SoFloPoJo Contents: Essays * Interviews * Reviews * Special * Video * Visual Arts * Archives * Calendar * Masthead * SUBMIT * Tip Jar
Kristine Snodgrass, Visual Arts Editor
To have your visual art considered for a future issue please contact [email protected]
To have your visual art considered for a future issue please contact [email protected]
November 2019
Images in the slide shows appear for five seconds each. Slide shows appear after each artist's statement.
De Villo Sloan
De Villo Sloan is a writer and visual poet. He earned a Ph.D. in literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he studied with Robert Creeley, among others, and helped edit the Black Mountain II Review. Sloan’s essays, poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous publications ranging from those associated with the post-avant underground to academic journals such as Sewanee Review and Southern Humanities Review. Recently the second section of his ongoing Neo-concrete Series was published as Xerolage 71, a part of Miekal And’s Xexoxial Editions.
DVS 1
Virgil Suarez
Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. At the age of twelve he arrived in the United States. He received an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1987. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently 90 MILES: SELECTED AND NEW, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work has appeared in a multitude of magazines and journals internationally. He has been taking photographs on the road for the last three decades. When he is not writing, he is out riding his motorcycle up and down the Blue Highways of the Southeast, photographing disappearing urban and rural landscapes. His 10th volume of poetry, THE PAINTED BUNTING’S LAST MOLT, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Spring of 2020.
Vorgo 4
Artist Statement
Both my photographs and mixed media art try to capture the erasure of time. Both also concern themselves with decay, detritus, and the decomposition of man-made things. Nature wins each and every time. Humankind eventually will perish and the planet will recalibrate itself. Even in the face of some cataclysmic and or nuclear disaster the planet will survive and morph into something new. I am also concerned with the plight of the underdog, the inaudible voices that perish daily trying to survive. My attempt to preserve witness to the mundane and the daily grind of lives being worn down to nothing.
Michael Rothenberg
Michael Rothenberg is the editor of BigBridge.org, co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (www.100tpc.org), and co-founder of Poets In Need, a non-profit 501(c)3, assisting poets in crisis. His most recent books of poetry include Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016), Wake Up and Dream (MadHat Press, 2017), and a bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story (Varasek Ediciones, Madrid, Spain, 2017). He lives in Tallahassee, Florida where is currently Florida State University Libraries Poet in Residence.
Unthank
August 2019
Eleanor Adair
Eleanor Adair was born and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. She left school at 16 and travelled to places including Alaska, France and Spain where she lived and worked. She has exhibited throughout the UK, including Liverpool, Glasgow, and London and at the Society of Scottish Artists in Edinburgh. She has had no formal art training.
The Matador
Artist statement
I'm intrigued by the scope of the human mind, our capacity for thought, language and humanity next to our potential for brutality, and in many ways it's this fascination that pushes me to paint. Likewise, I've always been interested in the role self-consciousness plays in shaping our identity, so my art becomes a means of exploring how we construct and define ourselves through others. I'm heavily drawn towards figurative art and find the human form the best place to explore those extremities that make the body talk. The bodies that materialise in my own art become an alternative account of the routine human form: bodies for eyes that like to wander.
Recently I've drawn on prehistoric archaeology for inspiration. I hope these observations offer vision into much of my portraiture, so that each face crosses boundaries of time and culture and brings something of our cultural past to the foreground. What's been really fascinating is how exciting contemporary art has become to me the more I find out about prehistoric art. Everything I do feels connected to it now
Art has always been a volatile process for me, a case of extremities in love and hate. It gives me no choice to be anything but an artist. So much so, that when I'm not painting I feel like I'm winning. Everything I paint then is built on these contradictory states.
I'm intrigued by the scope of the human mind, our capacity for thought, language and humanity next to our potential for brutality, and in many ways it's this fascination that pushes me to paint. Likewise, I've always been interested in the role self-consciousness plays in shaping our identity, so my art becomes a means of exploring how we construct and define ourselves through others. I'm heavily drawn towards figurative art and find the human form the best place to explore those extremities that make the body talk. The bodies that materialise in my own art become an alternative account of the routine human form: bodies for eyes that like to wander.
Recently I've drawn on prehistoric archaeology for inspiration. I hope these observations offer vision into much of my portraiture, so that each face crosses boundaries of time and culture and brings something of our cultural past to the foreground. What's been really fascinating is how exciting contemporary art has become to me the more I find out about prehistoric art. Everything I do feels connected to it now
Art has always been a volatile process for me, a case of extremities in love and hate. It gives me no choice to be anything but an artist. So much so, that when I'm not painting I feel like I'm winning. Everything I paint then is built on these contradictory states.
Jonathan Rice
Jonathan K. Rice is an abstract artist living in Charlotte, NC. His art has appeared in a number of solo and group exhibits in the region. His work has been featured as cover art on books and in online magazines, which include The Pedestal, Levure Litteraire, The Inflectionist Review, Empty Mirror, Diaphanous and Harbor Review Magazine. He was featured artist in the Spring 2015 issue of Apogee Magazine, the literary arts magazine of High Point University. Most recently his art was on exhibit at the North Charleston City Gallery in North Charleston, S.C. https://jonathankriceartist.com/
Excursion in a Minor Key
Artist's Statement
Jonathan Rice’s Excursion series were on exhibit in June 2018 at the North Charleston City Gallery in North Charleston, S.C.
Acrylic on canvas. 20” x 20." These are all available for purchase.
Blue Train Excursion
Sonorous Excursion
Excursion in a Minor Key
Temporal Excursion
Jonathan Rice’s Excursion series were on exhibit in June 2018 at the North Charleston City Gallery in North Charleston, S.C.
Acrylic on canvas. 20” x 20." These are all available for purchase.
Blue Train Excursion
Sonorous Excursion
Excursion in a Minor Key
Temporal Excursion
Kristine Snodgrass
Kristine Snodgrass is a professor, publisher, poet, art lover, and mom. She takes a lot of selfies and reads poetry every day. Kristine lives in Tallahassee with her partner, the artist and poet, Jay Snodgrass. You can find Kristine on Facebook.
Above and Below, Watercolor, Pen & Stencil
These pieces are inspired by distortion--women's faces/bodies. The images we see and control. And, flowers. And selfies. Always selfies.
May 2019
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s photos are published worldwide, including diaphanous, The Lummox, Serving House Journal, River Styx, and the covers of Witness, Heyday, The Mas Tequila Review, Pithead Chapel, The Chiron Review, Fine Linen, KYSO Flash, Nerve Cowboy, and many others. Her poems can be found in Best American Poetry, 2016, Plume, Diode, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of five books of poetry and photos, including JUNKIE WIFE, (2018), and THE DEAD KID POEMS (May, 2019). www.alexisrhonefancher.com
Artist Statement
I shot my first photos at age ten. My father thought I had talent and bought me a Nikon. I’ve always had a camera in my hand. Another way to interact with the world while keeping myself at len’s distance. I shoot “street” photos with my iPhone X. In the studio I shoot formal portraits with my Nikon D810, using an 85mm lens. In both worlds, my focus is on revealing my subject, sourcing the humanity that connects us all. Photographic Influences: Dorothea Lange, Mark Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Lisette Model, WeeGee, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Nan Golden, Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton, Jan Saudek, Cindy Sherman, Sebastian Salgado, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Arthur Tress, Graciela Iturbide, Lola Alvarez Bravo. The photos shown here were all shot at the BROAD Museum in Los Angeles, 2017.
I shot my first photos at age ten. My father thought I had talent and bought me a Nikon. I’ve always had a camera in my hand. Another way to interact with the world while keeping myself at len’s distance. I shoot “street” photos with my iPhone X. In the studio I shoot formal portraits with my Nikon D810, using an 85mm lens. In both worlds, my focus is on revealing my subject, sourcing the humanity that connects us all. Photographic Influences: Dorothea Lange, Mark Ellen Mark, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Lisette Model, WeeGee, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Nan Golden, Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton, Jan Saudek, Cindy Sherman, Sebastian Salgado, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Arthur Tress, Graciela Iturbide, Lola Alvarez Bravo. The photos shown here were all shot at the BROAD Museum in Los Angeles, 2017.
Ryn Holmes
An award-winning poet and photographer, Ryn Holmes originated from the bottom and top of California before finding her way to the Gulf Coast of Florida. She is a partner in K & K Writing Services and a co-editor of Panoply ezine. Over the years, her written and art works have appeared in various journals.
Artist's Statement:The lifelong pursuit of art in all forms has brought me back to what, given my age, is possibly my final attempt - photography. This latest endeavor involves the careful selection of subject (with an emphasis on color and form) which is then manipulated into something new. I am very exited about the project. Medium: Manipulated photography.
Bill Wolak
Bill Wolak has just published his fifteenth book of poetry entitled The Nakedness Defense with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared recently in Naked in New Hope 2018, The 2019 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Poetic Illusion, The Riverside Gallery, Hackensack, NJ, the 2019 Dirty Show in Detroit, 2018 The Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, and The 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival.
The Exaltation of Perfumed Flesh
Artist’s Statement:
I make collages out of all kinds of materials. Most are made out of paper engravings. Many collages are digitally generated or enhanced. To begin a piece, I select some sources—either color or black and white. If I’m using magazines or prints or old books, I cut out some images or parts of images that interest me. Then I start working on a background or some other sort of chance construction. Much is left to fleeting insights. These are tiny miracles of inspiration. Depending on whether I’m using scissors and glue or digital images, each collage could take several hours.
I make collages out of all kinds of materials. Most are made out of paper engravings. Many collages are digitally generated or enhanced. To begin a piece, I select some sources—either color or black and white. If I’m using magazines or prints or old books, I cut out some images or parts of images that interest me. Then I start working on a background or some other sort of chance construction. Much is left to fleeting insights. These are tiny miracles of inspiration. Depending on whether I’m using scissors and glue or digital images, each collage could take several hours.
James E. Lewis
j.lewis is an incurable amateur photographer who believes you can never get too close to nature. His photos have appeared in local fitness and nature magazines, online in various journals, and in his book of poetry and photography "a clear day in october" which is available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/clear-day-october-j-lewis/dp/168073055X)
Artist’s Statement
When digital art and photography became available, I discovered the tools I needed to express creative ideas the way I saw them in my mind. My initial focus was on creating graphic art, and I spent a lot of hours experimenting with layers, filters, and masks. Along the way, I discovered that adding “found objects” into the graphics opened additional ways of expressing myself. When I became addicted to digital photography, many of the skills I had already learned proved useful.My graphic art is always abstract, because I never know what the finished piece will be until I get there. I incorporate “found art” to make a statement, something that untethers objects from the concrete reality of the physical world and says “what if?” With photography, my goal is always to present reality from a perspective that invites contemplation. I love landscapes, both from a panoramic view and from the closest macros that I can coax out of my camera. Visual arts, along with writing poetry and composing music, are ways that I have found to share my personality. If I had to sum up what I want my works to say, it would be “Doesn’t this make you feel good?”
When digital art and photography became available, I discovered the tools I needed to express creative ideas the way I saw them in my mind. My initial focus was on creating graphic art, and I spent a lot of hours experimenting with layers, filters, and masks. Along the way, I discovered that adding “found objects” into the graphics opened additional ways of expressing myself. When I became addicted to digital photography, many of the skills I had already learned proved useful.My graphic art is always abstract, because I never know what the finished piece will be until I get there. I incorporate “found art” to make a statement, something that untethers objects from the concrete reality of the physical world and says “what if?” With photography, my goal is always to present reality from a perspective that invites contemplation. I love landscapes, both from a panoramic view and from the closest macros that I can coax out of my camera. Visual arts, along with writing poetry and composing music, are ways that I have found to share my personality. If I had to sum up what I want my works to say, it would be “Doesn’t this make you feel good?”
February 2019
Kerry Rawlinson
Decades ago, autodidact & bloody-minded optimist Kerry Rawlinson gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil, nurturing family and a career in Architectural Technology. She now pursues Art & Literature’s Muses around the Okanagan, barefoot; her patient husband ensuring she’s fed. She’s won some contests, e.g. from Geist; Postcards,Poems&Prose, Fusion Art; and recent work appears in NewFlashFictionReview; LRC, ReflexFiction, Prelude, RiddledWithArrows, Salomé, Boned, PedestalMagazine, ArcPoetry, Anti-HerionChic, pioneertown and MinolaReview; amongst others.kerryrawlinson.tumblr.com; @kerryrawli
Artist’s Statement
My creative leaning is towards people and places; the examination of meanings; the edges & intersects of culture, order/chaos; nature/construct; what emerges from people, collectively, and what happens when we’ve disappeared. I photograph extensively, then dabble with various digital tools to develop and move each piece to wherever I think it's leading. I never use Photoshop, and often enhance printed pieces with acrylics and inks.
Artist’s Statement
My creative leaning is towards people and places; the examination of meanings; the edges & intersects of culture, order/chaos; nature/construct; what emerges from people, collectively, and what happens when we’ve disappeared. I photograph extensively, then dabble with various digital tools to develop and move each piece to wherever I think it's leading. I never use Photoshop, and often enhance printed pieces with acrylics and inks.
Palm Fruit Kaleidescope
Arbour Lights
Log Truck Bar Ghosts
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Jonaki Ray
Acid Queen (Watercolor): This was based on the newspaper report of an acid-attack victim in India walking the ramp of a fashion show in New York. While the story inspired a poem that was published by So to Speak Journal, I also painted the face of a woman who has rebuilt her life with unbelievable courage.
Jonaki Ray was educated in India (IIT Kanpur) and the USA (UIUC), and is now a poet, editor, and writer based in New Delhi, India.
Jonaki is a 2019 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award winner. She was nominated by Zoetic Press for the 2018 Pushcart Prize for short fiction, and by Oxford Brookes Poetry Center for the 2018 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem by Oxford Brookes Poetry Center, and was the winner of their 2017 International Poetry Contest, ESL. She has been shortlisted for multiple other awards including the 2018 Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize, the 2016 RL Poetry Award, the 2016 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest, ESL, and the 2016 Writers' HQ International Fiction Contest.
Her work has been published in Southword Journal, The Four Quarters Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, Indian Literature, The Lake, and elsewhere. Visit her website for more information.
Jonaki Ray was educated in India (IIT Kanpur) and the USA (UIUC), and is now a poet, editor, and writer based in New Delhi, India.
Jonaki is a 2019 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award winner. She was nominated by Zoetic Press for the 2018 Pushcart Prize for short fiction, and by Oxford Brookes Poetry Center for the 2018 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem by Oxford Brookes Poetry Center, and was the winner of their 2017 International Poetry Contest, ESL. She has been shortlisted for multiple other awards including the 2018 Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize, the 2016 RL Poetry Award, the 2016 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Contest, ESL, and the 2016 Writers' HQ International Fiction Contest.
Her work has been published in Southword Journal, The Four Quarters Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, Indian Literature, The Lake, and elsewhere. Visit her website for more information.
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Left:
Night Dreams (Acrylic and Watercolors) This was partly inspired by Wuthering Heights, which I was re-reading for the dozenth time. At night, our thoughts roam and scan the horizon, and sometimes, face the fact of mortality; at other times, dream of flowers like the Night Queen. Right: Facing the Tunnel (Acrylic): What happens when we face the fear-causing monsters? Do we defeat them, or retreat? Below: The Inner Eye Watercolor): How does one retreat within? Is detaching a way, or does this really lead to happiness? |
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Vivian Wagner
Above Left: “Mermaid” (2017): acrylic and latex paint, silicone oil, PVA glue, pouring medium on canvas
Above Right: “Planetary” (2017): acrylic and latex paint, silicone oil, PVA glue, pouring medium on canvas
Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she’s an associate professor of English at Muskingum University. She’s the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), The Village (Aldrich Press-Kelsay Books), Making (Origami Poems Project), and Curiosities (Unsolicited Press).
Artist’s Statement
My art interests are wide and far-ranging. I’m always creating something – drawing, painting, doodling, pouring paint, taking pictures, collecting found objects, making jewelry, carving stamps, binding notebooks, etc. I see creation as much a part of my daily life as meditating, doing yoga, and brushing my teeth. I create as a way of fighting entropy, destruction, and malaise. Creating makes me happy and helps me feel alive.
Below Left: “Tree, Pixelated” (2018): watercolor on index card
Below Right: “Mechanical Animals” (2018): graphite and watercolor on hot press watercolor paper
Above Right: “Planetary” (2017): acrylic and latex paint, silicone oil, PVA glue, pouring medium on canvas
Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she’s an associate professor of English at Muskingum University. She’s the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), The Village (Aldrich Press-Kelsay Books), Making (Origami Poems Project), and Curiosities (Unsolicited Press).
Artist’s Statement
My art interests are wide and far-ranging. I’m always creating something – drawing, painting, doodling, pouring paint, taking pictures, collecting found objects, making jewelry, carving stamps, binding notebooks, etc. I see creation as much a part of my daily life as meditating, doing yoga, and brushing my teeth. I create as a way of fighting entropy, destruction, and malaise. Creating makes me happy and helps me feel alive.
Below Left: “Tree, Pixelated” (2018): watercolor on index card
Below Right: “Mechanical Animals” (2018): graphite and watercolor on hot press watercolor paper
November 2018
Janelle Cordero
Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. Both her writing and her paintings are sparse narratives that emphasize the disconnected nature of the human condition. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her debut poetry collection, Two Cups of Tomatoes, was published in 2015, and her chapbook with Black Sand Press is forthcoming in 2019. Janelle’s artistic priority is to collaborate with other creators to push for social and political change. Stay connected with Janelle’s work at www.janellecordero.com.
"Who Knows What This Means" was created using ink, watercolor, and digital manipulation.
"Who Knows What This Means" was created using ink, watercolor, and digital manipulation.
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"Pencil Twinning", left, was created using colored pencils and markers.
"Sparkly",right, was created using ink, watercolor, and digital manipulation. The art world is the only place where moments can exist forever, and because moments are fragmentary, my art never seems "whole." And that's okay, because rarely do we enjoy moments that are entirely whole and complete. My style is far from consistent, as my curiosity keeps me exploring new mediums and fresh techniques. However, my subject is almost always the human form. "Lounging" ink and watercolor |
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Michael Byro
"Dr. Gachet" birch plywood using bottles with a needle tip, acrylic
Michael Byro has had four gallery shows in 2016 at the Amity Gallery, Sugarloaf Performing Arts Center, The New Weis Center for Education, Arts & Recreation and the Albert Wisner Public Library in Warwick, NY. His work was at the Suffern Library June and July 2017. Prior to this, he won or placed in the Ringwood Manor Arts Association in 2015 and 2016. His first impulse was recreating Neolithic cave art. These included the French cave art such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira Spain. His work was featured in the magazine: The Underground Movement by the Central Connecticut Grotto. He quickly became fascinated with plywood and the beautiful natural grain in the wood and incorporated that. Then he noticed Mosaics and wanted to recreate some of the artwork from Pompeii, Greece and Israel. Since his wife was a travel agent for 25 years, the drive was to share images that he had seen some of, but knew others had not. The Lion Gate of Ishtar is a good example of this. He quickly moved on to George Seurat and wanted his “faux-aic art” to delve into pointillism. His passion is faux-aic, pointillism and a combination of the two. He wanted recognizable work to be seen in a new way. He has now sold artwork all over the United States from California, Texas to Maine. He has been consigned to paint business signs and other work. His art is at the El Convento Hotel in Old San Juan.
"W.S. Merwin" Charcoal on paper
"W.S. Merwin" Charcoal on paper
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"David Bowie" birch plywood using bottles with a needle tip, acrylic "Ezra Pound"
Jeannie E. Roberts
Jeannie E. Roberts writes, draws and paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings. She has exhibited her drawings and paintings in the Midwest and in Mexico City, and her artwork hangs in corporate and home settings. Her nature photos appear in online journals, magazines, and print anthologies, including An Ariel Anthology, Anti-Heroin Chic, Blue Heron Review, Midwestern Gothic, Off the Coast, Portage Magazine, Presence, Quill & Parchment, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets' Bramble Literary Magazine and elsewhere. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a Master of Arts degree in Arts Administration (Arts and Cultural Management) from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. She has completed coursework at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
She has authored four poetry collections, including The Wingspan of Things, a poetry chapbook (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Romp and Ceremony, a full-length poetry collection (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush, a full-length poetry collection (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature of it All, a poetry chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is also the author and illustrator of Let's Make Faces!, a children's book dedicated to her son (author-published, 2009). Her poetry appears in online journals, magazines, and print anthologies. She is Poetry Editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs and is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she lives near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
"Inuksuit Series, Baffin Island Stack" acrylic on canvas
She has authored four poetry collections, including The Wingspan of Things, a poetry chapbook (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Romp and Ceremony, a full-length poetry collection (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Beyond Bulrush, a full-length poetry collection (Lit Fest Press, 2015), and Nature of it All, a poetry chapbook (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She is also the author and illustrator of Let's Make Faces!, a children's book dedicated to her son (author-published, 2009). Her poetry appears in online journals, magazines, and print anthologies. She is Poetry Editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs and is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she lives near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
"Inuksuit Series, Baffin Island Stack" acrylic on canvas
My artwork has evolved in style and technique from my highly-detailed abstract pencil drawings of the
late 1970’s and 1980’s, to my abstract and pattern-rich acrylic and oil color-field paintings of the 1990’s, to my more representational mixed-media drawings and acrylic/oil paintings of today. My subject matter varies from the organic forms, shapes, and design elements found in nature to the mystical, ceremonial and picture-writing symbols created by ancient civilizations, cultures, and religions. Typically, my compositions attempt to pare down images to their essential, universal forms.
Through my art, I wish to honor nature’s beauty, the ancient arts and symbols of human existence, and past artists. My work has been influenced by my outdoor discoveries, by time spent abroad, by art and spiritual studies, and by my journey as a mother. For more, please visit my website: http://www.jrcreative.biz.
"Bone Series, Facade"
pencil on paper
Below left, "Abstract Series, Mandala III" acrylic on paper;
Below right, "Rock Garden", ink and acrylic on paper
late 1970’s and 1980’s, to my abstract and pattern-rich acrylic and oil color-field paintings of the 1990’s, to my more representational mixed-media drawings and acrylic/oil paintings of today. My subject matter varies from the organic forms, shapes, and design elements found in nature to the mystical, ceremonial and picture-writing symbols created by ancient civilizations, cultures, and religions. Typically, my compositions attempt to pare down images to their essential, universal forms.
Through my art, I wish to honor nature’s beauty, the ancient arts and symbols of human existence, and past artists. My work has been influenced by my outdoor discoveries, by time spent abroad, by art and spiritual studies, and by my journey as a mother. For more, please visit my website: http://www.jrcreative.biz.
"Bone Series, Facade"
pencil on paper
Below left, "Abstract Series, Mandala III" acrylic on paper;
Below right, "Rock Garden", ink and acrylic on paper
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August 2018
Ann Leshy Wood Photography
Ann Leshy Wood is an American-Lebanese poet, photographer and vocalist who sings with the internationally known Gainesville Master Chorale. She was born in DeLand, Florida to biracial (Middle Eastern) parents who were attending law school. She received her BA in English Literature at the University of Florida, returning at the age of 40 to study creative writing with the two well-known American poets, William Logan and Debora Gregor. She has been published in literary magazines and journals and presents her work at the Florida College English Association, the College English Association and has read on several creative panels at the Other Words Writers Conference at Flagler College in Saint Augustine, Florida, and at the Southern Writers Southern Writing Conference in Oxford, Mississippi. She won the Colby H. Kulman award for outstanding technical merit for one of her poems. She has taught literature and writing and enjoys living deep in the “old Florida” woods in a wooden home she hand built. She writes using the isolated landscape as a sense of place. Herbphotographs depict Old Florida and the landscape that is vanishing.
Clouds Composed as Birds
Florida Storm
Clouds Composed as Birds
Florida Storm
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Artist’s Statement:
I began to write at the age of 12 short stories and my first full length novella at 14 which I developed characters and illustrated. But it was in an elective class in creative writing in high school, I was encouraged to write poetry by the teacher, going on to win a poetry contest given by New College in Sarasota, Florida. I began taking photographs about 10 years ago. I have an intense sense of color and is used in my perspective in the landscape. Living in the woods or at the ocean affords me with the kind of scapes that affect my poet/artist’s eye. I use a Sony camera. At times my iPhone camera takes a shot. I love to manipulate my images at times with enhanced color, which I compare to as utilizing meter in crafting a line in writing poetry. Surrounded by thousands of trees affords me the luxury of imagery both for the lens of my eye and in my camera. |
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Turning Away After Haying
Harshal Desai photography
Elliptical
Harshal Desai's an artist, entrepreneur, and writer that loathes the typical 9-5 existence. He documents his thoughts through writing and photography as he takes on societies norms armed with nothing more than his cheeky wit and undeniable charm. His work is published in Verbal Art, Phenomenal Literature, National Geographic, FineFlu, The Type Image, 805Lit, Door is a Jar, and more. He is a co-founder of Parentheses Journal. Email him on [email protected]
Harshal Desai's an artist, entrepreneur, and writer that loathes the typical 9-5 existence. He documents his thoughts through writing and photography as he takes on societies norms armed with nothing more than his cheeky wit and undeniable charm. His work is published in Verbal Art, Phenomenal Literature, National Geographic, FineFlu, The Type Image, 805Lit, Door is a Jar, and more. He is a co-founder of Parentheses Journal. Email him on [email protected]
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Artist Statement:
These photos are symbolic of chakras, of the energetic fields of matter and material. The colors effuse life, an addition, discrepancies, contradictions, and life. I aim to indoctrinate non-living entities in the equation to create harmony and oneness. The source of this series is a juxtaposition and coming together of sensory elements and the materiality of things. The vastness of space and smallness of spaces enthrall and bewilder all the same. It is upon ourselves to embrace the parabola and symmetry of things for all they take shape as at every minute. This series is a continuum and pause of all things and their embodiments, a call out to purgatory. Trailblazing |
Dream Within A Dream Wings In Motion
Denny E. Marshall Pen and Ink
Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry, and fiction published. Denny currently lives in the Midwest. One recent credit for covert art is Bards And Sages Quarterly Jan. 2018. One recent credit for interior art is Meat For Tea Vol. 12 Issue1 March 2018. One recent credit for poetry is Grievous Angel March 2018. One recent credit for fiction is Night To Dawn 33 April 2018. Denny doesn't have a Facebook page or Twitter account. Denny finds both to be information/advertising sites not really social
sites. See more at www.dennymarshall.com
M2 With Wings
sites. See more at www.dennymarshall.com
M2 With Wings
L Machine
P Peeking Over Fence J Walker
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Artist Statement
Draw mostly with black pen & ink, sometimes color and have done a few paintings. Also do computer artwork. About 88% of artwork is hand-drawn. Recently bought a 21-color Sharpie set on sale at Walmart and have been doing quite a few of those. About a half dozen have been accepted as cover art.Many artists out there create works that look all the same. My number one goal is for artwork is for it not all to look the same. After that I like to get emotion, movement, or depth if not all three at least one of them, prefer to get all three.
Draw mostly with black pen & ink, sometimes color and have done a few paintings. Also do computer artwork. About 88% of artwork is hand-drawn. Recently bought a 21-color Sharpie set on sale at Walmart and have been doing quite a few of those. About a half dozen have been accepted as cover art.Many artists out there create works that look all the same. My number one goal is for artwork is for it not all to look the same. After that I like to get emotion, movement, or depth if not all three at least one of them, prefer to get all three.
May 2018
Carl Scharwath Photography
Carl Scharwath has appeared globally in more than 100 journals selecting his poetry, short stories, essays or art photography. Two poetry books Journey To Become Forgotten (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and Abandoned (ScarsTv) have been published. Carl is the art editor for Minute Magazine, a dedicated runner and 2nd degree blackbelt in Taekwondo
Ascension
Artist Statement:
I use photography as a means of self-expression. The most important quality of a photograph, as in all of art, is to evoke an emotional response. I prefer to capture surrealistic moments when I can, the play of light and colors and unusual situations as they unfold. As a passionate runner, being aware of my surroundings tends to produce some surprise scenes instead of forcing an image of time with my camera. Currently I have been concentrating on collaborations with other poets who interpret my photos with their powerful words creating an art form that compliments each other.
Ascension
Artist Statement:
I use photography as a means of self-expression. The most important quality of a photograph, as in all of art, is to evoke an emotional response. I prefer to capture surrealistic moments when I can, the play of light and colors and unusual situations as they unfold. As a passionate runner, being aware of my surroundings tends to produce some surprise scenes instead of forcing an image of time with my camera. Currently I have been concentrating on collaborations with other poets who interpret my photos with their powerful words creating an art form that compliments each other.
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Whole Earth
Sugar Mill Chariots |
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Tom Stock Collage
After 40 years of collaging, I find my work has evolved toward edgier, political, sarcastic, and current social issues. I have left behind the "aint nature grand" series. Gun control and the consequences of the overindulgence of unprocessed information interest me now. II am much less impulsive letting lots of time between layout and glue down.
The Ultimate Swipe
I lean toward simple by the elimination of background. I try for a shock effect. It pleases me to find even just two cutouts that fit together and portray a concept. "no pretty pictures please." I use archival hardboard and acid free glue. after 40 years, I' just about to emerge.
The Ultimate Swipe
I lean toward simple by the elimination of background. I try for a shock effect. It pleases me to find even just two cutouts that fit together and portray a concept. "no pretty pictures please." I use archival hardboard and acid free glue. after 40 years, I' just about to emerge.
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Slinkies Escaping Old Baggage
Difference of Opinion
Difference of Opinion
Dorothy & Mel Tanner Light Sculpture
Photographs by Marc Billard
Photographs by Marc Billard
Dorothy Tanner was born in The Bronx, NY in 1923. She studied woodcarving with Chaim Gross at the Educational Alliance, sculpture with Aaron Goddleman at the Jefferson School of Social Science, and was a student of Gabor Peterdi and Milton Hebald at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. It was at the Brooklyn Museum where she met Mel Tanner and married two years later in 1951.
While experimenting with many mediums in her career, Dorothy has found plexiglas to be the most rewarding. It is a material that she will sculpt, paint, sandblast, bake and shape. Some are wall sculptures, some free-standing or mobiles, while others are water sculptures. Light is an intrinsic element of the art form. LEDs have been the primary source of lighting the works since 2002.
While each sculpture stands alone as an artistic expression, her interest is to integrate the works into a total environment — installations that express a powerful visual and emotional sensibility.
Dorothy Tanner and Mel Tanner began their luminal art in Miami in the 1960s, adding the elements of live projection, electronics, and music to create a multi-sensory experience they called “Lumonics,” with the intention to deeply affect people on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels: to relax, energize, and foster a sense of well-being.
Since the passing of Mel Tanner in 1993, Dorothy collaborates with long-time associate, Marc Billard, creating sculptures, electronic music, and video,
and continuing to build the Lumonics experience. Since relocating to Denver in 2008, Dorothy has exhibited at Union Gallery, the Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA), Denver International Airport, Lakewood Cultural Center, Vertigo Art Center, and Union Station. In the summer of 2016, Dorothy and team formed an association with the 7 Healing Stars Oneness Center, founded by Jomar P. Suarez, M.D. , a psychiatrist with a vision for an integrated global community. The initial collaboration took place at The Scarlet, a former casino, located at 130 Main Street in downtown Central City, through May of 2017. Downstairs at The Scarlet, Dorothy Tanner created an art installation that featured the light sculptures. The installation which included video and a pyramid was utilized for relaxation and meditation. Dr. Suarez is
“especially interested in the potential of {this} art for mental health treatments and applications.”
Beginning January 13, 2018, Dorothy’s Lumonics Mind Spa, a site-specific art installation opens on the 1st floor of the McNichols Civic Center Building. It features light
sculptures by Dorothy and Mel Tanner (1925-1993), and music and video by Dorothy Tanner and Marc Billard. Dorothy’s intention for this meditative
environment is for everyone to experience new ways to stretch the body, expand the mind, and achieve greater spiritual awareness. July 31, 2018 is the closing date.
In addition to being open to the pubic during the week and weekends, events including workshops and performances will take place in association with
Dr. Suarez’s 7 Healing Stars Oneness Center (7HS). Subjects include art and culture, health and wellness, education, nutrition, sustainability, spirituality,
and community.
Mel Tanner (1925-1993)
“The whole idea behind everything here is to take light and make it into a shape... a shape that not only solidifies the light but the life the light touches.”
* excerpted from interview in The Miami News, 1975
Mel Tanner was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1925. After serving in the Army during World War II, he enrolled in art school under the newly created G.I. Bill. He attended
Pratt Institute, the Art Students League of New York, and studied painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School with Max Beckmann, John Ferren, and Reuben Tam.
While a student at the Brooklyn Museum, he met Dorothy. They married two years later in 1951, and moved to Syracuse, NY where they opened the Syracuse Art Workshop, teaching painting and sculpture. They also taught an art class for children in the summer at Syracuse University. They also exhibited at the Key Gallery in New York City.
In 1963, they returned to NY City and founded an artists' co-op, Granite Gallery, on East 57th Street. The Granite Art Association organized seminars, forums, and exhibitions. “The New Face in Art” Forum and Exhibition took place at the Loeb Center at New York University. Participants included Louise Nevelson, Red Grooms, Norman Carton, and art writer Gordon Brown. In 1965, after traveling extensively in Europe, the Tanners established a studio in Miami. Their interest in plexiglas and its unique light transmitting quality engaged both Dorothy and Mel in experimentation that led to a major component of their art form: light. This collaborative project became their main focus and dedication. The Tanners created Lumonics installations in Miami, San Diego, Bangor, and Fort Lauderdale.
Since Mel Tanner’s passing in 1993, his light sculptures have been exhibited in conjunction with Dorothy’s at the Coral Springs Museum of Art in Coral Springs, FL at “The Art of Healing” exhibition, ZONES Art Fair at the Edge Zones Art Center during Art Basel Week in Miami, FL; Vertigo Art Space in the Santa Fe Art District, Union Station, Denver International Airport, Lakewood Cultural Center, The Scarlet in Central City, CO, and the Museum of Outdoor Arts. His art will be part of the exhibit at the McNichols Building in the Civic Center beginning January 13, 2018. www.lumonics.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_and_Dorothy_Tanner
While experimenting with many mediums in her career, Dorothy has found plexiglas to be the most rewarding. It is a material that she will sculpt, paint, sandblast, bake and shape. Some are wall sculptures, some free-standing or mobiles, while others are water sculptures. Light is an intrinsic element of the art form. LEDs have been the primary source of lighting the works since 2002.
While each sculpture stands alone as an artistic expression, her interest is to integrate the works into a total environment — installations that express a powerful visual and emotional sensibility.
Dorothy Tanner and Mel Tanner began their luminal art in Miami in the 1960s, adding the elements of live projection, electronics, and music to create a multi-sensory experience they called “Lumonics,” with the intention to deeply affect people on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels: to relax, energize, and foster a sense of well-being.
Since the passing of Mel Tanner in 1993, Dorothy collaborates with long-time associate, Marc Billard, creating sculptures, electronic music, and video,
and continuing to build the Lumonics experience. Since relocating to Denver in 2008, Dorothy has exhibited at Union Gallery, the Museum of Outdoor Arts (MOA), Denver International Airport, Lakewood Cultural Center, Vertigo Art Center, and Union Station. In the summer of 2016, Dorothy and team formed an association with the 7 Healing Stars Oneness Center, founded by Jomar P. Suarez, M.D. , a psychiatrist with a vision for an integrated global community. The initial collaboration took place at The Scarlet, a former casino, located at 130 Main Street in downtown Central City, through May of 2017. Downstairs at The Scarlet, Dorothy Tanner created an art installation that featured the light sculptures. The installation which included video and a pyramid was utilized for relaxation and meditation. Dr. Suarez is
“especially interested in the potential of {this} art for mental health treatments and applications.”
Beginning January 13, 2018, Dorothy’s Lumonics Mind Spa, a site-specific art installation opens on the 1st floor of the McNichols Civic Center Building. It features light
sculptures by Dorothy and Mel Tanner (1925-1993), and music and video by Dorothy Tanner and Marc Billard. Dorothy’s intention for this meditative
environment is for everyone to experience new ways to stretch the body, expand the mind, and achieve greater spiritual awareness. July 31, 2018 is the closing date.
In addition to being open to the pubic during the week and weekends, events including workshops and performances will take place in association with
Dr. Suarez’s 7 Healing Stars Oneness Center (7HS). Subjects include art and culture, health and wellness, education, nutrition, sustainability, spirituality,
and community.
Mel Tanner (1925-1993)
“The whole idea behind everything here is to take light and make it into a shape... a shape that not only solidifies the light but the life the light touches.”
* excerpted from interview in The Miami News, 1975
Mel Tanner was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1925. After serving in the Army during World War II, he enrolled in art school under the newly created G.I. Bill. He attended
Pratt Institute, the Art Students League of New York, and studied painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School with Max Beckmann, John Ferren, and Reuben Tam.
While a student at the Brooklyn Museum, he met Dorothy. They married two years later in 1951, and moved to Syracuse, NY where they opened the Syracuse Art Workshop, teaching painting and sculpture. They also taught an art class for children in the summer at Syracuse University. They also exhibited at the Key Gallery in New York City.
In 1963, they returned to NY City and founded an artists' co-op, Granite Gallery, on East 57th Street. The Granite Art Association organized seminars, forums, and exhibitions. “The New Face in Art” Forum and Exhibition took place at the Loeb Center at New York University. Participants included Louise Nevelson, Red Grooms, Norman Carton, and art writer Gordon Brown. In 1965, after traveling extensively in Europe, the Tanners established a studio in Miami. Their interest in plexiglas and its unique light transmitting quality engaged both Dorothy and Mel in experimentation that led to a major component of their art form: light. This collaborative project became their main focus and dedication. The Tanners created Lumonics installations in Miami, San Diego, Bangor, and Fort Lauderdale.
Since Mel Tanner’s passing in 1993, his light sculptures have been exhibited in conjunction with Dorothy’s at the Coral Springs Museum of Art in Coral Springs, FL at “The Art of Healing” exhibition, ZONES Art Fair at the Edge Zones Art Center during Art Basel Week in Miami, FL; Vertigo Art Space in the Santa Fe Art District, Union Station, Denver International Airport, Lakewood Cultural Center, The Scarlet in Central City, CO, and the Museum of Outdoor Arts. His art will be part of the exhibit at the McNichols Building in the Civic Center beginning January 13, 2018. www.lumonics.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_and_Dorothy_Tanner
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Blake Carlton Watercolor
Wisdom
Blake Carlton was born and raised in South Florida. He studied art since childhood, including at The Art Student's League in New York under Robert Beverly Hale. His works here are all watercolors, which Blake finds the most challenging but rewarding medium. Blake is also an attorney.
Blake Carlton was born and raised in South Florida. He studied art since childhood, including at The Art Student's League in New York under Robert Beverly Hale. His works here are all watercolors, which Blake finds the most challenging but rewarding medium. Blake is also an attorney.
Siamese
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Hustling
Street
Street
February 2018
Firestone Feinberg Watercolor
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Firestone Feinberg is the editor of Verse-Virtual (www.verse-virtual.com), an online community journal of poetry. He is a retired high school music teacher, a composer, a painter, a poet, a husband, a father, and a grandfather. He lives in New York City. A self-taught artist, Feinberg paints exclusively in watercolor. His paintings are based largely upon his own iconography and various symbologies from many different times and places.
Left: House |
Right: Music in Perspective
Below left: Key, Flying Saucer and Other Things
Below right: Music, Even Now
Below left: Key, Flying Saucer and Other Things
Below right: Music, Even Now
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Evelyn Bartley Acrylics
Evelyn Bartley is a Boston-raised novice artist who paints and draws realism by inspiration only. She creates her art sporadically between many other interests. She also works in graphic pencil, pastels and watercolor. Bartley has no formal education in the arts, but family inherited talent.
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Daniel Santisteban Ink, Ink and Oil, Mixed Media
Above: Three to the Chest
Artist's Statement: The art I create represents what I personally find visually stimulating. I have always had an appreciation for architecture, engineering and technical drawings. For some of my artwork, I have gotten ideas from highly detailed images from Renaissance artists such as Albert Durer, and visual concept styles from certain motion pictures. I have also been influenced by minimalists and abstract painters, among others. My works have thus far been shown in, for instance, The Remembered Arts Journal and the former C.S. Schulte Gallery in Millburn, NJ. I can be reached at www.santistdaniel.yahoo.com for inquiries regarding my current works.
I very much enjoy working off of exposed canvas for the purpose of visual enhancement. Currently, I feel that a white background is necessary for what I want to communicate because of the sharp contrast between that background and the elements involved in the work. I am also fascinated by fine lines, bold colors and primal textures, and how I can incorporate those to enhance the composition.
When someone observes my artwork, I want it to be stimulating and atypical. It has to make you react in a certain way. Everyone has a visual “combination lock,” if you will, that when unlocked enhances life for that person.
Artist's Statement: The art I create represents what I personally find visually stimulating. I have always had an appreciation for architecture, engineering and technical drawings. For some of my artwork, I have gotten ideas from highly detailed images from Renaissance artists such as Albert Durer, and visual concept styles from certain motion pictures. I have also been influenced by minimalists and abstract painters, among others. My works have thus far been shown in, for instance, The Remembered Arts Journal and the former C.S. Schulte Gallery in Millburn, NJ. I can be reached at www.santistdaniel.yahoo.com for inquiries regarding my current works.
I very much enjoy working off of exposed canvas for the purpose of visual enhancement. Currently, I feel that a white background is necessary for what I want to communicate because of the sharp contrast between that background and the elements involved in the work. I am also fascinated by fine lines, bold colors and primal textures, and how I can incorporate those to enhance the composition.
When someone observes my artwork, I want it to be stimulating and atypical. It has to make you react in a certain way. Everyone has a visual “combination lock,” if you will, that when unlocked enhances life for that person.
Above: Untitled Below, left: Wotan; Below, right: Untitled
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Caitlin Noblé Oil on Wood Panel
Peering Into the Beginning or the End
Caitlin Nobilé is a contemporary painter and native Floridian attending Florida Atlantic University to earn her BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in painting. Her work features ornamental objects and mythical creatures associated with curious childhood memorabilia that make suggestions about life and death. The atmosphere they inhibit is a metaphorical womb, a temporary home that is warm and nurturing, as exemplified through dollhouses. However, the "womb" and its inhabitants exist in a state of unpredictability by the chance of violent invasion from the outside world. The paintings utilize a cute-culture aesthetic, which indicates a winsome piece, but is detracted by an impasto application as if the subjects are transcending the picture plane, suggestive of leaving said world through whether through birth or death.
Caitlin Nobilé is a contemporary painter and native Floridian attending Florida Atlantic University to earn her BFA in Studio Art with a concentration in painting. Her work features ornamental objects and mythical creatures associated with curious childhood memorabilia that make suggestions about life and death. The atmosphere they inhibit is a metaphorical womb, a temporary home that is warm and nurturing, as exemplified through dollhouses. However, the "womb" and its inhabitants exist in a state of unpredictability by the chance of violent invasion from the outside world. The paintings utilize a cute-culture aesthetic, which indicates a winsome piece, but is detracted by an impasto application as if the subjects are transcending the picture plane, suggestive of leaving said world through whether through birth or death.
Visions of the Unseen World Piece of Cake But not As Sweet
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Does it Still Make a Sound
November 2017
Jim Zola Photography
Admirable Failure
I found this in my camera roll and am not sure what happened -- a pleasant error. It was part of a series of photographs of me and my yellow lab. It just so happens that this mistake was the only photo i saved from that series.
I found this in my camera roll and am not sure what happened -- a pleasant error. It was part of a series of photographs of me and my yellow lab. It just so happens that this mistake was the only photo i saved from that series.
Reflection
I enjoy doing photo collages, but this photo is actually just the one image. An old collapsing storage building in Virginia. The reflections in the window is what caught my eye. |
In the Closet #1
I was working in an old house that was being used for storage by the historical museum. I came face to face with a closet full of manikin parts. |
Hippo #2
Photograph with enhancements.
Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for deaf children, as a toy designer for Fisher Price, and currently as a children's librarian. His publications include a chapbook -- The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) -- and a full length poetry collection -- What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He has poems and photos published or forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Front Porch Review, After the Pause, Cease, Cows, Bird's Thumb, Literary Orphans, Cacti Fur and others. He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.
Photograph with enhancements.
Jim Zola has worked in a warehouse, as a security guard, in a bookstore, as a teacher for deaf children, as a toy designer for Fisher Price, and currently as a children's librarian. His publications include a chapbook -- The One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) -- and a full length poetry collection -- What Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press). He has poems and photos published or forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Front Porch Review, After the Pause, Cease, Cows, Bird's Thumb, Literary Orphans, Cacti Fur and others. He currently lives in Greensboro, NC.
Pj Mills Gold leaf and oil
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Right: Decay, Gold & Flosser
These are gold leaf with oil painted images on top. This is a decaying process. In fact, as the pieces age because the paper is not treated the image is subject to change, and will essentially decay. The notion of making artwork with any archival respect is not taken into account. (unlike the rest of my work).The notion for this work came about with the idea of: "What will it be like after we (Humans) are no longer here?". The image title is self evident of the work. I chose gold because of its stability as an element and humankind's addiction to the element. |
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Left: Beetle & Decay on gold leaf
PJ Mills was born in Spokane Washington, the fourth son of an U.S. Air Force pilot. Most of his youth was spent in the sunny beaches of Southern California. Shortly after high school Pj left for Europe where he traveled by bicycle and Eurail pass through- out Europe and North Africa for a year before studying painting at University State College at Buffalo. After that PJ was given the Andrew D. White Grant for the Visual Arts fellowship to Cornell University to do graduate work in painting. In 2001 after experiencing the first Art Basel Miami, PJ left Western New York for the sunny beaches of Miami where he now resides with his wife, dog, and cat. Pj has an active studio at the Fountainhead Studios in Miami. His work has been shown at several museums and is in many private collections through out the US.
PJ Mills was born in Spokane Washington, the fourth son of an U.S. Air Force pilot. Most of his youth was spent in the sunny beaches of Southern California. Shortly after high school Pj left for Europe where he traveled by bicycle and Eurail pass through- out Europe and North Africa for a year before studying painting at University State College at Buffalo. After that PJ was given the Andrew D. White Grant for the Visual Arts fellowship to Cornell University to do graduate work in painting. In 2001 after experiencing the first Art Basel Miami, PJ left Western New York for the sunny beaches of Miami where he now resides with his wife, dog, and cat. Pj has an active studio at the Fountainhead Studios in Miami. His work has been shown at several museums and is in many private collections through out the US.
Above: Horned Beetle & Decay on gold leaf
Right: Centipede, Blood on Gold |
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Buu Truong Oil on canvas
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Top Left: Ready for Summer Top Right: Hampton Hills
Left:Hampton Hills Born in Vietnam, Buu Truong has lived in Florida almost all her life. She grew up in Orlando, and then later graduated from the University of Florida with a BS in Computer Engineering in May 2000. Over the years, she had done the occasional painting inspired by recently established artists as a creative outlet from her job. However, the more she painted, the more her passion for art grew, and she found art-making incredible satisfying. In February 2016, she received an Honorable Mention for her painting “Incoming Winds” at the Coral Springs Museum of Art exhibit “Inspire 2016.” In March 2016, she officially left her 16-year career in the Computer/IT industry and is currently pursuing a BA in Studio Art at FAU.
Left: Flamingo and Patterned Fabric It all started with painting as a creative outlet to my technical career in computer programming. Painting enabled me to see the beauty in imperfections and to be comfortable with not knowing the exact outcome. I find painting or art-making in general incredible satisfying - knowing that it is a creation all your own. Realizing that art is a skill that can be learned encouraged me to pursue a career in art. My inspiration stems from the sheer joy of learning and art-making. While painting is my preferred medium, I enjoy experimenting with different mediums with a “strive to fail” and “making not knowing” mindset. I revel in the fact that no matter the outcome, everything that I create is a stepping stone to helping me become a better artist and improving my craft. My current body of work is inspired by places and objects found in South Florida, where I have lived the last 17 years.
AUGUST 2017
Cangshu Gran
oil on canvas
oil on canvas
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Porcelain Tunnel: 24" x 24" x 0" Pink Forest: 24" x 24" x 0"
Night Train: 36" x 48" x 0"
Kit Kat Clock: 24" x 24" x 0"
Cangshu Gran is an oil painter in Boca Raton, Florida. She was born and raised in China and moved to the U.S. in 2012. Cangshu holds a BA in Japanese Literature from Zhejiang University. She is currently a MFA candidate in painting at Florida Atlantic University. Cangshu is inspired by nature and fairy tales, her paintings explore memories and daydreams while expressing paranoia.
Inspired by fairy tales and all the strange coincidences that happened in my awkward life, my paintings explore memories and daydreams while expressing paranoia. I house all my worries in oil paintings coated in smoothly graded colored glazes that dissolve my memories into a soup which emerges in unbelievable surrealistic forms.
Memories are preserved in a lot of things: a smell, a taste or a song. I preserve my memories in colors. I create whimsical worlds where intensified colors move from the pretty to the acidic, and characters hide behind masks while dramas quietly unfold in bizarre ways. My favorite painter is surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Chirico's father was a railway worker, thus the ambiguous angle of Chirico’s painting is sometimes thought to be mimicking the vision of a train passenger. I am the passenger on the train. I look outside of the window and see my life passing through in front of me. I am the observer. I am an outsider in my own life. I’m a passenger, a bystander and an escapist.
Cangshu Gran is an oil painter in Boca Raton, Florida. She was born and raised in China and moved to the U.S. in 2012. Cangshu holds a BA in Japanese Literature from Zhejiang University. She is currently a MFA candidate in painting at Florida Atlantic University. Cangshu is inspired by nature and fairy tales, her paintings explore memories and daydreams while expressing paranoia.
Inspired by fairy tales and all the strange coincidences that happened in my awkward life, my paintings explore memories and daydreams while expressing paranoia. I house all my worries in oil paintings coated in smoothly graded colored glazes that dissolve my memories into a soup which emerges in unbelievable surrealistic forms.
Memories are preserved in a lot of things: a smell, a taste or a song. I preserve my memories in colors. I create whimsical worlds where intensified colors move from the pretty to the acidic, and characters hide behind masks while dramas quietly unfold in bizarre ways. My favorite painter is surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. Chirico's father was a railway worker, thus the ambiguous angle of Chirico’s painting is sometimes thought to be mimicking the vision of a train passenger. I am the passenger on the train. I look outside of the window and see my life passing through in front of me. I am the observer. I am an outsider in my own life. I’m a passenger, a bystander and an escapist.
Fabrice B. Poussin Photography
An Artist's Wish
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Left, Deep Thought; Below, Before the Quilt
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review and more than 250 other publications.
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Her Galaxies
Shawna Scarpitti
Tissue Paper on Canvas
Tissue Paper on Canvas
Cotton Candy
Shawna Scarpitti, ATR-BC, is a nationally registered and board certified art therapist (ATR-BC) with the Art Therapy Credentials Board and a member of the American Art Therapy Association. She has a BFA from Auburn University and an MA in Art Therapy from Ursuline College in Cleveland, OH. Shawna has more than 20 years experience working as an art therapist in a range of settings, and is currently working with adults contending with addiction issues in a treatment center in the Palm Beaches. Shawna uses the healing modality of art therapy to promote awareness and facilitate growth while uncovering, processing, and coping with emotions. Her signature style of tissue paper collage is taught to her clients, which combines tissue paper that bleeds when wet with glue and water to create bold, bright combinations. She is currently working on tissue paper canvas commissions for families along the Treasure Coast, and will have two summer shows in Connecticut featuring her tissue paper art. www.shawnascarpitti.com
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Heart Poppies
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Macro Star Shines
Above, Honoring the Divine; Left, Be Mine
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Michele Francoeur
Ink, watercolor, oil & metallic acrylics Below, upper left, Textured Petals; Below lower left, White Flora; At top, right, Burnt Umber; Below, right, Etched Petals |
Michele Francoeur’s poured paintings explore the realms of transformative abstraction. Francoeur earned her BFA from Parson’s School of Design, NY in Communication Design and is currently a MFA Candidate (2017) at Florida Atlantic University. Her work has been exhibited in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bisbee, Arizona and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She works as an art educator in South Florida.
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Drawing inspiration from the visible world around me, I abstract colors and shapes in my paintings to express the beauty I experience in the landscape. I work fluidly, employing chance to open the field to then articulate into positive and negative shapes. Color is employed to express the exuberance of life and evoke specific remembered places. Layering elements compresses energy and heightens visual excitement. Exploring possibilities through interactions of ink, watercolor, oil and metallic acrylics, I initiate work by pouring pigment and binder onto paper or canvas. Through this intensely physical and engaged process I seek balance between letting the paint take its own course and controlling it. In my thesis body of work, Solace; intimately remembered places, I investigated and developed innovative ways to integrate the flora of the landscape into my paintings with the use of a laser cutter. Solace demonstrates that paint can communicate a deep connection to a specific place and time. In this body of paintings, lyrical abstractions result from my meditations on specific words, memories and places that are enacted by the fluid performance of body and paint. My work looks both inward to express emotions and outward to embrace the world. These works offer the expressive freedom of direct gesture and felt responses to conjure specific places charged with personal meaning.
May 2017
Mark Wyatt Photography
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Left, Mexico; Above, Nepal; Below right, China; Below left, Spain
Since around 1980, Mark Wyatt has been photographing mostly people on the streets of wherever he happens to be. Street portraits are the next best thing we have to staring at live humanity. When truth is captured in a still image and displayed on a page or screen, it can be freely and unabashedly examined, and the connections from subject to viewer are granted all the time they need to be understood. He started shooting black-and-white film in high school and was quickly entranced by the quiet of the darkroom and the stain and smell of Dektol. Later he adjusted to the sterile and blazingly colorful world of digital. He is posts usually one or two images a week at his website, mwwyatt.wordpress.com. Each image is uncropped and is processed only to the extent that most faithfully reproduces what the camera saw and how the camera saw it at the moment that the shutter was tripped. In the end, each photo aspires to be a simple but memorable snapshot of our world that the viewer will enjoy seeing again and doesn't easily tire of.
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Brad Garber Photography
Brad Garber has shown his drawings, photographs, mixed media and paintings since 1997, in the Portland and Lake Oswego, Oregon area. His art and photographs have made it onto the front cover of Vine Leaves 2014 Anthology, and in Gravel Magazine, Poor Yorick Journal, Off the Coast, The William & Mary Review, Four Ties Literary Review, Ray’s Road Review, Cargo Literary, The Sonder Review, Poor Yorick Journal, HeartMindZine, The Tishman Review, Meat for Tea, Third Wednesday, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Foliate Oak and other quality literary journals.
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Top left, "Dance Floor"; above left, "Dead Things; above, right, "Hoof"; below, "Easter Dinner"
Linda Lerner Photography
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Linda Lerner took several photographs of the World Trade Center, above, right, as it was being built, but none spoke to me like the first one featured here. What looks like a monstrous fin or giant animal’s steel teeth is cutting right across the new building. It’s dark color contrasts with the building cast in a soft pink gray light suggesting fragility.
It is the stop sign that literally stopped me in the photograph of old Fulton receding in the background, above, left, and the thought of encroaching gentrification, still unseen, edging closer. Heading toward Brooklyn Bridge Park, I was struck by some graffiti art on the wall of an open-ended tunnel. While the bright, spashy colors at first caught my attention, it was a horse drawn carriage, a man riding an old fashion bike dressed in 19th century garb headed one way out and a sign directing me to look at a bus riding in the opposite direction into the new park. It’s this convergence of the old and new working itself out in the scene I felt rather than consciously thought when I took the photograph. These photos were taken with a Sony Cyber Shot camera. |
Linda Lerner’s collection, Yes, the Ducks Were Real, was published by NYQ Books (Feb. 2015) as was her previous full-length collection, Takes Guts and Years Sometimes. A chapbook of poems inspired by nursery rhymes, illustrated by Donna Kerness, Ding Dong the Bell Pussy in the Well (Lummox Press, Feb. 2014.) She’s been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. In 1995 she and Andrew Gettler began Poets on the Line, (http://www.echony.com/~poets) the first poetry anthology on the Net for which she received two grants. In Spring, 2015 she read six poems on WBAI for Arts Express; Her poems have recently appeared in Gargoyle, Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review, Home Planet News, Chiron Review, New Verse News & BoogCity.Com; the following essays have been published: "Land Grab: Putting Down Stakes" appeared in The Brooklyn Voice, March, 2013, “Just Another Word for Plagiarism What’s Wrong With that appeared as a guest editorial in Small Press Review (May-June 2014) and republished in Home Planet News online (2nd issue.
Alex Nodopaka Photography
Alternate Reality (15)], right, is of an curiously fragmented rock. I seek out or collect such when beach bumming. By altering the rock's and its background colors with computer software I change the nature of figurative realism to the point of achieving an alien hue that the eye isn't familiar with. By altering the colors and their saturation the visual creation changes from a familiar essence to an exotic appearance.
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Alternate Reality (95)], left, is a photograph of an alternate reality that popped up in front of my car windshield. I always have a camera on the ready by my side for drive-by shooting and this time the iris blinked in a timely fashion. The last homeless I offered an apple flashed back a toothless smile. So I'm more careful now. By photoshopping in some of my geometric templates resulted in a semi-abstract composition with social interest.
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Alternate Reality (92)], left, is of 3 beach pebbles with crab pincers leftover from my lunch and arranging them in a configuration suggesting a humanoid form. The importance in 3-D assemblage is to establish a semi-natural configuration through the interconnection of separate parts for the purpose of unifying the composition. The final step was the import of geometric designs created by the artist, and finally in collaging the composition by superimposition.
Alex Nodopaka was born in Ukraine in 1940. After fleeing WWII on the back of his parents he landed in Casablanca, Morocco, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He's now a full time artist and writer in the USA. His interests in the visual arts and literature are widely multi-cultural.
Alex Nodopaka was born in Ukraine in 1940. After fleeing WWII on the back of his parents he landed in Casablanca, Morocco, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He's now a full time artist and writer in the USA. His interests in the visual arts and literature are widely multi-cultural.
February 2017
Ray Neubert Colored Marker on Paper
Left, Seated Nude; Right, Kneeling Nude;
Below left, Point of View; Below Right, We Carry It In Our Body |
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ARTIST'S STATEMENT:
I explore life relationships in a playful combination of word play and expressionism. This journey began with my first Brownie Hawkeye camera, continued with lessons in drawing and ceramics, through a grid of warp and weft into digital pixilation and continues on canvas, posters, recycled books and prints. My father’s word play, comics of all genres, Heroic Propaganda ART and Language Poetry influence my Neu-Art. In 2009 I began combining figure drawing, abstract thoughts and word play in saturated colored ink on small reclaimed paper books, flyers, musical scores, graph paper, U.S. Geological Maps even painting on discarded wood and weaving vinyl video tape. I have always been an alley picker. Reclamation is in my soul. I also began attending life drawing sessions for the first time since art school 50 years ago. I make quick black marker sketches to capture the essence of the nude figure and arbitrarily add words reflecting my environment , color them in with vivid colored ink markers and selectively frame with antique frames. I digitally transfer these onto large paper sheets and color with ink markers maintaining the energy of the small colored drawings.
I have exhibited in South East Florida, Los Angeles, the Washington D.C. area and North East Ohio museums, galleries, libraries, universities, and juried shows and have self-published two books of photographs and one of colored drawings. I’ve had One-Man shows in Miami, Palm Beach County, Northern Virginia and North East Ohio.
VITA:
I studied at The Art School of The Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit, Painting and Ceramics at Eastern Michigan University where I earned a BFA with teaching certification, Ceramics at The University of Michigan, Weaving at The Art School of The Chicago Art Institute, Weaving and Ceramics at Wayne State University in Detroit and Ceramics and Studio Painting At Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton where I received advanced degrees in education and supervision. I have taken The Artist As An Entrepreneur both in Fort Lauderdale and Cleveland, taught “Be The Artist You Were Meant To Be” and presently facilitate the Open Drawing Class (Life Drawing) at The Armory. Presently designing a follow-up class at The Armory.
I explore life relationships in a playful combination of word play and expressionism. This journey began with my first Brownie Hawkeye camera, continued with lessons in drawing and ceramics, through a grid of warp and weft into digital pixilation and continues on canvas, posters, recycled books and prints. My father’s word play, comics of all genres, Heroic Propaganda ART and Language Poetry influence my Neu-Art. In 2009 I began combining figure drawing, abstract thoughts and word play in saturated colored ink on small reclaimed paper books, flyers, musical scores, graph paper, U.S. Geological Maps even painting on discarded wood and weaving vinyl video tape. I have always been an alley picker. Reclamation is in my soul. I also began attending life drawing sessions for the first time since art school 50 years ago. I make quick black marker sketches to capture the essence of the nude figure and arbitrarily add words reflecting my environment , color them in with vivid colored ink markers and selectively frame with antique frames. I digitally transfer these onto large paper sheets and color with ink markers maintaining the energy of the small colored drawings.
I have exhibited in South East Florida, Los Angeles, the Washington D.C. area and North East Ohio museums, galleries, libraries, universities, and juried shows and have self-published two books of photographs and one of colored drawings. I’ve had One-Man shows in Miami, Palm Beach County, Northern Virginia and North East Ohio.
VITA:
I studied at The Art School of The Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit, Painting and Ceramics at Eastern Michigan University where I earned a BFA with teaching certification, Ceramics at The University of Michigan, Weaving at The Art School of The Chicago Art Institute, Weaving and Ceramics at Wayne State University in Detroit and Ceramics and Studio Painting At Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton where I received advanced degrees in education and supervision. I have taken The Artist As An Entrepreneur both in Fort Lauderdale and Cleveland, taught “Be The Artist You Were Meant To Be” and presently facilitate the Open Drawing Class (Life Drawing) at The Armory. Presently designing a follow-up class at The Armory.
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Lori Ceier Photography
LORI CEIER is a Florida Master Naturalist and nature lover. She resides in Northwest Florida and enjoys photographing the area's waterways.
Great Egret - A foggy morning created an unusual view of great egret perched on a pond cypress tree near the Choctawhatchee River.
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Left: Western Lake - Western Lake at Grayton Beach State Park. One of several rare coastal dune lakes in Walton county Florida. Right: Holmes Creek - Holmes Creek in Washington county Florida. A popular spring fed waterway for paddlers, the creek provides scenic views. Below: Water Lily - Water lily on Campbell Lake at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park. One of several rare coastal dune lakes in Walton county Florida.
Patricia Whiting Acrylics
PATRICIA WHITING is a painter-poet from West Palm Beach. Her paintings have been exhibited at various locations in Palm Beach County, including Armory Art Center, Lighthouse Art Center, Palm Beach Airport, Art on Park Gallery, Sugar Sand Park, Crest Theatre; and a solo show at Fyrplace Gallery. Her pen and ink drawings have been featured in several poetry anthologies and in her book of poems, Diary Poems: and Drawings. Right: Mindscape 7; Below Left: Mindscape15; Right: Mindscape 11; Bottom: Mindscape 4
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John Childrey Photography from Cuba
JOHN CHILDREY, a native of Richmond, Virginia, attended high schools in North Carolina, Washington (state) and Georgia (Savannah). He has degrees from the University of Virginia and a MFA from Florida International University in short fiction. He taught in public school and at Randolph Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College), The University of Virginia, Purdue University and Florida Atlantic University before retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2010. He first published poetry in 1962. After a gap, he joined the South Florida Poetry Institute. In 1986 he self-published Shadow Words. In the 1990s he edited Paradise, a collection of Florida poetry; in 1996 twenty poems of the Battle at the Little Big Horn appeared in a Custer fan-zine, and in 2012 the Coral Springs Museum of Art distributed a collection, from My Mother’s Scrapbook Voices from the Greasy Grass as part of their Chautauqua Series. In 2015, The Angela Thirkell Society of North America published Angela Thirkell’s Birds. For over 10 years the Voyage on the USS Terror has haunted him as an unfinished novel. See Childrey's poem "Seeking Papa in Cuba" in our poetry section.
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Patricia Carragon Photography
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PATRICIA CARRAGON'S recent poetry publications include The Avocet, Bear Creek Haiku, Clockwise Cat, First Literary Review-East, Panoply, poeticdiversity, The Yellow Chair Review, among others. She is the author of Journey to the Center of My Mind (Rogue Scholars Press, 2005) and Urban Haiku and More (Fierce Grace Press, 2010). Her two forthcoming chapbooks are Innocence (Finishing Line Press) and Cupcake Chronicles (Poets Wear Prada). Patricia hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She’s an executive Editor for Home Planet News Online.
Left: Birdwalk on Pineapple Street; Below Left: Senryu Exit; Right: Waiting |
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Bill Wolak Collage
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Above: The Prolonged Delirium of Exile; Vertical Left 1: Any Quick Glance That Revives Desire; Vertical Left 2: Biting the Fire; Vertical Left 3: Keeping a Little Light for Tomorrow; Vertical Left 4: Lips Urging You Deeper
BILL WOLAK is a poet who lives in New Jersey and teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University. He has just published his thirteenth collection of poetry entitled Love Opens the Hands: New and Selected Love Poems with Nirala Press POETRY AND COLLAGE Collage undresses the darkness with a mirror’s secret undertow. It’s a dance done on burning kites while dreaming at the speed of light. Expectant as nakedness, collage is a door that surfaces in the shipwreck of your sleep. It’s a caress with the irresistible softness of a slipknot in a velvet blindfold. At its best, like poetry, collage is a moan just beyond delirium. I make collages out of all kinds of materials. Most are made out of paper engravings. Many collages are digitally generated or enhanced. Most are black and white, but some are in color. My involvement with collage begins back in 1975, when I was studying Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. I was fortunate enough to have met and taken classes with Nathanel Tarn, who had spent a few surrealist years in Paris and who knew the major players, including André Breton. Tarn encouraged me to write to his English friend John Digby, who was a Surrealist poet and a collage artist. I corresponded with Digby for several years, and at some point, he invited me to visit with him in England. John introduced me to many English and French Surrealists. More importantly, John introduced me to his style of collage making. He cut up old books in which he found the engravings that he loved. He bought old books everywhere and made collages out of whatever he found. John has gone on to write a book about making collages entitled The Collage Handbook, Thames & Hudson, 1985, and you can see him on Youtube explaining his method of collage here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtca7QPIwJw> John Digby was my mentor in both surrealist poetry and collage. Our friendship has lasted over forty years. We still work together, producing books. Along with his wife, the poet Joan Digby, John has established the Feral Press, where he publishes many exquisite, hand-crafted books in limited editions. I am proud to say that John has provided the collages for nine of my books published by Feral Press. So, as you can see, collage and poetry have never been completely distinct categories for me. Rather, I view them as complementary endeavors. John Digby did the cover and collages for my first book of poetry Pale As an Explosion in 1978. After that, I did some collage work in my surrealist magazine Dream Helmet in 1979. Much later, I illustrated with my own collages my first larger collection of poetry Archeology of Light published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2011. Since then, I’ve published collages in many magazines. To date, every book that I have published has contained artwork of some kind, usually collage. |
November 2016
Acrylics by Gorden Kegya
GORDEN KEGYA’S figurative paintings portray colorful incisions. He is deeply inspired by the emotions, thoughts, movement and endurance of people in Africa.
Kegya's works are mostly based on the poetics and Westeranization of Africa. He majored in painting and sculpture (Bachelor of Arts in Art Education) at the University of Education, Winneba, Nigeria, where he experimented in digital media.
GORDEN KEGYA’S figurative paintings portray colorful incisions. He is deeply inspired by the emotions, thoughts, movement and endurance of people in Africa.
Kegya's works are mostly based on the poetics and Westeranization of Africa. He majored in painting and sculpture (Bachelor of Arts in Art Education) at the University of Education, Winneba, Nigeria, where he experimented in digital media.
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Photography by Francine Witte
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FRANCINE WITTE is author of the chapbooks Only, Not Only (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and First Rain (Pecan Grove Press, 2009), winner of the Pecan Grove Press competition, and the flash fiction chapbooks Cold June (Ropewalk Press), selected by Robert Olen Butler as the winner of the 2010 Thomas A. Wilhelmus Award, and The Wind Twirls Everything (MuscleHead Press). Her latest poetry chapbook, Not All Fires Burn the Same won the Slipstream chapbook contest. Her poem ”My Dead Florida Mother Meets Gandhi” is the first prize winner of the 2015 Slippery Elm poetry award. She has been nominated seven times for a Pushcart Prize in poetry and once for fiction. An avid iphoneographer, Witte is a former English teacher. She lives in New York.
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Acrylics by Steven Tutino
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STEVEN TUTINO is currently an undergraduate at Concordia University in Honours English Literature with an additional major in Theology. His poetry has appeared in Concordia University’s Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, The Paragon Journal and Halcyon Days. His artwork has appeared in Word in the World, The Paragon Journal, The Minetta Review, Beautiful Minds Magazine, GFT Press: Ground Fresh Thursday, Michael Jacobson's The New-Post Literate, The Omnicult, November Bees Journal of Art and Literature and is set to appear in The Round Up and The Hour After Happy Hour Review. He resides in Montreal, Quebec.
The significance of these paintings lies in their non-figurative emotional representation. I love colour and feeling the texture of the paint against the blade of the palette sweeping across the canvas and almost slicing through another colour, all the while carrying a figment of that colour along with it. This is how life is born in painting, when we see traces of a colour in another and the way the colours and the way they are physically impressed and differentiated come to represent the velocity of our everyday existence, that stream of consciousness, the dangers of art and so on...But to go back to my first point, I only realise after I complete the painting or when I'm close to completing the painting that an emotion is present through eyes and a mouth in square or rectangular form. This is the case for all the paintings here except for One Love United. It's like I was able to stamp my emotional state, my very soul into the painting then and that is why I firmly believe that art begins in nothingness and arrives or aims at least, towards spirit.
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August 2016
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Photography by Cara Nusinov CARA NUSINOV is a collage artist, poet, teacher, leisure photographer, Co-Director of the Poetry Buffet Party, a Poetry Therapy Practitioner, Laughter Yoga Leader Certified, and has read poetry on NPR, and at other venues. She originated the traveling Polka Dot Poetry Peacock sculpture anthology, and conducts The Writer Within Me Salons, where she prompts new and seasoned writers to write all about it, as she peddles poetry. She is the author of Unrequited Loves and Other French Kisses. She is the mother of two. Contact her on Facebook and she will be happy to “talk” to you. Top left: "Bird Cage"; Top Right: "Tillandsia", Left: "Dinner" |
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Photography by George Wallace
SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE OF BLISS These photos were taken on the back roads of Wyoming County, NY in the Genesee Valley between the Fingerlakes and Lake Erie. I was looking for images that bring out the scenic combination of land and sky experienced by the Seneca who lived there, and more recent agricultural land use by European settlers, who supplanted them. All the photos were all taken along routes 39 and 362. Included is an old crossroads store in Eagle, a small barn with elevator, and a freshwater wetland with a Golgotha-like triad of windpower turbines in the distance. The photos were taken with an android phone and standard editing functions -- cropping, color manipulation, brightness, focus and high definition -- applied. |
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Watercolor & Pen Illustrations
by Krista Graham KRISTA C. GRAHAM was born in Lexington, Kentucky 1988 and raised in the small rural town of Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Ever since childhood she’s had strong ambitions to be an artist. She attended Eastern Kentucky University and graduated with a BA in Art. Now working as an artist, she uses and experiments with many different mediums, but mostly works with watercolor and pen illustration. Her work can be found in EKU's Aurora Literary Arts Journal 2012, Artemis Journal 2014, the cover art for author friend, Shaun Turner's chapbook, The Lawless River 2016. Foliate Oak April 2016, and Artemis Journal May 2016. Top Left: "Gun", Right: "Jellyfish", Right Center: "Orca" Right Bottom: "Sound" |
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Top Left: "Transom", Top Right: "Skir", Bottom Left: "Entropical", Bottom Right: "Diabloesque"
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Photography by Phillip Kobylarz
PHILIP KOBYLARZ is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and essays. He has worked as a journalist and film critic for newspapers in Memphis, TN. His work appears in such publications as Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. He is the author of a book of poems concerning life in the south of France and a short story collection titled Now Leaving Nowheresville.
These photos were taken from the San Mateo bridge in the east bay of San Francisco.
PHILIP KOBYLARZ is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and essays. He has worked as a journalist and film critic for newspapers in Memphis, TN. His work appears in such publications as Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. He is the author of a book of poems concerning life in the south of France and a short story collection titled Now Leaving Nowheresville.
These photos were taken from the San Mateo bridge in the east bay of San Francisco.
Photography by Jim Lewis
JIM LEWIS is a poet, musician, nurse practitioner, and amateur photographer. His poetry and music reflect the difficulty and joy of human interactions, drawing inspiration from life experiences as well as imagination. When he is not writing, composing, or diagnosing, he loves going out on his kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California.
Top Left: "Written in Stone", Bottom Left: "4Footbridge", Bottom Right: "Seattle Skyline"
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MAY 2016
Sedona
Ruins
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Photographs by
MICHAEL MINASSIAN is a long-time South Florida resident who now lives in San Antonio, Texas. His short stories, poems, and photographs have appeared recently in such journals as American Literary Review, The Broken Plate, Convergence, Exit 7, Evening Street Review, and Fifth Wednesday. He is also the writer/producer of the pod cast series Eye On Literature available on I-tunes. Amsterdam Press published a chapbook of poems entitled The Arboriculturist in 2010. |
Around The Bend
Lucy 
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Acrylics by David Chorlton
Pepper Plant, Acrylic on canvas 24X18 inches
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DAVID CHORLTON once traveled extensively around Europe with his watercolors, and after moving to Phoenix in 1978 continued to paint in that medium although mostly indoors and working from memory. He had several exhibitions, including a solo show at Chandler Center for the Arts and others including galleries in Tucson, Boise, Dallas and Phoenix. Since the turn of the millennium he has spent his creative time primarily on writing, though he occasionally paints in acrylics.
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Apples at a Southwestern Window, Acrylic on Canvas, 30X40 inches Below Still Life with Snow, Acrylic on Canvas, 24X30 inches; |
Photographs by Jaqueline Bishop
The Gymnast & Other Positions is Jacqueline Bishop’s most recent book. She is also the author of the novel,
The River’s Song; and two collections of poems, Fauna and Snapshots from Istanbul. Her non-fiction books are My Mother Who Is Me: Life Stories from Jamaican Women in New York and Writers Who Paint/Painters Who Write: Three Jamaican Artists. An accomplished visual artist with exhibitions in Belgium, Morocco, USA and Italy, Ms. Bishop was a 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellow to Morocco; the 2009-2010 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow; and is a full time Master Teacher in the Liberal Studies Program at New York University. 
Facing Africa
At the center of this body of work is the issue of perception --- How do we see? What do we see? Who is seeing what? Can what we see be constructed? In a sense this work is all about the issue of translation. I was lucky enough between 2008-2009 to be granted a Fulbright award and to spend the year in Morocco, North Africa, where I had the chance to not only travel all over Morocco, but also to Cairo, Egypt. Both in Egypt and in Morocco I would be confronted with the specter of sub-Saharan African immigrants, who had fled their countries for all sorts of reasons and were begging in the streets of Morocco and Egypt. Following my time in Morocco I remained fascinated with the region of sub-Saharan Africa, and this fascination manifested in my taking a series of graduate courses on the region. As I sat in my classes, however, I became uncomfortably aware that many of us who were talking about Africa, spoke of the continent in terms of it being a “problem”, this, despite the fact that most of us had not travelled in the region. I started to think that we were projecting all sorts of stories and fantasies and mythologies on “Africa” and “Africans” and it was in this moment that the abstract photos in the “Facing Africa” series were born. What these classes taught me was that Africa was a puzzle that we could not translate. 
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The photos in “Facing Africa” are black and white to dramatize the stark terms in which the continent is often spoken of. But these stark black and white photographs also function as a puzzle interrupting the idea of “Africa” and “Africans” being a monolith; each country on the continent is given back its particularity. All the images in the series are black and white yet all the images are very different. The photographs have been printed on high gloss paper so that whoever comes close to look at the image will have a darkened shadow of themselves reflected in these images. Consequently the viewer becomes part of the characters participating in the construction of this constructed image. In addition, the images are very black, as Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa is often projected as the “Dark Continent.” Yet, despite this darkness, this “absence of light” that is blackness, one still manages to see reflections, though these reflections are often distorted in many of the ways that I see “Africa” being conflated and distorted, so that oftentimes one is forced to say over and over again that Africa is a continent and not a country.
My thinking then in doing these photographs is to call in question how individuals “frame” and “see” and “translate”. What is it that we “see” when we look at an image? How much of what we “see” is really our own selves reflected back to us? And, finally, can we use words, in the absence of “images”, to make others “see” and “translate” as well. ----Jacqueline Bishop |
Acrylics by Scott Neimi
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Poinciana View, oil on canvas, 30" x 40".
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Bridge of Flowers, oil oncanvas, 30" x 40" (private collection).
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Snowy Egret and Strangler Fig, oil on canvas, 40" x 30"
SCOTT NIEMI was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He completed his formal education at Florida Atlantic University where he earned a M.F.A. in Visual Art, focusing on painting and drawing. Currently, he is an associate professor of Design at Becker College (Worcester, MA), where he has taught in the Design program since 2005. In the past he has worked for Florida Atlantic University as an adjunct art professor, as a part-time lecturer at Franklin Pierce University, and and for the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art.
Scott has participated in many shows both on the national as well as the local level. His work can be seen, among others, in the corporate collections of the Oak Brook Bank (Oak Brook, IL), the Essex Inn (downtown Chicago), the Schacknow Museum of Fine Arts (Plantation, FL), UMass Ambulatory Center (Worcester, MA) and Clinton Hospital (Clinton, MA). He has work in hundreds of private collections, ranging from Beverly Hills to Australia.
In addition to The School Street Art Studios (Gardner, MA) where he maintains an active studio, Scott’s artwork may be found at The Boulder Art Gallery (Fitchburg, MA) and at Collins Artworks (Clinton, MA). He resides in southwestern NH.
For more information, contact him at [email protected]
Scott has participated in many shows both on the national as well as the local level. His work can be seen, among others, in the corporate collections of the Oak Brook Bank (Oak Brook, IL), the Essex Inn (downtown Chicago), the Schacknow Museum of Fine Arts (Plantation, FL), UMass Ambulatory Center (Worcester, MA) and Clinton Hospital (Clinton, MA). He has work in hundreds of private collections, ranging from Beverly Hills to Australia.
In addition to The School Street Art Studios (Gardner, MA) where he maintains an active studio, Scott’s artwork may be found at The Boulder Art Gallery (Fitchburg, MA) and at Collins Artworks (Clinton, MA). He resides in southwestern NH.
For more information, contact him at [email protected]