen, editor. Music is by Ariel Shalom, Flint, Pink Desert, and CTRL S. These interviews are accompanied by newly commissioned portraits of these writers made by Kevin J. Miyazaki in the spaces where they work.
Thomas Lawson, 2024 Rabkin Prize winner