Frances Clark

The Past, Cast in Bronze: What happens when we allow white people to tell Black stories?

Last summer, a statue of a bronze man sitting alone on a bench appeared in PVD’s Market Square. Although he can’t introduce himself, his bench bears his name: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901). If you aren’t familiar with Bannister, you likely know the Providence Art Club, which he helped found. During his life, Bannister was considered […]

Read More

On the Cover: How to bake a cake, Charlotte Collins-style

Charlotte Collins had never painted a real cake before. Last November, the Providence-based artist baked a vanilla, gluten-free cake topped with the neon-pink pills prescribed for their chronic migraines. They staged a photoshoot for their creation, and painted the resulting images. “All the cakes I’ve painted before are fake cakes.” I was only nominally familiar […]

Read More

Digital Witness: What Somerville’s facial recognition technologies laws tell us about the future of mass surveillance

When I imagined the beginning of a technocratic dystopia, it wasn’t like this. Uncanny humanoid robots were supposed to oppress us, not faceless software. Our saviors were going to be macho men holed up in bunkers à la John Connor. Instead, progressive municipal governments might be the ones to save us all. In 2019, the […]

Read More