Catherine Sawoski 8 posts
Catherine Sawoski is an art critic specializing in theater, literature, and visual arts. She is a senior at Barnard College at Columbia University studying English and Philosophy, and a Deputy Editor for Arts and Culture at the Columbia Daily Spectator. She has covered everything from Off Broadway shows to emerging poets and gallery exhibitions from young female artists. In her free time, you can usually find her at a show somewhere in the city or with her goldendoodle, Amber.

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From ‘Marjoe’ to ‘Strike’: Sarah Kernochan’s Career of Reinvention

Yes, Sarah Kernochan has won two Academy Awards. But that barely scratches the surface of her decades-long career, where she has been everything from director to novelist to screenwriter to musician. 

“I didn’t have any ambition to be a director, and certainly not a documentary filmmaker,” Sarah said, looking back on her Academy-Award winning feature, Marjoe.read more.

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STRIKE: The Sarah Kernochan Cult Classic That Never Was

Strike!, the 1998 film written and directed by Sarah Kernochan, was not supposed to be titled that. And, sometimes, it’s known as All I Wanna Do. 

“The original title, my title, was The Hairy Bird,” Sarah Kernochan introduced at a rare and recent screening at the Metrograph in New York, “which was a euphemism in the 60s at boarding schools for penis.read more.

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Podcasting: New Female Frontier? Or Misogynist Breeding Ground?

A confession: I listen to a podcast every night before I fall asleep. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t float out of consciousness with some voice cooing in my ear, dissecting the plot to a book I haven’t read or teaching me about a minor historical event. When I was in high school, my brother’s nightly routine included shutting off whatever Spotify show was spouting from my phone before he went to bed.read more.

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Georgia O’Keeffe and the Shapes in Her Mind

It would be a safe bet to say that most of the line snaking outside of MoMA thinks of Georgia O’Keeffe as a synonym for pastel flowers. Going into this summer’s new exhibition of her work, among the other uninitiated, a friend and I were able to wax poetic about dainty blooms, beautiful colors, and vibrant oil paintings that grace the covers of twelve month calendars.read more.

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Celine Song’s Quietly Profound Debut in ‘Past Lives’

A nondescript white man lies in a bed in New York City with his Korean-American wife. “Childhood sweethearts reconnect twenty years later and realize they were meant for each other,” he murmurs, mulling over archetypes in his mind. A pause. “In the story, I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of destiny.”read more.

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Maryam Eivazi’s Superb Scribbles at Ruttkowski;68

Recently, on an internet-age first date at the Met, I meditated with a man I just met on the value of scribbles. Posed in front of a Cy Twombley entitled “Dutch Interior,” I pointed to thin pencil marks on the imposing canvas, crayon scrawls and scratched-in numbers. He seemed less than impressed.

“Isn’t it interesting how all graffiti is the same?”read more.

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