There are a few things in life that will make me stop dead in my tracks and stare at it for a lengthy amount of time: a tea shop menu, my celebrity--crush lookalike, and a puzzling piece of “artwork”. To me, such artwork can range in anything from a captivating perfume ad to a still bird on the middle of the road. As I perused through the wonderfully varied works submitted for this issue, a number of pieces fit such a description—were I to see these artworks along my usual hasty walks, I no doubt would have stopped and stared, even amidst a busy intersection.Or maybe it isn’t busy at all—everyone else might be stopping to stare at these works of art as well.

With that, I invite you to take some time to pause, gaze, and ponder about these pieces that we’ve selected for Issue 3.2. Each person experiences art differently, so what will you see in each piece?

Maivy Bui, Visual Arts Intern

The Art

Self Portrait
Laurie-Lynn McGlynn

As a Visual Artist, creative writing for the sheer love of the craft comes naturally to Laurie. Through the trials and challenges in her life, writing has always been her outlet, a cathartic experience and a way to express her thoughts about the world around Laurie...as a woman...an Artist...a Writer....a mature student. In 2015 Laurie founded a collaborative performance art collective that joins the written word with music, dance, vocals, and digital technology. For each performance, she writes the libretto and her colleague composes a score. Apart from the MOTUS project, Laurie has enjoyed writing for newsletters, blogs, speeches, research papers, ghostwriting, non-fiction, and copy-writing. However, her passion is poetry.

Strange Flow
Claire Ibarra

Claire received her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. Most recently, Claire’s photographs appeared in Harbor Review, PANK, Topology Magazine, and SmokeLong Quarterly. Claire’s work was included in the “Finding the Light” Exhibition at the PhotoPlace Gallery.

Find more about Claire and her work at www.claireibarra.com.

I see the sky
Peggy Acott

Peggy Acott still remembers the little gray plastic Kodak camera she bought for eight dollars. Her next camera accompanied her to college, to Ireland, through her son’s well-documented childhood and into the midst of the digital age. Though appreciating digital photography, she still thinks watching an image emerge on paper in a darkroom is nothing short of magic.

EA1D235C-8FEE-44DB-BA00-B35DA3BDC7AF
Thomas GILLASPY

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review and Brooklyn Review.

Further information and additional examples of his work are available at http://www.thomasgillaspy.com and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/

open the sky
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) and currently live in Seattle with my wife. Oh, it doesn't really end there, but that should be good for now. Since some people tend to ask: yes I served in the US Army. I like to think that my writing has been influenced by... no, no, I won't go there. I read and I write. What else to say? Enjoy.

For more look me up at: Medium: medium.com/@nlowhim; http://www.intersections.org/nelson-lowhim; nelsonlowhim.blogspot.com.

glass
Erin Zerbe

Erin Zerbe is an interdisciplinary artist working in illustration, digital art and mixed media. Her work specializes in human emotions and relationships between the body and spirituality, tackling issues of the gender, grief, and the metaphysical. Zerbe has exhibited her work widely, along artists such as Yoko Ono, Shirin Neshat, and Sebastiao Salgado. Her exhibition record includes a variety of notable venues such as the Dublin Biennial; Cutting Edge exhibition in Florence, Italy; Gallery 175 in Seoul, South Korea; Biennale de Palermo; School 33 Art Center; and the (e)merge Art Fair DC. Zerbe received her BFA in Kinetic Imaging from VCU in 2006 and her MFA in Photographic and Electronic Media from MICA in 2011. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Marietta College, in Marietta OH where she teaches courses in Graphic Design and Photography.

More about Erin and her work can be found at erinzerbe.com or on her instagram @bearandbatShow.

chasing the light
Trisstah Wagstaff

Somewhere Between
Trisstah Wagstaff

Trisstah Brittany Wagstaff is an artist currently living and creating in Waco, Texas. She graduated from Baylor University in Waco, Texas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting in 2014 and received her Master of Fine Arts in painting in November of 2018 through the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. She has been published in Studio Visit Magazine volume 42 and recently in in the 2019 summer volume 44. Her work explores beauty and the unexpected places that it can be found while recognizing beauty as a language of hope. The process of her work was discovered during a time of great personal loss and pain. While grieving the loss of her father she found that her eyes and heart craved both depth and beauty. This began a spiritual and metaphorical journey in her work. She is an emerging artist who has shown her paintings in Austin, Ft. Worth, and Brownwood Texas as well as Savannah, Georgia. She has guest lectured at Baylor University.

Connect with Trisstah at trisstahwagstaff.com or via her instagram @trisstah.

Wall Wire
Edward Lee

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: 'Lying Down With The Dead' and 'There Is A Beauty In Broken Things'. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.

His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

Winter Turmoil
Diane Martin

Diane G. Martin, poet, photographer, prose writer, Russian literature specialist, Willamette University graduate, recipient of the Diana Woods Memorial Award, has published in numerous literary journals, including New London Writers, Poetry Circle, Open: JAL, Dodging the Rain, Antiphon, Dark Ink, Gyroscope, Rhino, Shooter, Lunch Ticket, Lady Liberty, Lowestoft Chronicle, and Stonecoast Review, and written several books of poetry and prose.

See more abut Diane at www.dianamartin.ru.

Badlands
Andi Zhang

Andi Zhang is a student majoring in Biology at the University of Nebraska Omaha. She is part of the visual art staff on the campus journal: the 13th Floor Magazine and has had Nonfiction work published in the spring 2019 issue. She has a passion for photography and graphic design.

Check out Andi’s instagram via @andi_andtheclouds.

Eeenie Minee No Mo
Edward Supranowicz

I do not believe in formal artist statements. Art should speak for itself, and the artist should maintain a respectful distance and silence.

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia., but has lived in some of the rougher parts of DC and Boston. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Straylight, Gravel, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.

Beastly
Keith Nunes

Keith Nunes (New Zealand) was nominated for Best Small Fictions 2019, the Pushcart Prize, and has won the Flash Frontier Short Fiction Award. He’s had poetry, haiku, short fiction, art, asemic writing and foto-poetry published around the globe.

Consider
Elaine Verdill

A long time poet and photographer, Elaine Verdill paints with acrylics as well.

Sunflower
Katrina Alyssa Torrefranca

White noise
Katrina Alyssa Torrefranca

Katrina Alyssa Torrefranca is a copywriter by day and a writer, visual artist, and filmmaker by night. For her, the world is a book full of stories she wants to devour. She wants to write herself in that book. The world will have to wait and see.

I’m waiting for you
Nikola Dabić

Artistic work is based on series of portraits made with the linocut technique using only the black color. In my creative process I’m producing
a system of analyzing subjective emotional behavior, certain personal situations, thoughts and ideological beliefs combined with certain social
phenomena and projecting them into visual work. In this development, the abstract object receives a potential of having an identity by turning them into human forms. These projections are always shown with unrecognizable and blurred faces because they are not real people, they are separate ideologies therefore their identity is non-existent. Each portrait have their own unique concept and field of mechanism which is integrated with authentic aesthetics.

The writing on the collar is written in my native language, Serbian, and it translates into English like this:
"hold on a little longer".

Nikola is a contemporary artist born on November 25th 1994 in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nikola graduated at the Academy of Arts, department of graphics and intermedia of Banja Luka University.

See more of Nikola’s work at https://nikoladabic.weebly.com/ or https://www.instagram.com/nikola.dabic/.