Halsey

There is a feeling that arises seeing this patchwork of faces in print: These are the artists, designers, musicians of our time — from Barrington Darius to Sonya Sombreuil, from YG to Isabelle Albuquerque, Pia Davis and Autumn Randolph to Lee Spielman, Lauren Halsey to Guadalupe Rosales.

I’m guided by something a Philadelphia Inquirer editor named Ashley Halsey told me by phone at the end of the first Gulf War, when I was reporting from a Kurdish refugee camp in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey.

Halsey told me he didn’t want a panorama.

“Sister Corita Kent is central to my beginnings as an artist,” says Lauren Halsey, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended community college before going to CalArts.

“There is this quality in someone, where their abilities match up with certain things that they want to do,” says Gaines of Halsey, who had switched over to art school from architecture.