Issue 35, March 2020

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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 35, March 2020

Featured image for “They Look Like They Are From A Dream”
Jamaluddin Aram

They Look Like They Are From A Dream

It was raining loudly on the tiled roofs and on the concrete sidewalks and on the trees but quietly on the grass. “This rain doesn’t sound and smell like rain,” I said when I went back inside the garage. My brother made a mark on the wood and put back the short yellow pencil behind his right ear. I looked at the cigarette behind his left ear and waited for him to say something.

February 2020
Featured image for “Alchemy of Gambling”
Catherine O'Neill

Alchemy of Gambling

The whole process threw me for a loop. I spent over forty years of my life in Nigredo living in the darkness of the disease of gambling. Gambling is in my blood; I carry the ancestral glow of an epigenetic behavior which goes down to the bedrock of my DNA. If you didn’t gamble in my family, there was something radically wrong with you.

February 2020
Featured image for “Young Woman Pointing (in a Landscape)”
Terence Byrnes

Young Woman Pointing (in a Landscape)

The nurse standing behind him tucked a strand of dark hair into her lavender hijab before grasping the rail on the back of his gurney. “Gib” Gibson and his surgeon had been discussing the modern hospital building that was under construction while they waited for an operating theatre here in the old one. The stony turrets and false battlements of this showy Victorian relic on the Montréal skyline would soon be put to some new purpose.

February 2020
Featured image for “The Most Dangerous Pitch”
BJ Neblett

The Most Dangerous Pitch

Victims of automobile accidents often report that at the moment of impact time seems to move in slow motion. I now understand what they experience. For one protracted fraction of a second time stood still. The din of the spectators faded to a distant thunder in my ears. My gloved hand crept skywards.

February 2020
Featured image for “Dendra”
Becky Strohl

Dendra

She lived alone in the woods.
As far as anyone knew, it was just nature beyond the Clifton Wilderness Park’s Welcome Center. Trees and mosquitos and dirt. What else was there to it? Hikers might enjoy the crisp air and momentary escape from their day-to-day life, which they termed “becoming one with nature.”

February 2020
Featured image for “Knots”
Liz Wasson Coleman

Knots

Any of the stories about why we left could be true, but I gravitate toward the one about the middle-aged father threatening to drive the Jeep off a cliff. I don’t know whether he imagined his family in the vehicle with him. The little boys wouldn’t have been wearing seatbelts in 1979. The infant would have been crying in her mother’s weak arms.

February 2020
Featured image for “Precious Possessions”
Kennedy Weible

Precious Possessions

Carson Rawlings, attorney for the late Miriam McShanahan for over twenty years, waited for Trapp to stop laughing at his mother’s burial request. Trapp sat dwarfing a brown leather chair across from his desk. Carson leaned forward, fingertips pressed together, hands tented, glaring at Trapp. Trapp continued giggling. Carson sighed. “I remember the hilarity of my own mother’s passing,” he said.

February 2020
Featured image for “Michael’s Father”
LeeAnn Sosa

Michael’s Father

I used to see Michael’s father nearly every day. He would be sitting on the steps of a church at the corner of Chestnut and Central, his face turned squarely into the bright sun and his eyes would be closed. He could be getting a suntan except that if you wait long enough you see that he periodically drops his head into his hands and remains like that, head bowed and cradled, his shoulders occasionally shaking. He looks like a statue…

February 2020
Featured image for “Actors Therapy”
Jessica Mannion

Actors Therapy

Amaryllis stood in the rain, squinting at the little blue dot on her phone that showed her location. The cracked screen was barely readable, and the rain didn’t help. It was the correct address all right, and nicer than where most auditions were held. The lobby was very warm and very posh, with doormen, a security desk, and turnstiles that allowed entry only when security pressed a button.

February 2020
Featured image for “Something Blue”
Connie Kinsey

Something Blue

Only the bride was still.
The bride, LeighAnna Hope Camden, sat on the floor of the church dressing room in an avalanche of white. She had yet to put on the dress. The slip alone was thirty-eight yards of netting covered with a fine batiste. Batiste, Bastille. LeighAnna wondered if the netting was fomenting rebellion.

February 2020
Featured image for “Esperanza”
O. G. Rose

Esperanza

Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed that if she confessed her love to her best friend, her life would leave her body: she would move on. This would cause her best friend great pain, and to save Artemio from hurting, Esperanza suffered the pain of never telling him how she felt.

February 2020
Featured image for “The Snitch: Kelly”
M.D. Semel

The Snitch: Kelly

Kelly couldn’t remember the last time she drove a car. She didn’t take the driving test until she was in law school and she had nearly failed it. Now, she was on the far eastside of Harlem at a cut-rate car rental place that looked more like a chop shop than a legitimate business. A friend had recommended it. She sat in the driver’s seat of a small, battered car and listened to the attendant explain its basic functions.

February 2020
Featured image for “Able Archer: Distant Early Warning”
Lawrence Lichtenfeld

Able Archer: Distant Early Warning

Major Powell had agreed to take photos of schematic diagrams of the SDI satellite systems. Dubrikov gave him a Minox B camera to shoot the plans. Powell had special plans created by the technical team at Langley that would photograph clearly on the tiny spy camera’s film. The images had to be clear enough for the Soviet technicians to be able to read, but not so clear that it looked like Powell had had time to set up a photo-shoot.

February 2020
Featured image for ““We Take Our Color From The Mines,” “The Sea Was Never A Friend To Us” and “We Are Forced To Face One Another””
Christopher Watkins

“We Take Our Color From The Mines,” “The Sea Was Never A Friend To Us” and “We Are Forced To Face One Another”

We take our color from the mines;
A frost of ash atop our coarse dark hair.

With brimstone flecks in the linarite of our
eyes, We see what lies in darkness—

Black holes to hell.

February 2020
Featured image for ““Binge-Watching a Dream,” “To Tell the Truth” and “The Moment and the Sequence””
Edward Miller

“Binge-Watching a Dream,” “To Tell the Truth” and “The Moment and the Sequence”

When he awakens, the dream tucks itself in.
At bedtime, the dream starts the night shift.
And so
Inside the lazy contraction of slumber is an energetic stretch.

February 2020
Featured image for ““the colonel,” “hunt simulacrum (Iceland 2040)” and “Hastings (1060/2018)””
Melissa Evans

“the colonel,” “hunt simulacrum (Iceland 2040)” and “Hastings (1060/2018)”

was in high dudgeon the colonel yelled

lying flat your pug-rasps in
in petering
juxtaposition of stuttered blasts
out get out

February 2020
Featured image for ““Infinite Affair With Air” “Love Letters” and “Fly Ball””
Buffy Aakaash

“Infinite Affair With Air” “Love Letters” and “Fly Ball”

You are this
which is not
that,
that
which is not
this.
You owe such and such
to whoever and whom,

February 2020
Featured image for ““This Tree,” “Death Dream”  and “Society””
Douglas Nordfors

“This Tree,” “Death Dream” and “Society”

I stop walking,
and contemplate
the way the thin
arm of this tree
once bent upward,
before stretching
out over the river.

February 2020
Featured image for ““Cactus,” “cutlet” and “pumpkin””
Natalie Warther

“Cactus,” “cutlet” and “pumpkin”

I wait for a sign that you need me:

a wilting arm, dry soil,
but you give me nothing

so I trickle water into your mouth.

Just enough to tame my own thirst.

February 2020
Featured image for “The Corpse in the Woods”
Hallee Israel

The Corpse in the Woods

Marli finds a corpse resting at the bank of a river in the middle of the woods after school. She almost doesn’t see it hidden amongst the brush and the moss, but the dingy gray color of its sneakers sticks out underneath the vibrant autumn leaves. After cleaning off her Dana Scully glasses – and squinting for good measure – she’s certain that it is a corpse, and not a fresh one either.

February 2020