Issue 63, July 2022

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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 63, July 2022

Featured image for ““Frank,” “Random Access Memory,” and “Self-Portrait as Paintbrush””
Erika Michael

“Frank,” “Random Access Memory,” and “Self-Portrait as Paintbrush”

There’s a portrait of me with
cousin Frank, he’s six I’m three,
taken at my first home in the USA,
a stone apartment building at Van
Cortland Park, bedrock segue to

the rest of our lives…

July 2022
Featured image for “Ukraine, War Resistance, Hopes for Peace, Human Rights”
Gerard Sarnat

Ukraine, War Resistance, Hopes for Peace, Human Rights

Stretched over 4.2 square miles, the Azovstal steel complex
is/ was a sprawling warren of rail lines, warehouses, coal furnaces, factories, chimneys
above essentially an underground city of tunnels seen as ideal for guerrilla warfare.

July 2022
Featured image for “The Price of Sunshine: “Mahmi and Me””
Susan Wan Dolling

The Price of Sunshine: “Mahmi and Me”

Mahmi has always felt to me part tame and part wild, part mother, part child. There is something vague about her I have yet to pin down. When people outside the family were about, she appeared like a grown woman, observing social etiquette, behaving as she was expected to behave, but she was somehow more fluid, more vulnerable, more changeable when we were by ourselves, just the two of us.

July 2022
Featured image for ““Ache,” “A Burning Observed,” and “First Draft””
Kimberly Phinney

“Ache,” “A Burning Observed,” and “First Draft”

Stooping down,
here,
I remember the honey blooms
on my grafted kalanchoe
and the bursting April storm clouds

July 2022
Featured image for “Gone To Ground”
Morgan Hatch

Gone To Ground

The sun had just appeared over the rim of the mountains. The air was crisp and smelled of mesquite. Carlos got out of his truck and rode the boom lift thirty feet up to the viaduct. Six lengths of rail had been craned in yesterday, now neatly stacked on a set of four-by-fours. A final course of rebar had been laid lattice fashion on top of the first pour, and Carlos worked his way through the iron grid to check the ties that secured each rod.

July 2022
Featured image for ““In the Fire Afterlife,” “Transplanted,” and “America’s Bullet””
Keith Mark Gaboury

“In the Fire Afterlife,” “Transplanted,” and “America’s Bullet”

the Great Chicago Fire of 1871,
the Great Boston Fire of 1872,
and the Great San Francisco Fire of 1906

crowds the chemical space
of My Great-Grandma’s Kitchen Fire of 1977.

July 2022
Featured image for “All That is Under the Sun”
Joaquin Bernal

All That is Under the Sun

“Mr Seixas, as you are well aware, you are charged on an indictment containing nine counts. These charges allege you are everything from a brutal slaver to a terrorist. What do you say in your defence?” The accused did not stir and in his sunken eyes caressed by the deep unflinching creases in his darkened skin, one could see the dying flames wrought within him…

July 2022
Featured image for ““Boating,” “Twin Sons,” and “Waking to No Child””
Cleve Latham

“Boating,” “Twin Sons,” and “Waking to No Child”

Here on a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico,
as a shrimp boat burrows behind
through the cool, plowed path of our electric motors,
we drink another salty beer, our bare feet
sliding on the damp deck with each ocean wash.

July 2022
Featured image for “Samson & Julia”
TeresaAnn Fico

Samson & Julia

Samson’s obsession with Julia Child began three weeks after his father’s funeral. He was watching TV late one Saturday night, numbly flipping through channels with the volume high enough that the couple living upstairs would surely complain yet again. The couch he was lying on was lived in, soft in the way that only comes from consistent use. Between the couch and the television set was a wooden coffee table, covered in a collage of water rings across the surface. An almost empty glass of water and an untouched plate of crackers sat on the edge of the table nearest Sam.

July 2022
Featured image for ““The Tale of a Fat Ugly Crow on a May Afternoon,” “Found,” and “It Began with an Ordinary Tuesday””
Joanne Jagoda

“The Tale of a Fat Ugly Crow on a May Afternoon,” “Found,” and “It Began with an Ordinary Tuesday”

In front of my living room window,
on a splendid May afternoon, warm and sunny,
a fat crow rapturously caws over its good fortune.
I watch in morbid fascination
as it tears apart a rodent.
Can’t fault the crow, a natural predator.

July 2022
Featured image for “Ridin’ Dirty”
John Schafer

Ridin’ Dirty

He tightened the half-inch screw into the wooden floor of the truck. It held the false front in place. The last two screws would wait on the Chinamen. He reached up and grabbed one of the wooden slates that ran the length of the Penske’s interior wall and pulled himself up; it bowed, but with a boost from his legs he was vertical before it gave. He walked back to the end of the truck and stepped onto the lift gate. He peered back in. No way you could tell. They would have to get in and they never did.

July 2022
Featured image for “Before the Call”
Sandra Schnakenburg

Before the Call

I stared at the phone, wondering what to say to a man I thought all my life— was dead. In 2008, two years before the call, everything I once knew had vanished. My angel Mom, who had given me hope, had passed away. I pondered what I would do next. After some inner work, my purpose crept up inside me like a wildfire needing to be tamed. I heard the call.

July 2022
Featured image for “Shiva’s Tears”
Clare Simons

Shiva’s Tears

A mongoose scurried along the mossy rock wall, darted under a pile of wood and dashed in front of my feet in search of tasty vermin. Its beady eyes glared up at me as if to say, “Entrance not for everybody.” The lumberyard stocked cremation woods heisted by timber smugglers from endangered forests, carried by porters, hauled by lorry drivers, and sold on the black market with bribes paid at every junction.

July 2022
Featured image for “To Grandmother’s House We Go”
Robert Eugene Rubino

To Grandmother’s House We Go

When you were thirteen, your paternal grandparents Nonnina and Nonno already seemed ancient, having been married fifty years. Now you’re older than they were then. But you remember … Three things hang on their walls: a gruesome crucifix, a framed wedding photograph, and a billy club.

July 2022
Featured image for “Comfort Hill”
Jeniah Johnson

Comfort Hill

Despite its cozy name, despite its gentle rise and dive through corn fields and cow pastures, Comfort Hill Road has its hazards. In the warmer months, when driving to and from town, I watch for entitled tractors, escapee cows, flocks of cyclists racing for the cure. But today, a January afternoon in Vermont, it’s just “Collie Lady” on the road.

July 2022
Featured image for “Chronic Good Weather”
Madeleine Belden

Chronic Good Weather

The feel of the rope wakes me. Coiled above my breasts, underneath, and pinning my hips against the kitchen chair. Arms pulled behind my back; wrists tied together. The rope smells like motor oil. I have no right to be surprised by my husband. I’ve watched enough Law and Order episodes to know that behavior escalates. I feel as though I’ve been drugged.

July 2022
Featured image for “The Comforting Words Package”
Diane McTigue

The Comforting Words Package

Evelyn skims the morning’s featured obituaries. Pure white-bread fare. Only one phrase grabs her attention: “in his kind and gentle way.” It’s simple but disarming, and it stirs a pang of empathy in her gut. She jots it down. Evelyn shakes her head at the grainy photos. When she reaches an advanced age, she’ll have a professional headshot taken just for this purpose.

July 2022
Featured image for “Views”
Aleksandra Appleton

Views

Twilight on the coast always suggests the presence of a colossal beast in the slow inhale-exhale sound of the waves and the lingering humidity of the air. Marcella felt its breath each time the automatic doors opened and closed. She had stopped looking up from the reception desk expecting to meet the source. Her focus was on her screen, where she cycled through real estate listings in the neighborhood next door…

July 2022
Featured image for “Spiritual Barter”
Kabir Mansata

Spiritual Barter

Raja Rampaul was born on Lord Krishna’s birthday. When his mother Eela was pregnant with him, she had this recurring dream of a blue-skinned baby appearing on her bed, holding the Earth in his right palm, while rolling his head back and having a good laugh. It was as if the baby was the only creature in the world who knew the secrets of the universe.

July 2022
Featured image for “Salvador”
G.L. Lomax

Salvador

A message was waiting for me at the front desk in Salvador da Bahia. Flávio would meet me later in the Largo do Pelourinho, a short taxi ride away. I unpacked. It was still afternoon, with time for a nap. I wanted to look fresh after so many hours in the air from Los Angeles. I caught myself wanting to look fresh for Flávio.

July 2022
Featured image for “Betul”
Quin Yen

Betul

“Mom,” Betul says in a tired, yet apologizing tone.
“Betul? Where are you?”
“Mom, don’t worry. I’m fine.”
“But, where are you?” Her voice trembles.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I should have told you earlier. I’m in America.”
“In America?”

July 2022