Category: Visual Arts

Alysha Has No Plans

Artist Statement

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.

‘Alysha Has No Plans’, Ballpoint pen on notebook paper, 2022

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.

Five Pieces

by Uzomah Ugwu

  • ‘Perfect Relations’, Acrylic, 2020
  • ‘Express’, Acrylic, 2020
  • ‘Purple Tri’, Acrylic, 2020
  • ‘Rules Broken’, Acrylic, 2020
  • ‘Tunnels Hushed’, Acrylic, 2020

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.

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.