Issue 1, May 2017

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Dragonfly Out in the Sun

Tracey Dean Widelitz

Hold On To Me,
Sunlit Beauty,
and Rose Petals and Golden Wings

Refugees DRC

Despair Paintings

Owen Brown

The world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked. But because I don’t want to go numb, I try to paint them, at least a few. For these, I paint figuratively, as I was trained, even though now, often, my desires, and my output, is abstract. Still, how can we ignore the drought in Afghanistan, the strife in Sudan, the war in Gaza, the invasion of Ukraine? Or even what goes on in our own lives?

Finding a Pathway

Finding a Pathway

Mark Rosalbo

As an emerging artist, the art form I work with is primarily abstract painting and large-scale installations. My artistic process involves using various mediums and techniques to create physical manifestations of internal dialogues and personal judgments. In my abstract paintings, I use house paint, various tools, and textured canvases. The technique involves creating overconfident brushstrokes that mask my imposter syndrome, with multiple layers of paint partially hidden under the surface. The inner turmoil arising from self-doubt is expressed as geometric shapes woven together with texture.

In Between

Wholeness Through Fracture: Sculpting the Human Condition

Aleksandra Scepanovic

Three works in clay by Aleksandra Scepanovic.
Each of these works tells a story of the complexity and beauty found in life’s fractures, embracing the wholeness that emerges through resilience.

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Coastal Grey

Miki Simic

This series of photographs, titled “Coastal Grey,” depicts elements of summer themes. My goal was to capture a vibrant setting and allow the viewer to realize it remains vibrant even though color is lacking.

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Symphony in Green

Patrice Sullivan

I paint landscapes, interiors, exteriors, still life’s with figures interacting and posing for the camera displaying memorable moments with families, friends, and neighbors.

friends

Friends, Triplets, and Family Narrative

Tianyagenv Yan

Tianyagenv uses light clay to make miniature figures and wishes to capture the characteristics of femininity, vulnerability, and resilience in potential.

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Green Canyon Bridge 1993, Thrive, and Tarot Deck: The Moon

Robb Kunz

My paintings explore the abstract simplicity of ordinary life and the deductive impulse to see ourselves reflected back in art.

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Metamorphosis

Marianne Dalton

The photographs are from the series, Metamorphosis. Each painterly creation constructed from dozens of layered photographs is driven by my reaction to nature’s extreme seasonal change.

La Huasteca

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

Tee Pace

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

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Cherry Blossoms

Annika Connor

Cherry Blossom Forest

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Janet Brugos

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White
Hurricane
Chicago Ice

Sunset over the Pacific

Three Photographs

Lawrence Bridges

UNDER THE PIER, MALIBU CA
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC
and POOL, POST RANCH INN, BIG SUR

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Joshua Tree Project

Holly Willis

The images are part of a larger series created in the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree in the fall of 2023 that explore the shifting state of the desert.

October Still Life

Chasing Paradise

Marianne Dalton

This series, Chasing Paradise, draws upon my work as a fine artist in painting, as I create stylized photographs of flowers and plants found in my rural environment.

Turtle Light

Ocean Sleep and Turtle Light

Maite Russell

Turtle Light and Ocean Sleep are works of multimedia and sculpture mediums, respectively, depicting the natural world with fantastical elements.

Issue 1, May 2017

Featured image for “Foot Soldier”
Leilani Squire

Foot Soldier

“Goddamn sand.” “What?” “G-o-d-d-a-m-n s-a-n-d.” Will speaks slowly, forcing the letters through the fluttering black on white kufiya wrapped around his mouth, nose and neck. “C-a-n-‘t s-e-e s-h-i-t,” Popeye yells back. “What?” Popeye yells in Will’s ear, “Said can’t see shit.” Will nods as the two soldiers brace against the orange wall, whipping dirty sand all around them. “Should stay here,” Popeye shouts in Will’s face. “What the fuck you

May 2017
Featured image for “The Ring”
Maria Savva

The Ring

May 2017
Featured image for “Miriam and Cat”
Maria Haskins

Miriam and Cat

Cat waited for Miriam to get up. He waited a long time, but she didn’t rise. She didn’t put fresh herring on his plate. She didn’t fill his water bowl. She didn’t open the back door so he could refuse to go out in the snow. She didn’t clean his box, even when he mewled and scratched sawdust all over the rug. By afternoon, Cat was very hungry. He walked

April 2017
Featured image for “The Call of the Dragons”
Michael Radcliffe

The Call of the Dragons

Thunder echoed in the distance as the rain pelted down, the cold, fat drops of water crashing against the traveler’s cloak. Tattered and frayed at the edges, one could tell from a distance the cloak and its owner had seen far better days. Shuffling forward in the darkness, the figure finally reached the doorway of a ramshackle inn at the end of the street. A battered and faded sign hung

April 2017
Featured image for “The Big Picture”
Daphne Deeds

The Big Picture

Field Kallop is an artist whose primary tool is gravity. Her exhibition, The Melody of Structures, recently on view at The Tremaine Gallery, was an elegant contemplation of physics, mathematics, and the unseen structure of nature. The work is hard to categorize because it is at once drawing, sculpture, installation, and, during a public event when she constructed the piece, performance. As approximately fifty observers stood around the periphery of

April 2017
Featured image for “Dark Cold Winter Woods”
Maren Morgan

Dark Cold Winter Woods

In the dark, I pass a Schwarzwald. Pine trees drip and drool in the obsidian pre-dawn. The thick black copse is cold and damp like a grave and thin frozen firs scrape the dirty oily sky without giving shelter. No lingering for me. I feel unease and the apprehension that Hansel and Gretel should have had. Dank, inky winter forests drive ice worms into my soul. This dense night wood

April 2017
Featured image for “Chasing Rabbits”
Maren Morgan

Chasing Rabbits

Chasing Rabbits Your first treatment you mercifully sleep through. Your first chemo and you sleep and sleep and sleep with your IV’ed hand propped on a pillow cross-stitched with magenta hibiscus blossoms. I’m glad you are oblivious to the gory war stories recounted by your fellow infusionees. Your gentle hand twitching, lip wiggling, and ankle rustling show me that in your dreams, you’re chasing rabbits– You and Queenie, your beloved

April 2017
Featured image for “Water’s Secrets”
Heather Gehron-Rice

Water’s Secrets

I wonder what she would tell me if I could understand Like spies of any age, I want the key to the code that will unlock her secrets. Oceans Secrets of the deep Our desire to know drives us ever deeper Struggling to crack the code Yearning to understand our siblings Whale, Orca, Dolphin Do we really want to know what they have to say? Rivers Secret patterns of movement

April 2017
Featured image for “Waiting On Life”
Cynthia Megill

Waiting On Life

Waiting on Life The silhouette of an old woman rests against the window of her car. A red light gives her time to muse. She remembers translucent memories and holds her gaze steady. She is long past the memories of porcelain words uttered in false wisdom, broken utterances dropped like smashed plates on the dinning room floor. But she remembers the drive home. Seeing bronzed faces of men, Men with

April 2017
Featured image for “On the Way to Work”
Piper Templeton

On the Way to Work

On the way to work, Annabel Prentiss found herself stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. An 18-wheeler had careened into a ditch off of the highway, and the back half of the rig blocked two lanes of traffic. Good thing her job didn’t require a clock-in time. It didn’t require much of anything, truthfully, except transcription skills and perseverance to put up with the hogwash at the office. She scoped deposition testimony

April 2017
Featured image for “The Story From Here”
Ken Klemm

The Story From Here

The converted Quonset hut had been bought from the military surplus after World War II had ended, almost 21 years before. From a former barracks, housing men on their way to that great conflict, it had been converted to a multi-purpose hall, in which many functions were held. On this night, the floor that had seen a big dance the night before had been covered in carpet and the north

April 2017
Featured image for “Training as a Metaphor for Life”
Jason Squire Fluck

Training as a Metaphor for Life

April 2017
Featured image for “Keep Breathing”
Mary Lu Coughlin

Keep Breathing

Only four years ago, Morrie Markoff began his fifth career. He wanted to write, be a writer. This weekend, he will participate in the L.A. Times Book Festival reading from his first published book. Clearly, at age 103, the title of the book comes as no surprise: Keep Breathing The interview with Steve Lopez captured my imagination. I was surprised and delighted by what touched me in this interview: Keep

April 2017
Featured image for “Another answer which eludes me”
Maren Morgan

Another answer which eludes me

April 2017
Featured image for “Why I Write”
Piper Templeton

Why I Write

In the last year, I’ve taken an active, more formal approach to my writing by publishing an indie book on Kindle and CreateSpace, which led to submitting short stories here on bookscover2cover. However, looking back, the writer has always lived inside of me, that compulsion other authors will recognize to create stories on a blank sheet of paper. My earliest writing memory goes back to grade school. I was around

April 2017
Featured image for “Sinking Daystar”
Cynthia Megill

Sinking Daystar

Sinking Daystar I have seen 23,011 sunsets or so. Each one different than the night before. Each one a newborn, crying out on an early eve. There is something about a newborn cry. Your heart opens wider just at the sound. Your eyes are softer. Your soul more gentler. Their inch high fingers touch the sky. They enkindle the heavens. The clouds light up. Laden booties stamp golden dust from

April 2017
Leilani Squire

Never the Same, Again

April 2017
Featured image for “The Oneness of Eternal Water”
Jan McMillan

The Oneness of Eternal Water

Hokusai’s wave Stands still in time, Each tiny drop perceived, Its foamy edges clear, Far off Mt Fuji Fixing its location, That single wave That certain day. Hokusai’s wave Has been around the world One hundred thousand million times And touched the shores Of every land with bordered shores. From beginningless time Hokusai’s wave’s been drawn to heaven And joined the procession Of clouds that drift and sail Across deserts,

April 2017
Featured image for “Gypsy Heart”
Jan McMillan

Gypsy Heart

Home is where the heart is, the saying goes. I bow to my gypsy heart And the many places I have loved. I. Oklahoma I was a child here, Feeling the way only children can– Learning what children learn– All life around me mysterious– In touch with my senses Of touch, smell, taste, sound. Pictures petrified with companion feelings Remain. Storms turning the mid-day skies to black Send us running

April 2017
Featured image for “Water’s Machines”
Heather Gehron-Rice

Water’s Machines

Water wheels grind wheat and corn, drive the bellows that heat the iron furnace. We think we harness the water, in reality we are only borrowing its power. Paddle boats roam the rivers, the rivers that provide their power. Steam engines, invented in my own back yard, combine fire and water for greater purpose. The mighty Susquehanna powers a dam, the dam turns water into electricity. One leads to the

April 2017
Featured image for “Origins”
Heather Gehron-Rice

Origins

I Stardust and a twinkle in your eye converge, you and I become we. We love and become us. A seed becomes a tree. A mighty redwood, statuesque ever reaching higher. A cedar of Lebanon, wizened bearing witness as centuries go by. Their roots a deep foundation. A dandelion, numberless as the stars in the sky wild and untamed. Their seeds take to air, carrying wishes and potential. A divine

April 2017
Featured image for “Talk to the Stones”
Pam Lazos

Talk to the Stones

Doc rose from his bed where he’d spent the last few hours. Ready or not, he had to speak with her. Celia lived only a mile away. Harley could stay with her, go to the same school, keep the same friends, live the same life. Plus there was the added benefit of Celia being Ellie’s twin. Harley might find herself in a parallel universe of sorts, Ellie gone, but not

April 2017
Featured image for “Heiress”
Sue Blake

Heiress

I dreamed I had me a daughter, magnificent as a field of corn swaying in the sun, at peace with what she knew and free. I dreamed of how I saw her grow, season by season. I dreamed of all the little things she’d find beautiful in the world that I could never see any beauty in till she showed me them up close. And she was generous like that,

April 2017
Katja Pinkston

How I Met My Neighbors

The eggplant was slowly sizzling in the pan on top of my stove when the front doorbell rang. I peered out the kitchen window. A stranger stood outside our duplex. Not that I knew many people anyway. The military had just moved us into this German house less than three weeks ago. A glance at the eggplant pieces in the pan told me that they still needed a good ten

April 2017