MAXWELL ORSEN
Vol. 01 | No. 03 | October 2026
Wynton Marsalis, Capote, & Andrew David Conrad
BEFORE WE BEGIN
These pages collect the art, books, exhibitions, fimls, objects, music, ideas, and observations that lingered longer than expected for me. Everything here earned its place. Take what stays with you.
- Maxwell
CULTURAL DESK
PERSON
FILM
ALBUM
Shawn Stüssy
Shawn Stüssy, considered by many to be the father of modern streetwear, started off shaping surfboards in Laguna Beach. To promote his boards, he slapped his signature on a T-shirt and wore it to a watersports trade show. He ended up taking orders for the shirt and sold more of those than his boards.
The mix of music, art, California surf culture, and downtown style in his resulting line of clothes became a template for what the industry would become.
He gave up Stüssy in ’96 to raise his kids and surf. He’s still making clothes, but much the way he did when he started. Before fame and money: “For the bros, not the pros.”
Eight Men Out
I was obsessed with this movie when it came out in 1988. I was nine. It tells the story of the 1919 World Series and the scheme by eight members of the “Black Sox” to throw it. The plot was backed by gamblers and, in a lot of ways, was a turning point for baseball, exposing just how deeply players, gamblers, and the criminal underworld had become intertwined. There had been numerous instances before 1919 of players being involved in similar schemes, but this was the big one that blew it all open.
Although hokey at times, and historically inaccurate in a number of places with regards to the scandal itself, the movie plops you down in an America in significant transition.
The cast is great. Set design feels real. This is a great baseball movie.
ANIMA
Thom Yorke’s ANIMA came out in 2019.
In terms of Yorke’s solo work outside of Radiohead and his other band, The Smile, this release is my favorite. The whole album feels like robot music for humans, or human music for robots. I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s odd and dreamy. If you like Yorke, you’ll love this.
The track Dawn Chorus is a masterpiece of melancholy, the kind of track you can’t listen to if you don’t want to think about your own life.
The album’s release was paired with a short film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s still on Netflix. Definitely worth a watch.
BOOK
PLACE
EFFECTS
Other Voices, Other Rooms,
by Truman Capote
This was Capote’s first novel. Much like Yorke’s ANIMA, this story has a strange, otherworldly feel to its setting. Set primarily around a decaying mansion, it has the sounds and heat of the swamps you’d expect from a Southern Gothic novel by someone with as unique a mind as Capote. The fact that he was only 23 when it was published is astounding.
If you know anything about the history of this book, then you know that it propelled Capote into the conversation as a serious American writer, for sure. But the photograph of Capote chosen for the back of the dust jacket became almost as big a deal as the book itself.
Chateau Frontenac
My wife and I stayed here after our wedding, which probably makes it a little harder for me to be objective about it. But it’s tough to oversell a place that looks and feels like it’s out of a storybook.
At the heart of Québec City, it sits above the St. Lawrence River and was built in 1893 by the Canadian Pacific Railway as part of an effort to encourage wealthy travelers to Canada. The surrounding city, one of the oldest in North America, is quaint and romantic. All of it is in the shadow of the Frontenac, however.
Historic, too. Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Canadian Prime Minister met here during World War II, and Hitchcock filmed I Confess at the hotel. It has routinely hosted royalty and movie stars. A magical place.
Plaster Lighthouse
My mother gave me this little plaster lighthouse when I published my first short story in a literary journal. The story didn’t lead to anything particularly tangible, either, other than the feeling of having actually done something I had once only imagined doing. But the lighthouse remains.
This little thing has come to represent something much bigger than the story itself. My mother had a way of supporting me whenever I wandered outside of whatever I thought I was capable of doing. Writing that story was one of those times.
That moment, and that time itself is long behind me now. My mom is gone too. The thing that remains is the reminder that, when I tried something new, there was someone in my corner. That’s worth keeping.
STUDIO REPORT
Curiosity and a fear of being stupid are big drivers in my artistic life. Curiosity grew out of the fear, actually. Growing up, I was afraid of being the one person in a group who didn't know something, at least a little bit. I wasn't dumb enough to believe I could know everything about everything, but I wanted to know something about most things.
At an early age, this drove me toward pursuits I wasn't necessarily interested in for my own enjoyment, but rather as preparation. I couldn't be dumb. I didn't want to be exposed, so I absorbed everything I could that I associated with being smart. That meant classical music, history, literature, and visual art. The music came easily because good music is easy to like, but pretending to enjoy or even understand Hemingway at, like, 12, or studying Watergate on my own time, became a problem. The more I sought out, the more there was to know. And because my motivation was fear, I often felt stupid anyway.
I understand now that I was trying to escape the parts of my life I was embarrassed by. We were poor. I was the son of an ex-con who got his G.E.D. in federal prison. There were times we were on food stamps. I'd have to wear my friends' hand-me-downs, and then not react when they'd point it out to everyone. "Hey! That's my shirt." I just wanted to be away from all of it, and so the obsessions grew.
Now, as an adult, I have a wide range of interests I genuinely enjoy, and it's because of those years. Forcing myself to explore revealed a huge world I wouldn't have known otherwise. When my daughter was born, I wrote a little piece on the piano for her. I first played a piano in the home of a wealthy family my mother cleaned for. I think about those days often, and I'm glad for them.
IN VIEW
Marsalis on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, May 7, 1986.
Wynton Marsalis was just 24 when he appeared on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Fred Rogers believed deeply in exposing children to serious forms of human expression without reducing or altering those forms for juvenile consumption. I’ve watched this episode numerous times over the years, and I thought of it on the one lucky night I had a chance encounter with Marsalis at the Newport Jazz Festival more than a decade ago.
Perhaps a little-known fact, at least it was to me, is that Fred Rogers was an accomplished pianist and composer, and held a degree in music composition. He was the primary songwriter for his eponymous show, including its unmistakable theme song, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
Rest in peace, Mister Rogers.
IN PRINT
The Radical Reasons Why You Dream of Making Things by Hand
This Aeon piece gets at something I think is easy for creators to forget. That there is value in the actual act of making something by hand. The mistakes, repetition, concentration, and physical work are part of the experience, not just a means of getting to the finished piece. In a world increasingly built around convenience and automation, that seems worth remembering.
ON REPEAT
Devereux Scales - Jeremy Nunes (L), & Matt Lavin. Photo credit: Linda Cleary.
Quillia by Devereux Scales
“Quillia” is the opening track on Devereux Scales’ 2025 debut album. The band actually started when two old friends got back together to mess around with guitar pedals, which is probably as good a reminder as any that making things doesn’t always need a grand plan behind it. Sometimes you start by playing around and see what happens.
GOOD COMPANY
Andrew David Conrad
Instagram: andrewdavidconrad
Andrew David Conrad's work is a strange mix of portraiture, pattern, abstraction, and something almost biological happening in his paintings. The colors can be loud, but the work never feels like it’s shouting for attention. I also like how much of the process seems to remain visible. You see the paint, the tools, his hands, his face, his body. The person making the work never really disappears from the work.
What I find most interesting is that Conrad doesn’t seem particularly interested in sticking to one way of making things. A piece can be raw and physical, another almost psychedelic, another more graphic or illustrative. There's his paintings. His physical objects. Himself. There’s a willingness to follow an idea wherever it leads, which I think is important. Artists can get so hung up on developing a recognizable “style” that they forget they’re allowed to be interested in different things. Conrad does not suffer this constraint.
Red/Yellow Blues
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Gaia #22 (Antipodia)
Whores of Ilium
FROM THE EDITOR
Thanks for reading the third issue of The Maxorsen Review.
October is here, and New England is getting colder. My daughter has a birthday this month, which always makes the passage of time feel a little more obvious. I’ll also be closing down the studio for the season. There’s no heat, and eventually, the cold wins.
I’ve been thinking about what comes next for the winter months, and I’ll admit I’m excited. Working in my home office or the basement limits my choices, which can actually be freeing. Smaller works, different surfaces, watercolors, and ink, but in a much more subdued way. A change in scale and materials feels needed.
A week or two left outside, and then I’m trading spray paint and a respirator for a smaller table, a smaller brush, and a different way of working. Here’s to it!
Until next month,
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