Issue 17, September 2018

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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 17, September 2018

Featured image for ““the poem which is the story of us”, “to R, who asked me to jump into the pool” and “of the understanding of love and other such things””
Vandana Devi

“the poem which is the story of us”, “to R, who asked me to jump into the pool” and “of the understanding of love and other such things”

this poem is the story of us/
written
between two pieces of paper/
he talked about us as though
he is not one amongst us/
as far
as i’m telling the story, the talk is
about us, ie, you and me and him/

September 2018
Featured image for ““of mass shootings and love and chopsticks and bridges and warmth and cherry blossoms and expectations and acrostic poems and” and “Dear White Men: Bet You Think This Poem Is About You””
Albert Lee

“of mass shootings and love and chopsticks and bridges and warmth and cherry blossoms and expectations and acrostic poems and” and “Dear White Men: Bet You Think This Poem Is About You”

of mass shootings and love and chopsticks and bridges and warmth and cherry blossoms and expectations and acrostic poems and
m Maybe it’s naïve for me to expect the world to scream
a and shoot just because another human is shot.
s Silence is not the absence of a gunshot.
s Silence is the presence of a bulletstorm.

September 2018
Featured image for ““Augusta Ada Lovelace, A.A.L.”, “Made Up” and “Six Hours before Performance””
Leigh Holland

“Augusta Ada Lovelace, A.A.L.”, “Made Up” and “Six Hours before Performance”

She walks in, seventeen and agate-pale, to view the Difference Engine No. 1 with her maman—blue taffeta, white veil, herself a fearsome intellect and bastion of social justice. Great gold instrument, steam engine structure and pipe organ height, exquisitely bewitching. Ada, intent on further knowledge,

August 2018
Featured image for ““Looking Forward” and “Moving In””
Danielle Boccelli

“Looking Forward” and “Moving In”

My hair is wet and drips. Water collects
breeze-chilled
in the small of my back.
The time is half-past
bittersweet. The day ends simply
and begins. Exhausted, refreshed,

August 2018
Featured image for ““Horizons,” “After Reading Traveling Through Dark” and “534-1785””
Peter Shaheen

“Horizons,” “After Reading Traveling Through Dark” and “534-1785”

Mostly brown fields salted with white patches of snow— moist from winter’s thaw and the coming green of spring. It’s there in the going and coming of seasons, the earth swallows your fading white form as you walk away. I follow to the blue horizon wishing you would not depart.

August 2018
Featured image for ““Shaving”, “Chez Heaven” and “Night, My Role in It””
John Grey

“Shaving”, “Chez Heaven” and “Night, My Role in It”

I hate shaving. Thinking enlists in its war. The two dimensions of reflection summarize me. Foam licks my temporal chin, I confess to the razor how I’m leaving immortality behind for someone else to believe in like a dolt.

August 2018
Featured image for “Charlie Hustle”
Alan Swyer

Charlie Hustle

At a get acquainted lunch, which took place before I agreed to direct a baseball instructional video, I did a surreptitious check on what I termed attention span. After countless hours with public figures—doing on-camera interviews with politicians, scientists, law enforcement officials, and athletes— I had learned the hard way that every person has a fixed period of time—a maximum—after which concentration shuts down.

August 2018
Featured image for “Ventilator Blues”
Daniel Bartkowiak

Ventilator Blues

Beyond the tracks and rising erumpent from the swallows of the Mississippi are two Maple trees which he watches alone and with a face not older than the trees but one of a similar mold. He pulls out a red lighter and a pack of Lucky Strikes from his leather jacket. He spins the wheel twice before the flame emerges, an orange haze in the gray evening.

August 2018
Featured image for “Dr. Yang’s Emotional Rebalancing Clinic”
Kristina Heflin

Dr. Yang’s Emotional Rebalancing Clinic

Kathleen glanced around the sterile chrome and white setting while clutching the tablet in her hands. She had been here once before for the preliminary, complimentary consultation, and it had been just as silent. A big screen TV mounted in the corner played a midday soap on mute with the captions scrolling across the bottom. The receptionist typed her notes in swift, almost clackless rhythm.

August 2018
Featured image for “Strangers”
Christopher Wyman

Strangers

Ms. Elizabeth Brockridge was as sharp as a tack. As an attorney, she never missed a trick in the courtroom or anywhere else in her life. Of course, she had to be, because she did not have much else going for her in the beginning. Her parents had nothing but a small farm they could barely pay the taxes on, and when it came to her education she was largely on her own. She showed all the naysayers, though.

August 2018
Featured image for “Symmetry”
Matthew Wade Thomas

Symmetry

A pickup truck slammed into our car killing my wife instantly. The drunk driver who ran the red light also died at the scene.
The accident was so random and the loss so devastating, I could barely comprehend it. Reacting without reason and not knowing what else to do, I sued. Even though the drunk driver had a family, they were not the object of the lawsuit, so I could take out my vindictiveness on the insurance company. I was not interested in a settlement—we went to court.

August 2018
Featured image for “Filling the Void”
Kevin Taylor

Filling the Void

“We’ll be getting a new store manager soon.”
“We will?”
“Yep, it’s coming on”–Rusty swiveled his chair and peered at the calendar on the wall–“ten months. They ain’t ever here for more than a year.”
“Why’s that?”
“Beats me, Luke. Someone told me it’s so they don’t get too attached to us. The same reason farmers don’t give their hogs names. Just makes it more difficult when it comes time to…” Rusty drew a finger across his throat.

August 2018
Featured image for “Clomid Dreams”
Susanne Lee

Clomid Dreams

She shifts to her side. On her thighs are tiny marks, the size of pinpricks, her battle scars. Faded but still visible are the blue Xs on her ass that her husband Steve draws with a blue marker he uses as a guide for the hypodermic he uses to give her the injection with. According to schedule, he fills her with the cocktail and afterward, full of medication that is supposed to make her ovulate, it begins. That night like all the others these days, with the invading chemicals swimming in her, she suffers psychedelic Clomid dreams.

August 2018
Featured image for “Sweet Dreams”
Carey Cecelia Shook

Sweet Dreams

“I can control my dreams,” Andrew, my oldest brother, told me as I drove him to work at 5:40 a.m. in 2014 because he didn’t have his own car. “That’s why I woke up a little later. I was dreaming, and I wanted to keep dreaming.” “What do you mean you can control them?” I asked. Andrew went on to tell me how he always knew he was dreaming, so he made his dream-self do anything he wanted to—fly, teleport, rescue people. That was the first time I heard about lucid dreaming.

August 2018
Featured image for “The Immortal Goldfish”
Sophie Austin

The Immortal Goldfish

When I was nearly eleven years old, I stood up in front of my classmates and proudly announced that I had an immortal goldfish. My teacher, a stout, angry woman called Mrs. Gilbert wasn’t as impressed by this statement as I had hoped. ‘Immortal?’ She said, her tone scathing. ‘It means she’ll never die,’ I said. ‘Mum said so.’

August 2018
Featured image for “The Matterings of Molehills”
Anna Davis Abel

The Matterings of Molehills

“I want to matter.” You will say this, ten months removed from it all, clutching a pink frilled pillow under your elbows, picking at the fraying seam you pull a little looser each time you come to her office. Your therapist with the little feet will listen and then say what everyone always says. “You already matter. Everyone matters.”

August 2018
Featured image for “Birth of a Cosmic Being: Chapter One”
Sarah Ann Jennings

Birth of a Cosmic Being: Chapter One

It was dusk when I awoke in this body for the first time. I was on a screened porch watching the light fade from the clouds with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while. We sat on wooden chairs carved by his grandfather and looked out over the back of his land. It was shadowed fields of greenery at this point, and a few dark spots that could have been cows or bushes depending on whether they moved or not. Over the canopy of trees farther back, a smoky gray blue of fading light traced the tops of the leaves, and I could easily picture the crescent moon rising behind us.

August 2018
Featured image for “Playing Mother”
Laura Schmitt

Playing Mother

They hired their au pair off a job posting website for the northeastern Wisconsin area. Mrs. Clara Bush had been specific about the language in the post, insisting on the term au pair because it conveyed a greater sense of class than babysitter or nanny, and she wanted to attract an elite applicant pool.

August 2018