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We have maintained our well-being throughout the pandemic by getting out to a forest on most days.

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I carry forward the acknowledgement that there is beauty and strength in each of us and the hope that we can rely on each of our circles of community to carry us through pain, sadness, and fear.

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So much of what you all said was so moving and thought-provoking. I identified with Walter’s experience in particular—as a HS teacher, my work also became much more intense and emotionally complicated. I spoke with Alexandra Barrage, who shared how Sumi’s words spoke to her, and how her running and music practices helped fortify and strengthen her. So good to connect.

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So grateful for the positive vibes from friends and family. Connecting and reconnecting.

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I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the panelists and my Williams community for bringing up these issues and for all the support shared with me during the pandemic💜

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The pandemic forced me to step off the conveyor belt of achievement and activity and I was forced to wrestle with my own shortcomings, purpose of being, and then ultimately striving for self-love.

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Incredibly grateful these last few years for a supportive text thread of 10 amazing and beautifully diverse Ephwomen — navigating midlife TOGETHER is one of my life’s greatest gifts so far. 🥰🥰🥰

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I met with Annie Thoms and learned about how regular yoga practice and poetry podcasts were just a few ways she managed the challenges of keeping 150 students at Stuy engaged through remote learning.

I have profound respect for the efforts and sacrifices made by educators like Annie.

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This was a beautiful conversation both on stage and in the audience.

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There is beauty in vulnerability and it is in our softness moments that we find strength

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Seeing all of these lovely and familiar faces in the audience is so wonderful and heartwarming!

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Thank you for sharing that isolation can be both difficult and comforting. It was and remains stressful, but being alone with my family and my young daughters and spending formative time with them has been very fulfilling.

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Walking around this beautiful setting has reminded me of the significance of moving through space, seeing and smelling natural things, recognizing and greeting other people in the environment. This was a ceremonial aspect of life at a residential college.

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I heard a lot of great speakers in this room, still lovely. 

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Connecting with people whom I had not seen in well over ten years in a place that makes us feel at peace filled my soul last night….

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So happy to reconnecting with you all!

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The prompt is - write something beautiful - no pressure. Peonies are beautiful. #1997

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Kirsten, Sumi, Bahia, Sam and Walter are the best and most beautiful and most profound panelists of all time! #1997 

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Kirsten, Sumi, Bahia, Sam and Walter are the best and most beautiful and most profound panelists of all time! #1997 

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WILLIAMSTOWN - A silly little thing, "Rock Fan" is a classic case of the flimsy gesture, the light-as-dust conceit, turned weighty and transfixing. Every time I see the work, by the artist David Hammons, on display at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, I do a double-take, and wonder: How did this craggy little rock, with its acne-cratered surface and bland, accordion-style fan, manage to come together so neatly? How can two objects, wildly unrelated and out of sympathy, merge and conspire so tenderly? It's a model marriage.

And like all good marriages, it has a good story behind it.

Hammons, an African-American artist in his late 60s, has been an elusive, unpredictable but hugely influential presence in the art world since the 1960s. In 1993 he was an artist in residence at Williams College.

During his time there he produced an outdoor sculpture, also called "Rock Fan": He placed a bouquet of old electric rotary fans, their cords hanging listlessly, on top of a large boulder. Occasionally, lazily, the blades of the fans would spin in the wind, as if preparing to take flight, then thinking better of it.

Rock Fan. Dumb joke. But just as in journalism, where the dumb question reliably produces the best answers, the dumb joke in art can often be unexpectedly fertile.

Some Williams students reacted skeptically to the piece. The rock was painted purple (a college color). One undergraduate even made her own small variant of the piece: a stone with a hand-held fan made from folded newspaper.

She left it beside Hammons's work. Hammons saw it, and years later, back in his studio, made the work we see here, which Williams College Museum of Art smartly bought from his dealer.

What do I like about it? Its flippancy - its sheer lightness of being - in tension with the presupposed profundity of art, the heaviness of rock.

And that the idea was stolen from a student - I like that, too (where would we be without the young?).

Finally, I like the fit - the way Hammons has bent the fan around at the sides so very neatly. The work suggests great formal simplicity and rightness (Brancusi would surely have smiled) but carries it off with insouciance. A found rock, a folding fan: Voila!

Like much of Hammons's work, it also alludes mischievously, magically, to African-American tropes - in this case, flamboyant hair or headgear.

Related works (one is on display at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art) cover similar rocks with black hair trimmings from barber shops.

Hammons's influence on some of today's best known African-American artists - Mark Bradford, Sanford Biggers, Radcliffe Bailey - runs deep. Many artists have stolen ideas from him. Here he showed that, like all the best artists, he has light fingers himself.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com.

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'Rock Fan' fits well in college setting - The Boston Globe

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A silly little thing, "Rock Fan," by the artist David Hammons, is a classic case of the flimsy gesture, the light-as-dust conceit, turned weighty and transfixing. Every time I see it on display at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, I do a double-take.