we imagine she was a bride the skeleton with the small skull a Greek girl………… ……….her head wreathed in ceramic flowers in Azerbaijan……………… ….800 BC a couple was buried where they fell asphyxiated……………. ……by toxic gas their bones circled around each other 700 years ago two people in England were buried their bodies dusted……………. ……with pollen we hope it was … Continue reading Currency by Maureen Clark
I’m a Chicago-based visual artist working primarily with street photography and short-form video. My work focuses on capturing the city through a retro, nostalgic, movie-like lens—observing everyday moments, people, light, and atmosphere as they naturally unfold. I’ve been building my creative profile for a little over three years. Much of that time wasn’t spent posting content or chasing metrics, but studying. I immersed myself in different formats, references, and visual languages, paying close attention to how artists translate reality into something emotionally recognizable. Nearly a year and a half was dedicated specifically to observing street … Continue reading Why Visual Identity Matters More Than Ever in the AI Content Era by Art Meder
Cottonwood trees are producing more fluff. I am jealous of things so aptly named. The verb take can be a phrasal verb with so many meanings: take off, take up, take in, take away. If I had a name it would be the sound of a bird making its nest in the empty gutter. It would be the sound of wings flitting over roofs, a thirst without forecast, a number so vast it doesn’t need to be counted. How about a name so simple you forget it ever meant something? A name that takes nothing … Continue reading Names by Esther Sadoff
The sixty-year-old woman is sleeping at the moment, so I sit on a worn brown couch in the family waiting room down the hall from Shirley. It’s not too far from the intensive care ward where she lays on the white, white sheets, connected in too many ways to the machines that keep her alive or that measure whether she is, or is not. This windowless refuge gives no hints about day or night, winter or summer. Two half-done jigsaw puzzles await completion on small tables. There is a television, but it isn’t on. Shelves … Continue reading By Shirley’s Side by Peter Wallace
When she walks out to the barn for the evening feed, what she notices first is how dark it is already, and how, with the darkness, a stillness sets in. Stillness is not the same as quiet. The soft but urgent whinny of the pony wanting dinner ripples from the front pasture, the drumbeat crunch crunch crunch crunch of hooves hitting fallen leaves begins as the herd files into the paddock. The pony and two donkeys stop at the gate that leads to their side of the barn. The two horses walk to their stall … Continue reading Feeding Horses and Other Things by Billie Hinton
“I’m always having a conversation with myself between art and craft. Art is for the heart and craft for the wallet,” says fine artist and fine craftsman Alan Box Levine in his studio at the McGuffey Art Center In Charlottesville, Va. “Art is a window to the world. It has nothing to do with money. I also restore old things—windows, tables, chairs, book cases—for a living.” Levine’s compact studio displays the makings of his varied talents. Displayed are wooden benches, boxes of all sizes, dried flowers, toys, vintage family photographs. An antique ladder back chair … Continue reading Fine Art and Craftsman Alan Box Levine
I missed my son’s voice this Christmas. Of all of us, Steven’s voice was the deepest. And that includes all the voices of our best-entire-family friends, the Eisenheims. Bruce (Steven’s dad) and the Eisenheim men (there are three) are all over six feet tall (just like Steven), but even so. In a room completely filled with Eisenheims and Trvaliks, you could still pick out Steven’s voice from the crowd. That’s how deep it was. Deep and resonant. Even his laugh was deep. He laughed a lot. That’s when I noticed it, actually. Christmas week, on … Continue reading The Second Christmas by Mary Trvalik
They’re the last to disappear, along with hickory, spicing the ground from mid-autumn through December. I stumble over carpets of the fermenting harvest, some greasy and quick to roll an ankle if you aren’t careful. Juniper and Bittersweet, the other malingerers, droop along the walnut path leading to a new year. So often on these daily walks, I gaze around to see something I recognize, looking to the ground that remembers what happened here, last year and years before. Otherwise, the busy mind by habit, locks itself into its present worries, generally things that can’t … Continue reading Walnuts by Sharon Perkins Ackerman
Mark didn’t want to go to Jackie and Jonathan’s—he had too much studying to do before the end of the semester—but Marci insisted. “You can’t study all the time,” she said, but he was the only one of the four of them in graduate school, and was under pressures they weren’t. “Can we at least leave right after we eat?” he asked. “No walks in the woods this time?” Marci gave him a sideways glance. Getting back to Boston from the North Shore on a Sunday was never an easy drive, and the later you … Continue reading Cheesecake by Con Chapman
The season of Christmas swoops in, ahead of me and my best intentions. I’ll never be a person who has all the family and friends crossed off the list, gifts sweetly wrapped, silky ribbons, satiny bows. Lured by magazines’ designer fine table settings and sparkling trees, loaded with heirloom ornaments. Oh, well. I sat down, stared out my window at sunlight glittering across a barn’s metal roof. I scribbled and scribbled. I scribbled some more. What does it mean? Especially giving. The art of giving. Over the years, I have sometimes goofed with a gift. … Continue reading Ho Ho Streetlight by Trudy Hale