Kenneth Koch’s poem “One Train May Hide Another” is a masterpiece in playing with language and getting the reader to realize hidden meanings and experiences. It closes with these lines,
“Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.”
These have been important words for me to live by in recent times but they also reflect how I feel about the art I have had the pleasure of curating for you. My intern, Amir, and I have spent hours pouring over the 288 pieces that were submitted to us—discussing the nuisance, coloring, emotional profile, and our reactions so we could craft this experience for you. We wrote down our thoughts and feelings and revisited them several times both separately and together in order to bring you the absolute best experience possible. This journal and the work that I am entrusted with is the most life giving part of my current human experience so I thank those that share with us and support us in this mission. I go to poetry for comfort and I have needed a lot of comfort in current times feeling the full weight of Max Ehrman’s line from Desiderata, “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world” over and over again and wondering why the beauty is so obscure to me when I am not “at the river”. While I am still grappling with that question I implore you to join me on the journey to pause and see what is already there and let it pass and see if something new is unveiled—in yourself, in those around you, in your surroundings, and in the art and words that you are about to commune with. I don’t believe I have ever had anyone tell me they wish they had spent less time consuming and pondering art so allow yourself all the time and space you need to fully soak in the works below.
Anna B. Jordan
Visual Art Editor
I see myself as a novice walking into the world of art for the first time. The myriad of artwork submitted challenged me to look deeper into what I am seeing. Viewing art has the power to completely grasp one’s essence and soul if one allows themselves to peer deeper beneath the surface. The artwork in this issue have a real entrancement to them. Each time I look at the art my mind is taken on a journey as if it were my first time seeing it again and I am awestruck every time. I hope viewing this issue you also experience the pull the artwork has and the incredible creativity of the artists behind them.
Amir T. Chaudhry
Visual Art Intern
The Art
Heavenward
Betsy Jenifer
Illuminated
Betsy Jenifer
Betsy is a twenty-year-old artist and writer from south India. Her work has been published in magazines like The Claremont Review, Canvas, Polyphony H.S. and After the Pause, among others.
Instagram: @betsyjenf
Casa Mexicana
Tatiana Arsénie
Tatiana Arsénie is an artist from Berlin, Germany. Her training includes techniques in printing, Byzantine art techniques, drawing and painting. Tatiana was part of numerous individual and group exhibitions,is the author of a series of projects such as which “gezeichnet.Pankow” (drawn.Pankow) and the author of two books.
Web: http://artwork-tatiana.blogspot.com/
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/artwork_tatiana_arsenie/
Apéritif
Gregory Caso
rEPUBLIC dAY
Gregory Caso
Gregory Caso is a graduate of Bucknell University with an honors degree in creative writing. He is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Hofstra University. He works primarily in prose and poetry, and his work has previously been published in Mistake House, Diodata, and Fire and Ice. He finds photography to evoke a blend of words and emotions.
light_42
Karen Fitzgerald
Some Light
Karen Fitzgerald
My sense is that we inhabit a sacred ecology. The energies that connect us, and the physical presence of energy, bind us within a vast, ever-changing roil of conscious energy. As we slowly lose our solipsistic sense of superiority within this roil, we also come to understand our place in the world differently. My work is a nod in that direction. I am submitting work from a new suite, titled What the Light Saw. This work continues my use of the tondo form – I’ve been working in the round for over 30 years. This suite also continues the use of precious metals; gilding that signifies something is sacred. What is new in this work is the use of a Venetian plaster ground, which allows for the oil paint to sit differently than it does on a plain or gilded ground.
Instagram @kbfitzgeraldart
website: https://linktr.ee/KbFitzgeraldArt
Everybody needs some kinda goddess
dave sims
A retired educator, Dave Sims makes art and music in the old mountains of central Pennsylvania. His digital art and comix appear in dozens of tangible and virtual publications, galleries and exhibitions. His fiction collection The Carcass & Other Stories is now available from Raw Art Review/Uncollected Press and 21, a wild folding map chapbook, from the A3 Press and Review. Experience more at www.tincansims.com
Instagram: @tincansims
Embody #1
Jillian Ellis
embody #12
Jillian Ellis
The photo series "Embody" uses self-portraiture to explore the relationship between the body and the inner pain that comes from living with a mental illness. Using simple backgrounds and lighting, I photographed the shapes and gestures that allow my body to express the feelings for which I have no words, purposefully omitting the face. I spent years of my life trying to hide from my depression and anxiety, stifling the dark emotions that were screaming to get out. However, when I have these deep feelings that make no logical sense, that I can’t put into words, they manifest in other ways. Why do I want to twist and grab at my own body? Why do I want to feel my own fingernails digging into my skin? And how does it feel to try to escape that darkness and continue to live every day? While the stigma of mental illness has lessened in recent years, many of us still feel compelled to deny our struggles, to show the world a happy face. Our brains have a unique ability to conceal and even ignore our deepest emotions. But whatever we have inside us, whatever feelings we are hiding from--our bodies know the truth.
Website: jillianjellis.com
Instagram: @jillianjellisart (https://www.instagram.com/jillianjellisart/)
lockdown
jan price
If you are a rose, I will smell you and run my fingertips over your silken skin. If you are yellow I will use you sparingly because I really love frost blue and sad emotions. If you are human I will stand back and wait until you let me capture you, even though you will look back at me from the canvas knowing you have not given your essence. I will run away into my pine forest and tell the blue wren and rushing water in the creek how selfish you are. They will tweet and babble, Don’t go back! Don’t go back! But I do! And you know I will don’t you! Over and over I will paint you until are YOU !
arbol de papel
Sarah Simon
Sarah is a New Yorker at soul, teaching English and studying film in Uruguay. She published her first book, "core collection: poems about eating disorders" with Adelaide Books in 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Core-Collection-Poems-Sarah-Simon/dp/1950437507 https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19663814.Sarah_E_Simon Instagram, @ssimon8; Twitter, @smileformebabyg.
three part harmony
robin becic
Currently my work in watercolor explores the elements of the natural world around us. The paintings begin with seemingly random applications of colors. Once the initial layer is dry, I look at the resulting shapes and relationships that happened from the blend of the colors. I enjoy these initial starts to my work because they have an excitement and tension between their unrelated elements. This random relationship is the ground and structure used in a drawing/design. This approach to painting gives me permission to use process to develop an idea. In letting go of pictorial logic and premeditated color, I have found freedom in developing my compositions and subject matter with a boldness in color choices. I intentionally move away from local color. My paintings, much like the world in nature, ask the viewer to make sense and order out of what we think we see. The use of several photos to compile a composition allows me to leave real subject matter, and to combine ideas found in the mix of images. Who am I as an artist in the world? I paint to contemplate, I play tennis to compete, and I am a birdwatcher waiting for a moment of surprise.
bridge between
melissa wang
I am a self-taught artist, inspired by nature, human vulnerability and global issues. I taught literature as a PhD candidate at UC Davis before segueing into tech. Since 2017, I have participated in group shows and my artwork can be found throughout the US. Currently, I am a studio artist at Root Division in SF.
instagram: instagram.com/ms_esoterica and my website: www.melissawangart.com.
reach
keith nunes
The image was taken while house-sitting in the North Island of New Zealand. I enjoy the aftermath of the photo-taking when I use filters and cropping to create something I didn't see when I first looked.
at the gorge
Richard Lingo
walls closing in
richard Lingo
Photographer is a retired educator who has found his passion in photography. He now travels around one-third of the year in pursuit of just the right shot.
shadowtime two
judith spiegel
Image is digitally manipulated photograph with rendering “by hand.” The work is a recent abstractions of a series of photographs of shadows that I took, masked and gloved against the virus, while walking around my neighborhood.
greenfloral
christy lorio
Christy Lorio is an MFA Creative Writing candidate at The University of New Orleans. Her photography has been published or is forthcoming in Seafoam Magazine. Bad Pony, Gravel and Antigravity Magazine. Catch her on Twitter and Instagram at @christylorio.
2624
ashton alexander
Growing up in the city of Chicago taught me many things, one of them was to love the people around me. As I became enamored with photography in my early twenties I was quick to gravitate towards portrait photography. That dissipated over time as my love for seeing people in their most vulnerable state (when nobody is watching) and making those moments as beautiful as possible became my drug of choice.
chaises
dave petraglia
A Best Small Fictions 2015 Winner, Dave Petraglia's writing and art has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, bohemianizm, Cheap Pop, Crab Fat, Crack the Spine, Five:2:One, Gambling the Aisle, Gravel, Hayden's Ferry Review, matchbook, Medium, McSweeney's, Mojave River Review, Necessary Fiction, North American Review, Per Contra, Points in Case, Prairie Schooner, Popular Science, Razed, SmokeLong Quarterly, Up the Staircase, and others. His blog is at www.davepetraglia.com
rose chaos
carmen germain
Carmen Germain is the author of These Things I Will Take with Me (Cherry Grove) and The Old Refusals (MoonPath Press). She divides her time among painting, drawing, and writing. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Natural Bridge, and Fifth Wednesday Journal, among other publications.
c for carlotta
bette ridgeway
Bette Ridgeway is best known for her large-scale, luminous poured canvases that push the boundaries of light, color and design. Her youth spent in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and her extensive global travel filled have informed her colorful palette. For the past two decades, the high desert light of Santa Fe, NM has fueled Ridgeway’s art practice. Her three decades of mentorship by the acclaimed Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins set her on her lifetime journey of non-objective painting on large canvas. She explores the interrelation and change of color in various conditions and on a variety of surfaces. Her artistic foundations in line drawing, watercolor, graphic design, and oils gave way to acrylics, which she found to be more versatile for her layering technique. Ridgeway has spent the last 30 years developing her signature technique, called “layering light,” in which she uses many layers of thin, transparent acrylics on linen and canvas to produce a fluidity and viscosity similar to traditional watercolor. Delving further, Ridgeway expanded her work into 3D, joining paint and resin to aluminum and steel with sculptures of minimal towers. Ridgeway depicts movement in her work, sometimes kinetic and full of emotion, sometimes bold and masterful, sometimes languid and tentative. She sees herself as the channel, the work coming it comes through her but it is not hers. It goes out into the world – it has a life of its own. In her four decade career, Bette Ridgeway has exhibited her work globally with over 80 museums, universities and galleries, including: Palais Royale, Paris and Embassy of Madagascar. Multiple prestigious awards include Top 60 Contemporary Masters, Leonardo DaVinci Prize, and Oxford University Alumni Prize at Chianciano Art Museum, Tuscany, Italy. Mayo Clinic and Federal Reserve Bank are amongst Ridgeway’s permanent public placements, in addition to countless important private collections. Many books and publications have featured her work, among them: International Contemporary Masters and 100 Famous Contemporary Artists. Ridgeway has also penned several books about her art and process.
springs out
nelson lowhim
Born in Tanzania, of Indian and Seychelles and Euro background. Lived in India for a year. At age 10 moved to the States (all over from the south to the west to the midwest to the east to Alaska). Joined the Army (yes the US one) and deployed to a few places. Always good to see the way Empire works on its fringes, doesn't it? I currently live in Seattle with my wife. Oh, it doesn't really end there, but that should be good for now. For more look me up at: http://www.intersections.org/nelson-lowhim nelsonlowhim.blogspot.com IG: @lowhimsart