Category: Visual Arts

Equinoxes

by ALLISON ANNE

allison anne is a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (unceded Očhéthi Šakówiŋ land), working in collage, zinemaking, mail art and mixed media. The core of their practice is handcut paper collage— a constantly evolving exploration of experience and emotion through the reconstitution and rearranging of various printed media and ephemera. By recontexualizing images and materials, allison creates complex textural, intuitive abstractions and configurations which prioritize that which is found, discarded and left behind, exploring the intersections and interactions between context, materiality and creativity.

allison is a founding member of Twin Cities Collage Collective, a member of the International Union of Mail-Artists and the collaborative projects Morphic Rooms, NONMACHINABLE and Scissor Prism Orchestra. Their work has been shown and published around the world and is in the collections of the Scandinavian Collage Museum and the Minnesota Museum of American Art as part of the MPLSART 2020 Sketchbook Project.

  • Delphinium, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
    Delphinium, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
  • Structural Color, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
    Structural Color, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
  • Holocene, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
    Holocene, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
  • Diffraction, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
    Diffraction, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22
  • Sapped, Hand-cut paper collage, 2020-22

Fey

by Alex Joseph

ALEX JOSEPH is a painter as well as a writer and researcher of cultural studies. As an artist, he has taken a long time to shape his voice and makes sure that each work reflects the emotion of striving for a goal and the detours that happen along the way. He works primarily in Watercolor and Acrylic and focuses on portraiture as his language of depiction.

Fey, Watercolor on paper, 2021

I Look Towards East

by Karkhana-e-amoeba

From an iconoclastic understanding of self-portraiture to a more distant research based miniature style, I have built my studio which produces self-sustained works. My Images are still within the spaces of self-stories (fan fiction), addressing the environment itself that they surround. I find that self is in itself a mythical character. A formation of multitudes, different collection of consciousness and sensations that are put together into an idea of unified self, which in itself is a lie. This particular work, based on poem I wrote, represents love, loss, and politics across borders.

(Excerpt)

III

I can only see East now,

Hooked to a fishtail

An unreachable sail

When west is a leash

IV

I see East now

On another page

A line draw across my eye

An absurd faith

V

East & East & East

At the shore of nowhere

Locked in a painted wall

I looked towards East

‘I Look Towards East,’ Multimedia on Paper, 21cm x 29cm, 2022

Coexist

Artist Statement: The ability of humankind and nature to co-exist is a critical question for our time. This piece speaks to that issue and ecological concern but demonstrating that “man and nature” are interwoven, and that they can and should coexist.

Digital Art, 2021

LAUREN BARTEL is an award-winning writer, artist, and historian. Her literary work, essays, artwork, and photography have won numerous national and regional awards and have appeared in several literary magazines, academic journals, and podcasts. Her independent work in history won the national academic and research prize presented by the Nobel family, and her groundbreaking biology research regarding rare orchid propagation is pending publication in a scientific journal. Lauren’s life passions include the natural sciences, creative arts, and natural history. A change-maker, servant leader, and citizen naturalist, she studies and conducts lab and field research in genetics, zoology, and botany and volunteers her time to environmental and conservation causes as well as child literacy and education. For her volunteer work, Lauren has twice been the recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award and has won the Congressional Award Silver Medal (the highest honor Congress can bestow on a youth civilian). A Miami native of Latinx and Italian heritage, Lauren will be an incoming freshman at Harvard College in the fall of 2022.

Ocean Macrame

Artist Statement: I try to capture moments of transition, knowing that such moments often occur in stillness.

Digital Photography, North Island (California), December 2015

JIM ROSS jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in seven years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, and hybrid in over 175 journals and anthologies on five continents. Photo publications include Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal, Feral, Friends Journal, Manchester Review, Stonecoast, and Typehouse. Recently-published photo essays include Barren, DASH, Kestrel, Ilanot Review, Litro, New World Writing, Sweet, So It Goes, and Wordpeace, with Typehouse forthcoming. Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of five little ones—split their time between city and mountains.

Wonderland (Other Seasons)

  • Another Waiting (‘Our Fragile Glimpse’), Digital, 2021
  • Embrace (‘Our Fragile Glimpse’), Digital, 2021
  • Wonderland (‘Other Seasons’), Digital, 2021
  • At The End Find The Beginning (‘Other Seasons’), Digital, 2021
  • Stranded On The Shore Of The Self (Part of the ‘(Un)seen’ series), Digital, 2021

EDWARD LEE is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction 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, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

Two Pieces

Artist Statement

Afloat on Antithesis is a take on representing the struggles of existing in our patriarchal societies (its not specific to women or those who identify as women, but we are more often the targets patriarchy). It describes that no matter what scars we carry, no matter if our hearts and minds and bodies are breaking into pieces, the world expects us to always be impeccable.

When I Met Emerson on the Other Side is psychedelic art, an effort to present a surreal dreamlike space inspired by various philosophies such as transcendentalism and bits of communism, feminism etc.

  • ‘When I Met Emerson on the Other Side,’ Watercolor on paper, 2020
  • ‘Afloat on Antithesis,’ Watercolor, 2020

SHARON GAYEN, is a corporate drone by the day and an artist by the night. She is based out of Hyderabad and takes a keen interest in Pointillism, Kirie, Psychedelic, Doodling and has recently ventured into cyberpunk inspired art. She works with a variety of medium ranging from watercolors to charcoal, her favorite medium being ink on paper. Having spent a lot of her life by the sea, she draws inspiration from crashing waves and crustaceans. She loves translating her favorite pieces of literature into art. She is also fascinated by circles, triangles and trapezoids, often incorporating them into her work.