The gravedigger called, annoyed that I was not at the cemetery where he was waiting to lay my father’s stone marker. I’d expected his call en route and said I would get there as fast as possible. It was a steamy, late summer day some years ago and the cemetery was a 15-minute drive. My father’s ashes were encased in a black plastic box beside me. He’d died in 2000 and since then, the heavy, half empty container had collected dust in a corner of my office. He’d requested the scattering of his … Continue reading Guarantees by Elizabeth Meade Howard→
Artist Jane Skafte has designs on our natural environment. She illustrates her deep concerns for climate change with research, conscience and talent that subtly reveals devastation from the ground up. “I am interested in what happens when naturalism and the awesome terror of nature (e.g., tsunamis, erosion, earthquakes) is fused with abstract geometric elements, as a stand-in for human imposed structures and practices (e.g., clear cutting forests, fracking, CO2 emissions),” states Skafte on her website. “…In an attempt to deal with these overwhelming global events, I work to illustrate the changes that concern … Continue reading Jane Skafte: Cautions of Climate Change→
New England is fertile ground for any photographer, and I enjoy drawing from this environment. I’ve long had a love of taking pictures. There’s the heft of a camera, the frustrating magic of lens, light, and alchemy of movement—the frozen awkward smile, or the contemplative stare unknowingly observed and crystalized in time. I took a photography course in high school and I’ll never forget the awe of first seeing Ansel Adams’s landscape photography. The expansive views, the richness. Until then, I didn’t know black and white photography could actually be that expressive. Unlike Adams, I don’t do … Continue reading Jenny Rossi: Many Shades of New England→
Both the Irish and Ukrainian/Russian sides of my family settled in Allegheny County, and the men worked in the steel mills and coal mines. My mother got on a bus one day and moved to central Ohio. She remarried and we moved to a farm on the edge of Appalachian Ohio with no running water, an outhouse, coal stove, and three acres of gardens for me to plow and hoe by hand. I believe the long days working outside allowed me to merge with and absorb the quiet rhythms of nature, so that the … Continue reading Digital Art by Edward Michael Supranowicz→
I grew up in Southern California with a darkroom in my garage. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all photographers. As a child I didn’t spend much time with photography, even though I was around it. I saw how photography was a way for them to document their world and how much joy that brought them, something I realized for myself later in life. I became interested in photography in my early twenties. I am self-taught. Now in my early forties, I’m still learning. I am inspired by the work of Claude Cahun, Francesca … Continue reading A Light Touch by Jennifer Lothrigel→
Body painted women. Haitian orphans. Black Elvis. Models for hip-hop and Votre Nom. The homeless. A budding coquette in the summer sun. These are but a few of the fascinating faces caught in telling moments by photographer Mark Edward Atkinson. A native of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Atkinson now lives in Virginia Beach where he is creative director of Otto Design and Marketing. A writer and documentarian whose portfolio includes films, landscapes and still lifes, his portraits of people from near and far are especially arresting. “I love the unexpectedness of people,” he says. “The … Continue reading Portraits by Mark Edward Atkinson→
Shoes is the story of the artist’s aging father who needed to give up a good pair of shoes because they no longer offered enough support. Harris inked the soles of these shoes and walked in them to make prints on the paper. This book is one of 52 weekly books Harris made in 2013 in a project entitled A Year In Books. I found book art (or it found me) in 1995 in Florence, Italy, when, instead of painting on paper, I folded it into sculptural forms. I didn’t know the term “book art,” … Continue reading Book Art Featured at Virginia Festival of the Book by Lyall Harris→
Collage has always been at the center of my creative work. I began by accident or twist of fate, with a pile of magazines and a pair of little pink scissors. A fun project to do something crafty turned into a passion for what I call the “joy of juxtaposition.” I had been writing since I was very young and always identified with poets and artists, but until then my expressions were mainly poetic. My Dad was an auto factory worker who’d wanted to be a minister and my Mom was a florist. Both … Continue reading Piecing It All Together by Lorette C. Luzajic→
I probably started working towards becoming an artist in middle school in Charlottesville. I made little comics to sell to my friends and I’d fill up my homework and test sheets with doodles in the margins. I always had a macabre sense of humor. (Camels usually carry water in their humps. These carry clocks. A pun, silly joke.) As an artist, I’m not sure what draws me specifically to bizarre and fantastic subjects. I was brought up either outside around nature or inside reading or watching classic and cult science fiction and horror books and … Continue reading Kevin Haga: Mixing Music and Art→
My name is Mario Loprete. I live in Catanzaro, a small Calabrian city in the south of Italy. We are in the land that the ancient Greeks called “Magna Grecia,” rich in culture and history. I also travel a lot. I rent a house in European cities that could inspire my work and consolidate some work relationships with galleries and collectors that I began on the internet. Artistically, I am self-taught, studying the history of art in Catanzaro and the great masters of art—Mattia Preti, Caravaggio, Rembrandt—without external contaminations. I studied at an art shop … Continue reading Italian Artist Shares New Concrete Ideas→
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