Issue 85, July 2024

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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 85, July 2024

Featured image for “Restarting”
Katie Geer

Restarting

Charlotte’s dad is gone. If it weren’t for king-size candy bars, she would have realized sooner. But he disappeared while she’s eying the grocery store candy. It’s so much better here, which is why they always stop when they visit him on the god-damned island.
That’s what her mom calls it. Then Charlotte makes her put a dollar in the swear jar.

July 2024
Featured image for “There’s No Place Like Home”
Reyna Marder Gentin

There’s No Place Like Home

There were too many places to sit. That’s what Dorothy thought when they’d moved into the house in 1964, trading in what Lester had called their “starter home” for something bigger and grander. What had they thought they were starting? A family, a full life ahead of them.

July 2024
Featured image for “On the Edge of My Mother Tongue”
Dominique Margolis

On the Edge of My Mother Tongue

There is space on the edge of language where it is quiet but far from empty. It is the space where life is at it should be. I happened upon it by chance one summer between my first and second year of legal existence while scratching at the wall next to my crib on the first floor of the Au Style Modern’ tailoring shop in the village of Tauves in the Auvergne region of France.

July 2024
Featured image for “The First Night”
Meredith Overbeek

The First Night

The light was creeping in around the edges of the curtains, so she knew it was time to get up. Grandma wouldn’t mind now. The sun was up so she could be up too. This was a sleepover, and now that the sleeping part was over, the fun could begin.

July 2024
Featured image for “Abby”
Seth Foster

Abby

B E A B I G K I D A N D O N O TC R Y ‍ i squeeze ma’s hands tighter as we walk out of the funeral home sunshine hits my face with heat i lift my face up to the sun and squint the sunlight and tears on my face are hot and cold at the same time it feels funny i look at ma the strings from her glasses sway as we walk tears hang on the bottom of her chin

July 2024
Featured image for “The Merriest Widow”
David Kennedy

The Merriest Widow

A rider was drawing closer, through the light fog rising from the forested hills around Stockton. The ladies had initially considered the pursuer as merely another gallivant taking some exercise, but the man on the horse was taking no leisurely route, rather a direct line toward their carriage.
“Have no fear,” said the coachman. “I am a tolerable shot at a hundred feet.”

July 2024
Featured image for ““A Priori,” “Signs of Something,” “Zero-Sum””
Julie Benesh

“A Priori,” “Signs of Something,” “Zero-Sum”

The first time I saw St. Peter’s
magnificent marble and lack of time-
pieces, I dismayed my travel

partner with an obvious observation;
a trifling truism: that it reminded me of a casino
welcoming the hopeful riff-raff

July 2024
Featured image for “Texting with a Ghost”
Trelaine Ito

Texting with a Ghost

“Can we talk?”
He sounds almost too forceful in his delivery, the tone of his voice transforming his question into an attack, so he selects his next set of words deliberately, knowing he’d only have one shot at his opening.

July 2024
Featured image for “Foxy”
Lucas Cowen

Foxy

Going to art therapy puts my anxiety into overdrive. I don’t have the patience for painting, not even for the five-minute figure studies, and I’m not here at these sessions because I respond so well to criticism. The coffee dispenser is practically bottomless, though. It’s never good coffee, obviously; it’s free and unlimited; by my eighth cup I start to feel like I’m someone else, which, to my understanding, is the point of being here.

July 2024
Featured image for ““Interval 213,” “Étude 46,” and “Étude 76””
Ray Malone

“Interval 213,” “Étude 46,” and “Étude 76”

reaching across, hand into the blackberry bush,
a walk from where we were down to the sea,
a small bay, of pebbles & the incoming swell of the water,
listening for the rhythm, as if it might be the key to writing

July 2024
Featured image for “A Traveling Cloud”
Begonya Plaza-Rosenbluth

A Traveling Cloud

After spending a year in Northern Spain with my father’s sister’s family, I reunited with my parents and siblings in Bogotá, Colombia, instead of our home in Los Angeles, California. My parents were starting over again from scratch and setting up shop to establish themselves. Mom, who was a perpetual optimist, had recently hit the jackpot, and with an endless display of excitement she was paying-off debts, shopping for new home furniture, and preparing for my milestone birthday celebration.

July 2024
Featured image for “Between These Overflowing Aisles”
Elizabeth Herr

Between These Overflowing Aisles

If Mina stared long and hard enough at the harsh fluorescent lighting, she could disappear into the abyss of all the other times she burned under its harsh whiteness–she could forget where she was, how old she was, who she was. Mina wondered if these self-proclaimed staring contests with the lights were the cause of her headaches, or if there was something actually wrong with her.

July 2024
Featured image for ““Big Bang,” “Mother Tongue,” and “Rarity””
Raju Vegiraju

“Big Bang,” “Mother Tongue,” and “Rarity”

How can something
come out of nothing,
let alone the universe?

But that is what contemporary
theory of cosmology proclaims—

July 2024
Featured image for “I was too tired to even squeegee”
Elizabeth Ricketson

I was too tired to even squeegee

I was too tired to even squeegee the shower glass door on a recent May morning. Just the day before, my husband Jon and I had set up my solo exhibit at the Ledyard Gallery on the second floor of the Howe Library in Hanover, New Hampshire. I was fatigued by the physical effort of moving art over the previous week and a half as I had also delivered paintings to a few additional locations in my home state of Vermont. The real tired came from completing the goal. The task.

July 2024
Featured image for ““Shaped,” “Relay,” and “Speechless””
Susan Shea

“Shaped,” “Relay,” and “Speechless”

Seeing blurred writing
on an abstract painting
brings me right back

to begging you to teach me
to read before I went to school

July 2024
Featured image for “Another Way Through Adlivun”
Lisa Voorhees

Another Way Through Adlivun

My name is Saghani, which means Raven in our tongue. Some say with a name like that, I’ve been cursed since the day I was born. Perhaps they are right.
At eighteen years of age, I was already a widow, gathering fish from the nets alongside the other members of the widows’ colony, knee-deep in the frigid water of the Nilak River.

July 2024
Featured image for ““Your Clothes in Tatters,” “Into the Slow Air,” and “Current or Currently””
Samuel Gilpin

“Your Clothes in Tatters,” “Into the Slow Air,” and “Current or Currently”

…skyward, lying on our backs listening for rainfall,
lying, we the ones of loitering, of settling into the longing for dreams to overtake us,
asking if anything could overtake us,
this overwhelming desire, this yearning for…

July 2024
Featured image for “The Danger of Insatiable Curiosity”
Lily Finch

The Danger of Insatiable Curiosity

Wade saw the roofline of the house while he hiked along the edge of the forest. He walked past it initially, but the tall spires and darkened stained glass windows’ Gothic look weren’t to be ignored. He’d never seen a real Gothic mansion before—only what he’d seen in movies and knew about from what he read in books.

July 2024
Featured image for “A Very Short Description of the Destruction of the Indies”
Sandro F. Piedrahita

A Very Short Description of the Destruction of the Indies

“Why do you say Felipillo is a savage? Sure, he likes to eat with his hands, and he doesn’t speak perfect Castilian, but there is nothing cruel or barbaric about him. Father Dominguez told me savages drink human blood and sacrifice children to their gods. Felipillo has never done anything like that. And neither have his people.”

July 2024
Featured image for “Just Write: Origin Story of a Writer”
Mira Saxena

Just Write: Origin Story of a Writer

My earliest memories of loving stories were when I was sitting in the light-filled corners of the kids’ stacks at the newly built Northland Public Library in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, suburbs in the late 1970s. In 1976, my family arrived in the state after my father started a new job. Even before the library collection was moved to the new building from its humbler previous address at what was then called Three Degree Road, the older library was a quiet place of respite for all of us.

July 2024
Featured image for “Requiem”
Chad Gusler

Requiem

I used to be an oak tree. Or maybe it was a maple. Regardless, there was a nest in my branches, a twiggy little thing woven with scraps of yarn, strands of dental floss, and kiss-curls of hair. I gave it to the sky, but it was always empty.

July 2024
Featured image for “The Murphys on Matilda Street”
Hannah Kennedy

The Murphys on Matilda Street

It’s the lunch rush at Pyszne, the restaurant where I work every weekday from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. Pyszne, which is pronounced push-nah, has the distinction of being the only Polish restaurant in the neighborhood of Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s Little Italy.

July 2024
Featured image for “Friends, Triplets, and Family Narrative”
Tianyagenv Yan

Friends, Triplets, and Family Narrative

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

July 2024
Featured image for “Green Canyon Bridge 1993, Thrive, and Tarot Deck: The Moon”
Robb Kunz

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

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

July 2024