In 2015, when Douglas Rosenberg became chair of UW–Madison’s Art Department, he wanted to ensure that he continued to make time to be creative and mindful, even as he took on a demanding job. So he started a weekly writing practice, giving himself a prompt and taking time every week to capture his thoughts.
The resulting collection, including five years of weekly essays, is now compiled in a new book called, “Staring at the Sky: Essays on Art and Culture.”
The book includes Rosenberg’s reflections on everything from works of art, to readings, to the ever-changing sky outside his rural Wisconsin home.
Rosenberg, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in Art, is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and author who works at the intersection of performance and media. His work including screendance, video, film, and performance has been exhibited internationally for over 30 years.
Recently Rosenberg sat down with the School of Education’s communications team to share more about “Staring at the Sky.” Here is an edited transcript:
Why did you start writing these essays? In 2015, I became the chair of the Art Department. And those jobs, as you know, are pretty time consuming. I wanted to make sure that I made myself accountable to some creative time, that I didn’t give up my creative space for the rigors of the job. So I gave myself a prompt or a task to spend some time with every week, writing an essay that captured what I’d been thinking about.
The Art Department has this newsletter that goes out on Mondays, and I would start each of those newsletters with this bit of writing. I started getting emails from people who would write me little notes. And it led me to believe that people were reading some of these things and that maybe I should be a bit more attentive.
So I gave myself this task to do this for a year. And at the end of the year, I thought I should probably do this for another year. And I kept extending my own prompt to myself, and I did that for the five years that I was chair.
Tell me about the essays. What are they about? The essays are literally about what was coming into my peripheral or direct vision during the week that had passed. So every Sunday I would sit down. Throughout the week, I made notes about things that I wanted to write about. And it might have been a show — a student exhibition, something that I had seen on a trip to New York — or it might have been something I was reading, something from one of my lectures in class. In each essay, there was some kernel of something that I wanted to tease out into a longer thought.