Kristine Snodgrass, Visual Arts Editor
To have your visual art considered for a future issue please contact [email protected]
Nov 2025 - Karla Van Vliet
Artist Statement: Karla Van Vliet
Expression is like a bird flapping around inside me. Painting, asemics, and poetry are how I let that bird out to fly into the world. Or at least fly out of me onto the page.
My most recent work comes from an exploration of texture and color, using natural pigments; earth green, earth red, and indigo. These are dry pigments mixed with an acrylic medium. I paint on watercolor paper which I mount onto a cradle board then seal with a varnish so the pieces don’t have to be set under glass. I cut the paper field I work on with thin lines or angled lines. This gives me a horizon, a bank, the line between sky and water. water and land, or simply a line between inner and outer self.
This is an extension of work that started with ink on paper, and my exploration with asemic writing. Asemic writing is, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts states, “a wordless semantic form that often has the appearance of abstract calligraphy. It allows writers to present visual narratives that move beyond language and are open to interpretation, relying on the viewer for context and meaning.”
Asemic writing for me is the gesture of writing, a way of expressing what has not yet found voice in word but needs speaking. It keeps my hand in the practice of writing. Engaging in asemics is a radical act, that of not being silenced in this time where I am often at a loss for words. It is a place I can express my internal experience in that transitory realm between image and defined language.
With all the chaos in the world I like to create a calm place to rest the eyes. My intent is to create a sense of stillness, a place where feeling can open and be experienced. The pieces can be seen as ancient text, discovered, and waiting to be translated by the viewer. My hope is that the viewer slows down, quiets themselves, and let their translation rise up within them.
Bio:
*Karla Van Vliet is an artist, writer, and co-director of Anhinga Press. Her most recent publications are Bone Scribedand Wildwood Devotions, both collections of poetry and asemics (Shanti Arts.) She is also the author of She Speaks in Tongues (Anhinga Press,) a collection of poems and asemic writings, and Fluency: A Collection of Asemic Writings (Shanti Arts) as well as others. Her poems, asemics, and artwork, have appeared world-wide. Karla is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal, and the founder of Van Vliet Gallery, an online gallery which showcases art and asemcis from around the world. For more information about her visit vanvlietarts.com.
Expression is like a bird flapping around inside me. Painting, asemics, and poetry are how I let that bird out to fly into the world. Or at least fly out of me onto the page.
My most recent work comes from an exploration of texture and color, using natural pigments; earth green, earth red, and indigo. These are dry pigments mixed with an acrylic medium. I paint on watercolor paper which I mount onto a cradle board then seal with a varnish so the pieces don’t have to be set under glass. I cut the paper field I work on with thin lines or angled lines. This gives me a horizon, a bank, the line between sky and water. water and land, or simply a line between inner and outer self.
This is an extension of work that started with ink on paper, and my exploration with asemic writing. Asemic writing is, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts states, “a wordless semantic form that often has the appearance of abstract calligraphy. It allows writers to present visual narratives that move beyond language and are open to interpretation, relying on the viewer for context and meaning.”
Asemic writing for me is the gesture of writing, a way of expressing what has not yet found voice in word but needs speaking. It keeps my hand in the practice of writing. Engaging in asemics is a radical act, that of not being silenced in this time where I am often at a loss for words. It is a place I can express my internal experience in that transitory realm between image and defined language.
With all the chaos in the world I like to create a calm place to rest the eyes. My intent is to create a sense of stillness, a place where feeling can open and be experienced. The pieces can be seen as ancient text, discovered, and waiting to be translated by the viewer. My hope is that the viewer slows down, quiets themselves, and let their translation rise up within them.
Bio:
*Karla Van Vliet is an artist, writer, and co-director of Anhinga Press. Her most recent publications are Bone Scribedand Wildwood Devotions, both collections of poetry and asemics (Shanti Arts.) She is also the author of She Speaks in Tongues (Anhinga Press,) a collection of poems and asemic writings, and Fluency: A Collection of Asemic Writings (Shanti Arts) as well as others. Her poems, asemics, and artwork, have appeared world-wide. Karla is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal, and the founder of Van Vliet Gallery, an online gallery which showcases art and asemcis from around the world. For more information about her visit vanvlietarts.com.
Aug 2025 - Grant Guy
ARTIST STATEMENT: Grant Guy
My current obsession is NO!theatre. There is a correspondence of NO!theatre to Allan Kaprow’s un-art. The goal is to remove the theatre of everyday and the theatre of the ”doer” from all the trappings and luggage of conventional theatre.
NO!theatre sees all and incorporates all without being beholding to an artistic ideology. It uses conceptual art, words, Fluxus, DADA, visual poetry, performance art/Happenings, un-art/theatre and, paraphrasing Larry Miller, the universe as material.
My current obsession is NO!theatre. There is a correspondence of NO!theatre to Allan Kaprow’s un-art. The goal is to remove the theatre of everyday and the theatre of the ”doer” from all the trappings and luggage of conventional theatre.
NO!theatre sees all and incorporates all without being beholding to an artistic ideology. It uses conceptual art, words, Fluxus, DADA, visual poetry, performance art/Happenings, un-art/theatre and, paraphrasing Larry Miller, the universe as material.
Grant Guy is currently the artistic director of the Circus of Objects, a pseudo-cabaret theatre. He earlier steered SHARED STAGE also a pseudo cabaret. He was the artistic director for 16 years the object/puppet based theatre company ADHERE+DENY.
He has performed in several cities in Canada and in Dayton, Ohio, and New York City in the States. He has exhibited in France, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and in the United States. His poetry and visual poetry has been published in hardcopy and online nationally and internationally. This coming October, Guy will be performing at the Live Art Festival in Wuhan, China.
He has been the recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s Award of Distinction, the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Difference, two Major Arts grants and several smaller grants.
May 2025 - Damm, Hamilton, & Shankar
Paula Damm
Paula Damm’s work is deeply personal, with autobiographical narratives intricately woven into fiber and paper. Her creations explore memory, identity, and human connections through tactile and timeless mediums. With each piece, Paula invites viewers into a space of introspection, exploring themes of resilience and the universal search for meaning.
Artist Paula Damm has forever had fiber in her fingers. She is intrigued how making marks with paint, paper, needle and/or thread can be both art and poetry, contemplative and dangerous (think needles piercing flesh), and a way to envelop revered objects, thoughts and words.
Meg Hamilton
artist statement:
"asemic writing is the language of my inner most heart.
i cannot separate its curves and sweeps, its lifts and falls, from the natural world that surrounds me. it allows me to give voice to the words that dwell within the pockets of silence and quietude that i carry inside of me: the wellspring of art.
asemic writing is quiet and patient. it has a melody and hums happily when i paint.
deeply inspired by nature since early childhood, my watercolor paintings also give voice and witness to the beautiful world that surrounds us all. the paintings and the asemic writings dovetail into each other, allowing the painting to become one thing. abstraction is the means, and beauty is the intent.
as a self-taught artist, it has taken my lifetime to come to this place of contentment with my art. my hope is that you will find happiness and peace in viewing it."
"asemic writing is the language of my inner most heart.
i cannot separate its curves and sweeps, its lifts and falls, from the natural world that surrounds me. it allows me to give voice to the words that dwell within the pockets of silence and quietude that i carry inside of me: the wellspring of art.
asemic writing is quiet and patient. it has a melody and hums happily when i paint.
deeply inspired by nature since early childhood, my watercolor paintings also give voice and witness to the beautiful world that surrounds us all. the paintings and the asemic writings dovetail into each other, allowing the painting to become one thing. abstraction is the means, and beauty is the intent.
as a self-taught artist, it has taken my lifetime to come to this place of contentment with my art. my hope is that you will find happiness and peace in viewing it."
meg hamilton is a self-taught artist, working quietly in her 210-year-old log home in west virginia. growing up beside the hudson river in new york, she was deeply inspired by nature, and this appreciation and love have guided her work to this day. also, since the earliest days of her childhood, she began creating and writing her “secret languages”, spending hours filling pages with her imaginary script.
now in her seventies, she finds the asemic heart and mind of her youth have remained true companions.
meg currently sells her work in two galleries near her home and has been featured in two successful gallery shows. she also had the great honor of being a featured artist in the Van Vliet Gallery in 2024. the virtual show was entitled “Elysian Avenue”.
now in her seventies, she finds the asemic heart and mind of her youth have remained true companions.
meg currently sells her work in two galleries near her home and has been featured in two successful gallery shows. she also had the great honor of being a featured artist in the Van Vliet Gallery in 2024. the virtual show was entitled “Elysian Avenue”.
Shloka Shankar
Artist’s statement:
"I enjoy creating visual poems that often combine abstract painting, digital collage elements, and found text. Four of the pieces in my submission are part of a digital postcard series, each beginning with a three-stroke painting in black, white, and grey. Layered on top are additional collage elements, completed with found text—either selected at random or erased from specific pages."
"I enjoy creating visual poems that often combine abstract painting, digital collage elements, and found text. Four of the pieces in my submission are part of a digital postcard series, each beginning with a three-stroke painting in black, white, and grey. Layered on top are additional collage elements, completed with found text—either selected at random or erased from specific pages."
Titles & Sources:
apprehend (v.) - Found text culled from If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino.
phalanx (n.) - Found text culled from p. 25 of The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.
setting (n.) - Found text culled from If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino.
apprehend (v.) - Found text culled from If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino.
phalanx (n.) - Found text culled from p. 25 of The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.
setting (n.) - Found text culled from If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino.
Shloka Shankar is a poet, editor, and visual artist from Bangalore, India. A Best of the Net nominee and award-winning haiku poet, Shloka is the Founding Editor of Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press. She is the author of the haiku collection The Field of Why (Yavanika Press, 2022) and co-author of the haiga anthology, living in the pause (Yavanika Press, 2024). Website: www.shlokashankar.com | Instagram: @shloks23
Genre: Visual poetry/Digital collages/Blackout poetry
Genre: Visual poetry/Digital collages/Blackout poetry
February 2025
Tommasina Bianca Squadrito
Tommasina Bianca Squadrito
Statement
-- I dedicate myself to a Calligraphy without writing following undisciplined and, often, contracting traces. Stati a Luogo, Monitulipare, Deliri in Monitulipare, Sia Rbaria Achidi are some of the latest places that have emerged starting from an embryonic writing that withdraws. I like interconnections, I study them continuously. What there is between things, between thoughts, between bodies fascinates me and it is a language that I am studying in depth.
https://officinapatosq.blogspot.com/
Bio
--- In recent years I have focused on walking and breathing and dedicated two loose Endecasyllables to Maria Zambrano and Simone Weil, exhibited at Printmaking Vercelli in 2024. Deliri in Monitulipare, 2023, Palermo, performance with Eva Geraci, flutes and Gandolfo Pagano, guitar, my video, sheets and voice.
Among the latest contributions: Waave (WAAVe Global Gallery Women Asemic Artists and Visual Poets), Ponte Bianco, Brave new world, The new post literate, Usanga 7, Slova 15, Zoomoozophone revew 8, Asemic Issue 15, Die leere Mitte 12, Gammm 2010, Forfest 2009 2011, 2014, Q/Arto – UVUO Almanach 2006.
Some installations and performances: 2019 Camico - A wild language, the related video and the worked sheets were proposed, with a stage set-up, Eva Geraci on flute, Giovanna Cossu, Sabina De Pasquale, actresses at Nuvole - art meetings, Palermo. Beside, installation of asemic sheets and performance with Eva Geraci, flute Valdese Church of Palermo, 2018. Nuvole. Casa, India Theatre Rome. The Candelai Space Palermo, Fire Theatre Foggia, Miela Theatre Trieste, 2007.
Some solo exhibition 2019 Here, here, there, there. Notes from out place Zona Franca Palermo. 2011 Retrospective and Maria Zambrano station video Artus Gallery Kromeriz Czechland, 2010 Woods Art Studio Ginestrelle Assisi. I like remember the collective: 2011 Living Spaces by Galerie G Olomouc Czechland and Modo, Udine, Starkmacher, Mannheim Germany 2004; Mesto pro Cloveka -A town for the humanity 2003; Living between - Interaction man-house-cosmos Scientific Committee and logo for European Project Palermo - Madrid – Porto.
-- I dedicate myself to a Calligraphy without writing following undisciplined and, often, contracting traces. Stati a Luogo, Monitulipare, Deliri in Monitulipare, Sia Rbaria Achidi are some of the latest places that have emerged starting from an embryonic writing that withdraws. I like interconnections, I study them continuously. What there is between things, between thoughts, between bodies fascinates me and it is a language that I am studying in depth.
https://officinapatosq.blogspot.com/
Bio
--- In recent years I have focused on walking and breathing and dedicated two loose Endecasyllables to Maria Zambrano and Simone Weil, exhibited at Printmaking Vercelli in 2024. Deliri in Monitulipare, 2023, Palermo, performance with Eva Geraci, flutes and Gandolfo Pagano, guitar, my video, sheets and voice.
Among the latest contributions: Waave (WAAVe Global Gallery Women Asemic Artists and Visual Poets), Ponte Bianco, Brave new world, The new post literate, Usanga 7, Slova 15, Zoomoozophone revew 8, Asemic Issue 15, Die leere Mitte 12, Gammm 2010, Forfest 2009 2011, 2014, Q/Arto – UVUO Almanach 2006.
Some installations and performances: 2019 Camico - A wild language, the related video and the worked sheets were proposed, with a stage set-up, Eva Geraci on flute, Giovanna Cossu, Sabina De Pasquale, actresses at Nuvole - art meetings, Palermo. Beside, installation of asemic sheets and performance with Eva Geraci, flute Valdese Church of Palermo, 2018. Nuvole. Casa, India Theatre Rome. The Candelai Space Palermo, Fire Theatre Foggia, Miela Theatre Trieste, 2007.
Some solo exhibition 2019 Here, here, there, there. Notes from out place Zona Franca Palermo. 2011 Retrospective and Maria Zambrano station video Artus Gallery Kromeriz Czechland, 2010 Woods Art Studio Ginestrelle Assisi. I like remember the collective: 2011 Living Spaces by Galerie G Olomouc Czechland and Modo, Udine, Starkmacher, Mannheim Germany 2004; Mesto pro Cloveka -A town for the humanity 2003; Living between - Interaction man-house-cosmos Scientific Committee and logo for European Project Palermo - Madrid – Porto.
November 2024
John R McConnochie - Asemic Comics
John R McConnochie - Asemic Comics
John McConnochie Artist Statement and Bio
“It’s all an experiment. It’s all process, flow. I push boundaries, as many of my peers do, drawn across a variety of works. I drift into purely textual experiments, but often in the becoming there are radical changes, chance collisions, encounters and the pieces evolve with a life of their own through the various paradigms of asemic, concrete and visual poetry. The images, a reflection of zeitgeist, a diary of visual language, sometimes direct sometimes obscure, reflecting various modes and times of creation. Like inhabited places, they have passed, while we continue in flow.
“It’s all an experiment. It’s all process, flow. I push boundaries, as many of my peers do, drawn across a variety of works. I drift into purely textual experiments, but often in the becoming there are radical changes, chance collisions, encounters and the pieces evolve with a life of their own through the various paradigms of asemic, concrete and visual poetry. The images, a reflection of zeitgeist, a diary of visual language, sometimes direct sometimes obscure, reflecting various modes and times of creation. Like inhabited places, they have passed, while we continue in flow.
August 2024
Jeanne Ranney Ranz
To me asemics represents ambiguity in the meaning of words, ideas and emotions, ….like peeling the layers of an onion of understanding, but never knowing the meanings beneath. These abstract meanings are expressed through technique…..mark making, smudges, erasures, stamping, collage and the overlapping of all these elements together. Color is often not essential, pure markings and design evoking a pleasing reaction.
Jeanne Ranney Ranz
Jeanne Ranney Ranz
May 2024
Amy Rodriguez, Karla Van Vliet, Maria Damon
Amy Rodriguez, Karla Van Vliet, Maria Damon
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Introduction
Glitchy Womyn Anthology 2022-2023 A glitch is typically considered an error, a mistake. This anthology explores how glitch can be used to guide an aesthetic, to process a thing, to make change. The women in this book demonstrate how they interpret and play with glitch in their works. The works are varied and surprising: textile to skin, ecology, collage to digital alteration. For me, a connection is unearthed here. As women, we are most familiar with concepts of error and mistake. The parameters applied to our gender performance and being have ultimately resulted in perceived error, and those mistakes have been scrutinized for years. What error did we create today? How have we been judged and even persecuted by error? What interests me is how those challenges are turned into creation. In this book, women reimagine what it is to be an error. We are empowered by art, craft even. I will always maintain the glitch is a building up. Here you will see themes of ecology, women’s bodies, faces, skin, but the work here is not just about earthly bodies. It is a pastoral of color, texture, composition, and fire. The energy in the works represented in this anthology is undeniable. I invite you to be a viewer in collaboration with this book, however that looks to you. Kristine Snodgrass Tallahassee, FL 10/12/2023 |
February 2024
Andrew C. Wenaus & Kenji Siratori
Andrew C. Wenaus & Kenji Siratori
Note on the book:
LIBRETTO LUNAVERSITOL is a collaborative work by Andrew C. Wenaus and Kenji Siratori written in patamathematical formulae and International Phonetic Alphabet. A xenopoetic musical score and work of visual poetry that looks to the Zaum experiments of Velemir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh, the book speculates on a sudden emergence of a super-hybrid technical language autopoietically organizing itself into existence outside the experience, knowledge, or access of humans. In this sense, the book can be thought of as an extended analogue to or visualization of the ways autonomous informational processes optimize themselves in the black box of big data in ways that we cannot understand without undergoing similar emergent transformations ourselves. Steadfastly opposed to purity and essentialism the book calls for the entirety of time and space and its attendant objects, processes, and concepts to parasitize literature and poetry. From this super-hybridity will ultimately emerge the song of Zaum, the technical word as such, and quantum writing. LIBRETTO LUNAVERSITOL is forthcoming from Calamari Archive in 2024 and will be accompanied by a musical score by Wenaus and composer, soprano, and keyboardist Christina Willatt.
Bios:
ANDREW C. WENAUS is a Canadian writer, poet, visual artist, and literary theorist. He is the author of The Literature of Exclusion: Dada, Data, and the Threshold of Electronic Literature (Lexington, 2021) and Jeff Noon’s Vurt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Recent creative pieces include Declaration of the Technical Word as Such (Sweat Drenched Press, 2023) and Ω - 1 Chronotopologic Workings (Schism Press, 2023). He is the editor of the experimental writing anthology Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3 (Time Released Sound, 2023). His critical writing has appeared in James Joyce Quarterly, Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, Paradoxa, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Foundation, English Studies in Canada, Foundation, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Big Other, and Electronic Book Review. He is also a composer and, with Christina Willatt, has written, recorded, and performed electro-acoustic scores for theatre, dance, film, and contemporary classical ensemble. He teaches at the University of Western Ontario.
KENJI SIRATORI, a trailblazing Japanese cyberpunk author and multimedia artist, is renowned for his avant-garde contributions to literature. Embracing the title of a "quantum writer," Siratori delves into the fusion of human consciousness and cutting-edge technology in his works. His writings, characterized by experimental narratives and surrealistic themes, challenge conventional storytelling, propelling him into the forefront of the avant-garde literary movement. Siratori's exploration of the interface between humanity and artificial intelligence defines his distinctive position as a visionary in the realm of quantum writing.
LIBRETTO LUNAVERSITOL is a collaborative work by Andrew C. Wenaus and Kenji Siratori written in patamathematical formulae and International Phonetic Alphabet. A xenopoetic musical score and work of visual poetry that looks to the Zaum experiments of Velemir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh, the book speculates on a sudden emergence of a super-hybrid technical language autopoietically organizing itself into existence outside the experience, knowledge, or access of humans. In this sense, the book can be thought of as an extended analogue to or visualization of the ways autonomous informational processes optimize themselves in the black box of big data in ways that we cannot understand without undergoing similar emergent transformations ourselves. Steadfastly opposed to purity and essentialism the book calls for the entirety of time and space and its attendant objects, processes, and concepts to parasitize literature and poetry. From this super-hybridity will ultimately emerge the song of Zaum, the technical word as such, and quantum writing. LIBRETTO LUNAVERSITOL is forthcoming from Calamari Archive in 2024 and will be accompanied by a musical score by Wenaus and composer, soprano, and keyboardist Christina Willatt.
Bios:
ANDREW C. WENAUS is a Canadian writer, poet, visual artist, and literary theorist. He is the author of The Literature of Exclusion: Dada, Data, and the Threshold of Electronic Literature (Lexington, 2021) and Jeff Noon’s Vurt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Recent creative pieces include Declaration of the Technical Word as Such (Sweat Drenched Press, 2023) and Ω - 1 Chronotopologic Workings (Schism Press, 2023). He is the editor of the experimental writing anthology Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3 (Time Released Sound, 2023). His critical writing has appeared in James Joyce Quarterly, Extrapolation, Science Fiction Studies, Paradoxa, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Foundation, English Studies in Canada, Foundation, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Big Other, and Electronic Book Review. He is also a composer and, with Christina Willatt, has written, recorded, and performed electro-acoustic scores for theatre, dance, film, and contemporary classical ensemble. He teaches at the University of Western Ontario.
KENJI SIRATORI, a trailblazing Japanese cyberpunk author and multimedia artist, is renowned for his avant-garde contributions to literature. Embracing the title of a "quantum writer," Siratori delves into the fusion of human consciousness and cutting-edge technology in his works. His writings, characterized by experimental narratives and surrealistic themes, challenge conventional storytelling, propelling him into the forefront of the avant-garde literary movement. Siratori's exploration of the interface between humanity and artificial intelligence defines his distinctive position as a visionary in the realm of quantum writing.