Charles Donelan

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND: While getting his PhD in English and comparative literature at Columbia University, The Indy’s arts editor Charles Donelan lived for 10 years in the N.Y.C. neighborhood of Morningside Heights near Harlem. When he found out that artist Sanford Biggers—who now teaches at Columbia and has an upcoming show at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum — lived there back then and also does now, the two had an immediate connection. “We both witnessed the original days of hip-hop and break-dancing and the New York culture of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,” said Donelan, who joined The Indy in 2004 and also teaches at Laguna Blanca, “especially the whole hybrid culture of b-boys and grad students drinking in the same bars.” Donelan’s profile of Biggers and his work starts on page here.