Canto 73 Sacred Plumes

Katie Rubright’s Canto 73 Sacred Plumes is one of those works where an occasionally irritatingly verbose man like myself has to show restraint. As a native New Yorker, I could go on ad nauseam about its ties to the city of my birth and the many aspects of that amazing and maddening place it encapsulates. Also, as an art nerd, I could wax poetic (till you insist to my boss that I must be stopped at all costs from inundating you with endless art-speak) forever about its exciting and undeniably successful marriage of collage, painting, drawing, and (if I may be so bold) architecture.

I have not read Dante for over a century. Still, from my recollection (and I have never made this connection before), it could act as a perfect allegory for the many layers of hope, disappointment, wealth, and poverty personified in New York City. Honestly, I probably should have waited for a weekend newsletter (I'm still going to have to at least throw it in one) to write about this work because it demands a depth of conceptual and visual analysis that cannot be contained in daily letters. But, for now, I can definitively say Canto 73 Sacred Plumes requires study, not just of the composition, but the plethora of cultural commentary it contains.