UZOMAH UGWU is a poet/writer, curator, and multi-disciplined artist. Her poetry, writing, and art have been featured internationally in various publications, galleries, and art spaces. She is a political, social, and cultural activist. Her core focus is on human rights, mental health, animal rights, and the rights of LGBTQIA persons. She is also the managing editor and founder of Arte Realizzata.
I was sitting in a cafe with an acquaintance when I asked if I could draw her. She read something from her phone as I drew. The wallpaper behind her looked like the inside of a microchip. Instead of a menu, there was a QR code printed on the table. I incorporated elements of the QR code into the wallpaper around the subject. I also let the tip of her eyelash intrude upon the design. Finally, I embedded a heart shape into the wallpaper so that it appears to float by the subject’s lips. This drawing vibrates with interactions between the human mind and the technology it has created.
SAMANTHA STEINER is a writer and visual artist. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Saltonstall Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Find her on social media @Steiner_Reads.
We have a strange relationship to photographs, in that we overlook the artifice. Conversely, in paintings all we see is the artifice. In my paintings, I have attempted to create hybrids that have elements of photographs (such as the color scale) and elements of paintings (in that they are brushwork). The goal is not to create realism, but to pull the mediated and mediation so close together that they nearly touch.
KARL ZUEHLKE is an artist, translator, and teacher. Zuehlke’s artwork has appeared in The Penn Review, Cream City Review, Adroit Journal, Reed Magazine, Tint, Peatsmoke, and elsewhere.
DONALD PATTEN is an artist from Belfast, Maine. He is currently a senior in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Maine. As an artist, he produces oil paintings and graphic novels. Artworks of his have been exhibited in galleries across the Mid-Coast region of Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com
My family has planted a forest garden in coastal B.C. The trees grow hazelnuts, walnuts, cherries, apples, pears, figs, plums, apricots, and sea buckthorn. There are blueberry, raspberry, gogi and gooseberry along with grapes, and wildflowers on a lawn of clover.
Climate change has been a challenge with freak weather and unseasonal temperatures, the drought last summer and the floods this one.
I’ve been painting the fruits that do grow. Portraits of apples and plums, with as much attention paid to their individuality as I pay to my figure works.
Painting in a garden in a time of shifting ecologies is a celebration of resilience shadowed by knowledge. When Dutch painters in the 17th century painted fruit, they were in contemplation of the transience of human life, firm in the conviction that the eternal seasons would continue to unfold even as the eyes looking at the painting would turn to dust. To paint fruit now is to think about the ephemeral nature of all things, including the ecosystem. There is a qualitative difference in the sadnesses beneath the lustrous surfaces of historical and contemporary fruit paintings, with the later propelling one towards an immediate engagement with the luminous life force shimmering in the present moment.
ANN-MARIE BROWN is a Canadian artist currently working out of a studio on the far west coast of British Columbia on a thin slice of land between the forest and the ocean.
My collage work is an amalgam of vintage graphics, mixed media, and photography, arranged within photoshop. I tend to be drawn to exploring negative space & color. This particular series, ‘The Terrible Practice,’ (2021-2022) is an exploration of ego death and what lies beyond that.
JESSE CAVERLY was born an hour outside of Boston but he and his mother quickly became nomads. He doesn’t remember much about Tucson and everything about Hawaii. There, he had a small white terrier as a pet. There, he collected comic books and ate guavas fresh off the branch. Then they moved to California, high school was all right, college didn’t happen but life did. He is now a storyteller, proud father of a wilding, and an occasional poet. He resides in Arcata, Humboldt County. He can be found here.
Inklette Magazine 