Period: Autumn / Winter 2016

PERIOD ART BY WOMEN

autumn / winter 2016

“ ART IS THE ONE PLACE WE ALL TURN TO FOR SOLACE.

period contents

05 Foreword 07 Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

by Virginia Hughes for National Geographic

12 June Glasson Portraits & book covers

Meredith Marsone

” CARRIE MAE WEEMS

21 Explosions of color Alexandra Levasseur 29 Surreal landscape portraits

period www. period.ink periodlit@gmail.com @periodink

period

from the editor

contents

33 Naomi Okubo self-reflection and identity in portrait

43 Anka Zhuravleva

magical photographic scenes

51 Poetry by Melissa Fite-Johnson 54 poetry by June Pepper 56 poetry by Tiana Clark 58 Personal Narrative Maggive Devlin On Doubt

period www. period.ink periodlit@gmail.com @periodink

This year has been mired in conflict. From the shootings of innocent people of color and the discordant political dynamics in the US; the Syrian refugee crisis; the global backlash against women’s rights; to the ever-present danger of climate change; it is clear that 2016 has been a difficult year for the fight for common sense, love, and equality for many around the world.

With so much going wrong - the violence, the divisive politics - it can be easy to overlook the positive work being done. There are some of us who wonder if things have actually gotten worse, or if we are more likely to be aware of events we may have not been informed about before. We wonder if social media has allowed us to connect with each other or has torn us further apart.

While working on this issue, I had several reasons to give pause, to ask myself if it seemed worthwhile, or perhaps tonedeaf, to continue to focus on art at a time like this. I took a break from it for a few months. I slowed down and I wondered what it was I was trying to accomplish.

We may have different opinions about the role of art in society. Art can be an instrument for political change. It can also be simply about finding beauty and helping others to feel inspired.

As Marie Wilson said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” I had this in mind when I decided to begin this project last year. I feel lucky to have had a chance to speak with the women in this issue about their work. I think of the words of the poet Maggie Smith in her poem Good Bones: This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.

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from the editor

When I was growing up, I was implicitly taught that men created art, men created beauty and decided what was beautiful, and that it was the role of women to simply be beautiful - that alone, society seemed to say, was a woman’s highest achievement. I hope that, as I have, you can find some inspiration through the creative expressions of the women artists in this issue. We have a lot of work to do to make next year a more beautiful year than the last.

I want to thank all who contributed to this issue: the artists who agreed to speak about their work, and Jun Yosh for his help with translation. But I also want to thank all the artists who continue to find beauty in this world, and who try in their own way to make the world a better place for everyone.

- Myra Pearson

Three-quarters of handprints in ancient cave art were left by women, study finds.

Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

by Virginia Hughes for National Geographic

Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints.

Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma.

Archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, Snow determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female.

“There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time,” said Snow, whose research was supported by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration.

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“People have made a lot of attesting to the many mysteries unwarranted assumptions still surrounding this early art. about who made these things, and why.”

“Hand stencils are a truly ironic category of cave art Archaeologists have found because they appear to be hundreds of hand stencils such a clear and obvious on cave walls across the connection between us and the world. Because many of people of the Paleolithic,” said these early paintings also archaeologist Paul Pettitt of showcase game animals— Durham University in England. bison, reindeer, horses, woolly “We think we understand them, mammoths—many researchers yet the more you dig into them have proposed that they you realize how superficial our were made by male hunters, understanding is.” perhaps to chronicle their kills or as some kind of “hunting Sex Differences magic” to improve success of an upcoming hunt. The new Snow’s study began more study suggests otherwise. than a decade ago when he came across the work of John “In most hunter-gatherer Manning, a British biologist societies, it’s men that do who had found that men and the killing. But it’s often the women differ in the relative women who haul the meat lengths of their fingers: Women back to camp, and women tend to have ring and index are as concerned with the fingers of about the same productivity of the hunt as length, whereas men’s ring the men are,” Snow said. “It fingers tend to be longer than wasn’t just a bunch of guys their index fingers. out there chasing bison around.”

One day after reading about Manning’s studies, Snow pulled Experts expressed a wide range of opinions about how a 40-year-old book about cave to interpret Snow’s new data, paintings off his bookshelf.

The inside front cover of the book showed a colorful hand stencil from the famous Pech Merle cave in southern France. “I looked at that thing and I thought, man, if Manning knows what he’s talking about, then this is almost certainly a female hand,” Snow recalled.

Snow ran the numbers through an algorithm that he had created based on a reference set of hands from people of European descent who lived near his university. Using several measurements—such as the length of the fingers, the length of the hand, the ratio of ring to index finger, and the ratio of index finger Hand stencils and handprints to little finger—the algorithm have been found in caves in could predict whether a given Argentina, Africa, Borneo, handprint was male or female. and Australia. But the most Because there is a lot of overlap famous examples are from the between men and women, 12,000- to 40,000-year-old however, the algorithm wasn’t cave paintings in southern especially precise: It predicted France and northern Spain. the sex of Snow’s modern sample with about 60 percent For the new study, out this accuracy. week in the journal American Antiquity, Snow examined Luckily for Snow, that wasn’t a hundreds of stencils in problem for the analysis of the European caves, but most prehistoric handprints. were too faint or smudged to use in the analysis.

As it turned out—much to his surprise—the hands in the The study includes caves were much more sexually measurements from 32 dimorphic than modern hands, stencils, including 16 from the meaning that there was little cave of El Castillo in Spain, overlap in the various hand 6 from the caves of Gargas measurements. in France, and 5 from Pech Merle.

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“They fall at the extreme ends, and even beyond the extreme ends,” Snow said. “Twenty thousand years ago, men were men and women were women.”

Woman, Boy, Shaman?

Snow’s analysis determined that 24 of the 32 hands—75 percent—were female. (See “Pictures: Prehistoric European Cave Artists Were Female.”)

Some experts are skeptical.

Several years ago, evolutionary biologist R. Dale Guthrie performed a similar analysis of Paleolithic handprints.

His work—based mostly on differences in the width of the palm and the thumb— found that the vast majority of handprints came from adolescent boys.

for adventure, said Guthrie, an emeritus professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

“They drew what was on their mind, which is mainly two things: naked women and large, frightening mammals.”

For adults, caves would have been dangerous and uninteresting, but young boys would have explored them

“I think the article is a landmark contribution,” said archaeologist Dave Whitley of ASM Affiliates, an archaeological consulting firm in Tehachapi, California.

Despite these handprints being discussed for half a decade, “this is the first time anyone’s synthesized a good body of evidence.”

Photo courtesy of Dean Snow

Other researchers are more convinced by the new data.

Whitley rejects Guthrie’s idea that this art was made for purely practical reasons related to hunting. His view is that most of the art was made by shamans who went into trances to try to connect with the spirit world. “If you go into one of these caves alone, you start to suffer from sensory deprivation very, very quickly, in 5 to 10 minutes,” Whitley said. “It can spin you into an altered state of consciousness.”

The new study doesn’t discount the shaman theory, Whitley added, because in some huntergatherer societies shamans are female or even transgendered.

The new work raises many more questions than it answers. Why would women be the primary artists? Were they creating only the handprints, or the rest of the art as well? Would the hand analysis hold up if the artists weren’t human, but Neanderthal?

The question Snow gets most often, though, is why these ancient artists, whoever they were, left handprints at all.

“I have no idea, but a pretty good hypothesis is that this is somebody saying, ‘This is mine, I did this,’” he said.

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P

Hello, June! By chance I came across your work shortly before I ordered a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s collected stories with the new cover you illustrated. I was drawn to it because it resembled the 1979 cover by Charles Skaggs, with O’Connor’s iconic peacock featured prominently against a white background.

Could you tell me more about how you came to design book covers for FS&G with Charlotte Strick, and your relationship to O’Connor’s work?

JUNE GLASSON

June Glasson is a landscape and portrait artist based in Laramie, Wyoming, whose works have been shown at The National Portrait Gallery in London, Nature Morte Gallery in Berlin, and various New York and stateside galleries. Her work has also appeared in New American Paintings, The Paris Review, and Guernica, as well as the film “Our Idiot Brother”. She has also designed book covers for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Most recently, she has designed a cover for Margaret the First, by Danielle Dutton, published by Catapult Press.

I’ve always loved O’Connor’s short stories. So when Charlotte said she was looking for someone to create new covers for her back catalogue I was thrilled!

Before we started working on the covers I went back and re-read the work, and then Charlotte and I spent some time discussing the themes in the books and the previous covers. FSG really wanted the new covers to reference some of the previous editions, like the Charles Skagg cover and Milton Glaser’s 1967 Wise Blood, so we drew a lot of inspiration directly from them. The new JG In 2008 Charlotte came across covers evolved as we worked one of my portraits in Domino through different mediums and designs. There was a lot Magazine and contacted of back and forth over 2 years me about commissioning a as we perfected them. It was a portrait. A couple of years very collaborative process and later she reached out to we both felt very proud of the me about creating some results! illustrations for a piece in The Paris Review. When she started developing new P covers for F.S.G., she reached Who are your favorite writers? out to me again about Is there a particular author collaborating on them. that you would like to design a cover for?

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I can’t remember not drawing or making things with my That’s tricky. I’d have to hands. say my favorite writer of all time is my partner Rattawut I’ve always been making art so Lapcharoensap. Of course it’s hard for me to pin-point I’m in love with him but I also a moment when I figured out think he’s an incredible writer. I wanted to “be” an artist. I I’d definitely love to create a think I just always considered cover for his novel, when he myself one, though have only finishes it. just recently begun to consider myself a semi-successful one.

As for other authors - right now I’m reading Nam Le’s The Boat and I’ve got Joy Williams’s Visiting Privilege and an epic fantasy novel at my bed side.

JG

P

When did you first know you wanted to be an artist, and what was your childhood like? You’ve mentioned in an interview with The Paris Review that your father was a sculptor. Do you think that his work influenced you while growing up?

JG

I grew up in a very creative household. My father was a sculptor and my mother, though she would never call herself one, was an artist in her own right.

Rock Springs

P In some of your works you make use of negative space, not only with your masking technique, but also in the vastness of your landscapes.

Could you explain some of your reasons for highlighting empty spaces?

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JG

In Wyoming, the climate and landscape is harsh and spare In art and in life, I believe and beautiful and you can get the absence of something sometimes speaks louder than on roads where if feels like you can drive forever without the thing itself. Often when seeing a car or a building. All I’m struggling to represent this space shifts your sense something, especially of scale; one can not help but something that is loaded with meaning, I feel like using feel removed from the rest of the world and the closeness of negative space works better things in that world. to create a space where the viewer can bring their own That said, all these personal interpretation or meaning. feelings come up against the Since moving to the west, I’ve history of this landscape. The “American West” occupies such found my work slowly being a specific place in our collective influenced by the landscape, imaginations and there is a the history, and the culture single dominant narrative that of this place that I now call home. In a lot of my paintings one encounters again and I’m struggling to capture what again: that of the lone cowboy, who occupies a romanticzed is so remarkable about the and “empty” landscape. landscape here, which is its vastness. Whenever I return to Wyoming I drive this one But we know that land is road that takes me through not and never was empty.

Northern Colorado into There have have always been Wyoming. people living here and behind this single story is a more There is this moment when complicated and violent history. you cross the border into Wyoming and the land rises I think in a lot my work I and the trees disappear and use drawing, painting, and everything opens up. Laramie, installation to play with iconic where I live, sits on a wide “western imagery” - buffalo, open plain that seems empty weaponry, truck nutz, etc and it’s like a little model to investigate the dominant railroad city. narrative about the region,

a place that is both exotic and P home to me.

How has being a woman affected you, in terms of your direction as an artist, or any P challenges you may have faced?

Apart from cover designs, installation work and having your paintings in film, is there JG another area of design you’d I feel pretty grateful for the like to explore in the future? advantages that I’ve been given

in my life. I grew up pretty privileged but not rich, with a I’ve been playing around with creatively supportive family, and a fantastic mother, who is smart some fabric designs recently and would love one day to do and strong and independent and loved to eat and dance and some album covers. who is a wonderful role model.

I’ve also been working on I’ve also been conscious of some designs for local how being a woman affects murals (though so far I’ve the way people see me and only created small life-sized my work. I’ve also always been murals) as well as some conscious and interested in collaborative communityhow women have historically based art projects with my been represented in Art and dear friend and collaborator, Pop Culture. In much of my Meg Thompson, through an work, I strive to create realistic organization we founded representation of the women called the Wyoming Art in my life, representations Party. Some of our past that show both my personal projects include a travelling relationship to my subjects as pan-Wyoming collaborative well as my concern about the Art Project, Pop-up Art treatment of the female figure. shows, and an annual In both my oil portraits and ink Artwalk. For our next project paintings I struggle to create we’re planning on creating women who play with and something for our annual challenge our notions of how “Jubilee Days” Parade. women should behave and be seen.

JG

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Meredith Marsone See more at

juneglasson.com instagram.com/studioglasson

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Meredith Marsone is a contemporary artist working in oils. Her subject matter centres around the figure as they move through the myriad of human experiences. Marsone’s work is at once accessible and relatable but leaves the audience wondering the deeper context. She purposefully leaves this up to the mind of the viewer encouraging you to create your own narrative and meaning from the figures in their chaotic and emotive environs.

P

The most immediately striking feature of your work is your use of juxtaposition: areas of abstraction contrasted by realistic portrait painting.

There is a sense that the impasto contains images or realities within it that have been rubbed out. What led you to develop this style?

MM

This technique was actually born out of frustration. I’d been working on a painting for hours but had to finally concede it wasn’t working. I picked up my palette knife which I had only used for mixing colour at that point, and smeared paint over what I had deemed to be a failure of a painting. To my astonishment the painting transformed. A few hours of playing, balancing and markmaking later, ‘Shiver’ was completed.

Now, this technique is more refined and purposeful but still a risky and therefore scary method of paint application.

Often the figure underneath is fully rendered and the gestural paint work is applied over the top. There’s a very real risk the painting will get destroyed in the adding of the abstract paint.

But its an important addition to the work. The purpose of this application is to create an emotional currency, an access point for connection. And since my work is more or less all about human connection, its the perfect way for me to visually represent my ideas.

P

How do you decide on a particular model or scene?

MM

It’s a bit elusive to pinpoint, really! The ideas for a body of work percolate for a while and the imagery will come to my mind during that process.

It’s an ever-evolving process though, from one painting to the next. It comes back to ‘What do I want this work to say?’

P

I noticed your portrait of Ben Brown, a children’s book author and poet. Could you tell me how you became familiar with his work? Are you interested in poetry?

MM

I’ve recently become interested in poetry and painting working together. My partner Carsten is a poet and psychologist, and he has written poems for some of the paintings in my next solo show. I can’t quite get over how beautiful the marriage is between the words and the paint. It’s been a magical experience.

P

The art world, as a whole, has been a space typically reserved for men. In your experience, have you faced any challenges that are unique to being a woman in the field?

I became familiar with Ben’s work at a poetry reading in a grungy little bar in Christchurch. His gritty performance coupled with eloquent imagery in his words MM were absolutely captivating.

Not really, no. I think it’s a I was definitely an instant difficult world to crack into groupie! no matter who you are. The only thing I will say is that women seem to get labelled as political as soon as they have a strong voice and I find that a bit odd. I recently watched an interview with Jenny Saville who was asked if it was correct her paintings were a political statement of the female form.

She replied to say that she was just interested in the human form - flesh and skin. A statement or judgement didn’t Ben Brown come into it for her.

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P

I think it’s really important as an artist to share your own experiences through your work. This latest series ‘Abstracted Love’ is born of my experience of growing my intimate relationship.

There are so many aspects to relationships that are underdiscussed. For example, the very real fact that your partner is there to hold a less than glamorous mirror up for you to see the parts of yourself that need growth, healing, accepting, or addressing in some way. If you don’t accept this to be true, you’ll deem your relationship ‘broken’ or your partner ‘not right for you’.

MM

Can you elaborate on how your work is influenced by your personal experiences?

Which contemporary artists currently inspire you?

At the moment my art crushes are Benjamin Bjorklund, Kit King, Barnaby Whitfield, Jeremy Mann, Michelle Doll, Jake Wood Evans … I could go on!

P

You had a solo exhibition recently, Abstracted Love. How did you prepare?

MM

Many months of long days painting have resulted in 17 paintings that I’ve put everything into. As a body of work they speak about the connection between two people, when its strong or lost, or broken. Some show the torment of personal growth, Nothing’s broken. You just others the momentary bliss need to work through your of union. There’s something own shit in order to be a relatable for most in there. They better version of yourself. And are struggles and joys we are all so does your counterpart. familiar with.

That’s what relationships are people are growing machines. See more at I just want to contribute in www.meredithmarsone.com some way to dispelling the www.instagram.com/ Hollywood notion of the meredithmarsoneartist ‘perfect’ relationship.

Shiver

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ArrĂŞter le temps

ALEXANDRA LEVASSEUR Alexandra Levasseur is a mixed-media artist from Canada.

She creates expressive representations that are a blend of movement, the female form, and nature. Her works incorporate a variety of media and aim to depict the human figure blended with the natural world.

Loveloss II

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P

To begin with, can you tell me a little bit about your background? What was your childhood like, and when did you begin drawing?

unreal; the reality from the illusion. The contradictions in my style intend to enrich the contradictory nature of the content.

P AL

I grew up by a lake, in the woods and since I was little, art has been, for me, a way to study Nature.

I was most likely influenced by my grandmother who was an artist, too, and I used to always have a painting in progress when I was visiting her.

P

Your work is at once womanly and raw - but not entirely feminine. It’s also filled with intense brooding but also with childlike curiosity.

To what extent have your experiences shaped your style?

AL

I like to create stories where I merge my naive interpretation of scientific studies with my personal uncertainties, dreams and experiences.

I’m looking for the line that separates the real from the

Do you work with live models?

AL

I mostly work with pieces of photographs taken by me or found in magazines and I make collages or montages as my preliminary sketches. If I can’t find a certain body part or specific position of the body, I use myself as a model.

P

Many of your recent works incorporate absent space: places where the figure melts in with landscapes, patterns, or plants. What are you trying to convey with the merging of the subject and nature, or, with the subject and the background?

AL

The women in my work represent nature; strong, beautiful, mysterious. The way the figures sometimes blend with the background is a reminder of the fact that we human beings - are made of

artists you would like to the same elements as our environment. The planet and recommend that inspire or everything that composes it is move you? one single organism.

P

You’ve worked in a variety of mediums and with different surfaces - paper, wood, and the like. Yet your work has always retained your very own unique style. What drives you to experiment with media?

AL

I really love Matisse for the compositions and colors. I also identify myself a lot with Maya Deren (filmmaker) for the mix of surrealism, strangeness and feminine powerful energy in her work. I also love Munch for the darkness and the strong expressiveness.

AL

I’m looking for the best combination of materials that could also be a part of the statement and will strengthen the ideas.

P

You seem to be very prolific!

You’ve accomplished a lot in the past 6 years. So I have to ask, when you aren’t painting or drawing, how do you spend your free time?

See more work at alexandralevasseur.com www.instagram.com/alexandra_ levasseur

AL

Ballet dancing, reading, yoga, cooking and dining with friends, watching films and playing with my dogs.

P

Finally, are there any other

Above: Interférences Mixed media / wood panel Below:

Le passage

Mixed media / wood panel

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L’eau Initiale

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Naomi Okubo Réincarnation Secrèt

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The ideas for my work come from an inferiority complex and my experiences in adolescence. As an adolescent, everyone starts to care about how other people think of their appearances.

In my personal experience, when I changed my own appearance, people changed their attitude towards me, and our relationship became better. I also realized the power of fashion and the fear of others’ watchful eyes. I have been interested in appearances ever since.

In Tokyo, Japan, where I live, and in other developed nations, mass media provides us not only with images of created appearances, but also images of lifestyles and ways of spending our time. We admire these images, and adopt them to create our own images, but we are overly exposed and consume these images so much, that we become confused about what is real and what is contrived. The consequence is that we become addicted to them. Although it seems like a personal issue, it is connected to greater problems and inconsistencies in society.

In my work, I want to show my thoughts on these problems and inconsistencies taken from my personal experiences.

P

I was struck by the lack of faces in your paintings.

After reading your personal statement, I could relate to your feeling of being watched and being in a constant state of self-awareness. It also reminded me of a quote by the art critic John Berger: “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.” Do you think this feeling of being viewed is a part of being a woman? And is your refusal to paint faces a resistance to being viewed?

understand that it’s very hard for people to create and maintain their identity. I wonder, what do people think of me, and I wonder how people watch me, and how should we behave around other people?

These three things are elements of social pressure, which are all obviously linked to my work.

I think the idea for the theme of my work is influenced

by Japanese society, since Japanese people show a characteristic of sympathizing rather than insistence.

It’s a little difficult for me to answer the question of “Do I do get inspiration from you think this feeling of being John Berger’s book “Ways of viewed is a part of being a Seeing”, especially these days. woman?”

NO

At the very beginning of my career, when I started making art, my works were most likely to be based on experiences during my adolescence. Back in those days, I had a difficulty and a kind of fear of relating to people. It’s very personal, but I’m sure that struggle is also related to my current work.

As we mature, we can

What this question means to me is what do I think about being a woman. Woman’s position should be equal to men in society, but we do understand that there is a physical difference between the sexes. I believe it is better for us to understand the differences between each other instead of criticizing. In other words, we should celebrate our differences. However, currently

Picnic for a Picnic 35

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P

You use repeated patterns and duplicated images of yourself. What is the meaning of the repetition in your work?

Congratulations on your recent solo exhibition in Hong Kong.

How was it? And how did people react to your paintings?

NO

NO

I mentioned the word “sympathizing” earlier. I use the same person no matter how many people there are in my works because I want to represent sympathizing in this country. The pattern of repetition is the expression of hiding. It’s like camouflage.

Girls Wanna be like a Flower society doesn’t allow for that because people still tend to think of women as weaker.

P

You use flower imagery quite often, which seems like a clear metaphor for cultural perceptions of femininity. What should the viewer take from this, and what are your views on traditional femininity?

NO

Flowers express a symbol of the stereotypical femininity in my works. Do you know the title of my work “Girls Wanna Be Like a Flower”? I made this title name ironically.

By the way, people understand themselves through comparing themselves with someone else, so there is always a gap between truly understanding other people.

There is a difference between the idea of myself, as I see myself, and how others interpret their concept of who I am.. The repetition of myself in my art is other people’s images of me. In this way, I think I can still keep having differences no matter how many humans I put in my work.

Hong Kong was such a powerful city. I was kinda disappointed that I couldn’t control my environment much, unlike last January at the Tokyo collection, because it was.. how can I say...a peculiar place.

But, nothing ventured is nothing gained. I’m now satisfied with everything. Hong Kong grew twice as quickly as Japan, I guess. Anyhow, I could see the city was full of paradoxes, which I wasn’t expecting.

But there are always people who support my artwork.

And it was a show done on a small scale, so I could have conversations with customers directly.

I think Hong Kong has just begun to accept the Western style of contemporary art.

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That opportunity also made me become an artist in more a realistic way. So now, I’m thinking about going the next step. I want to do not only paintings, I want to try something else.

P

What challenges have you faced as a female artist?

NO

I’m thirty-one years old now, and I am feeling pressure from society. In Japan we are expected to get married and have children by our thirties.

Family

P

Can you explain your artistic influences, and when you knew you wanted to become an artist?

NO

I was influenced by many artists, such as Matisse, Edouard Vuillard, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol. My mother was an artist when I was younger, though she doesn’t draw anymore.

At that time, she used to take me to museums and we painted together. Those experiences made me want to become an artist.

In Japan, women are expected to concentrate on taking care of their husbands and family, and on being a mother after they get married. So my mother did that, too.

When I was in college, I had a chance to exhibit at a studio.

I hardly ever listen to music.

Politics and social problems are not reflected in my works, but I do get ideas from these issues.

I love reading books, watching movies, and also I am now interested in social problems and politics, so I listen to radio programs about these things.

Why? Because speakers like journalists, critics, professors on radio can talk more freely and easily. Podcasts are helpful as well.

In my opinion, an artist’s work should show how that artist understands society, and it should reflect this in their work.

Honestly, I’m having a hard time deciding if I should have a family or continue working on my career. I get lost sometimes when the topic comes to mind.

In Japan, it’s not easy (almost impossible) for a new mother to handle her family and a career.

Interview translated from Japanese

by Jun Yosh.

Edited by Myra Pearson.

P

See more work at nyaooon.jimdo.com www.instagram.com/nyaooooooon

Can you tell us a bit about your creative process? How do you decide on the scene you’d like to paint? And do you listen to music while painting?

Above: If In One Below: Where Should I Go 39

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Girls Wanna Be Like Flowers #2

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Camping

from the “Distorted Gravity� series

ANKA ZHURAVLEVA Anka Zhuravleva studied at the Moscow Architectural Institute and worked at Mosfilm, the largest and oldest film studio in Russia. She is a photographer and painter who has shown her work in numerous exhibitions internationally. She currently resides and works in Porto, Portugal.

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P You’ve mentioned that you were partially influenced by your mother’s albums of classical painters, particularly Dutch masters and Renaissance artists. So it would seem that you were raised in an artistic household.

Can you elaborate on your childhood, and if other members of your family are artists?

AZ

To elaborate on my childhood... Well, it was a good one. Despite the fact I almost always was alone with myself, it was really good.

My favorite memories are of my grandma’s summer house where I spent about 5 months every year. All the time I explored the garden, played with flowers, looked at butterflies, or went to a field or a forest. Pictures from that time are still with me and inspire me so much as well as sounds and smells and colors I recall. I loved drawing, reading, riding my bicycle, being with animals, like a normal kid from the 1980’s.

I dreamed of becoming ballet dancer, teacher, or archaeologist. There were no

artists in my family, but half of the other members were of intellectual professions journalists, teachers, doctors.

P I’d like to ask a personal question if I may. In your bio, you mention that after your mother’s death you plunged into an “alternative lifestyle”.

Can you tell us about that time of your life, and what you have learned from it? And about the band you were in during that time?

AZ I do not remember a lot from that period. I felt as though in a fog. I did not want to feel pain, so as a result, I did not allow myself to feel anything else. I was just drifting along life like I was on a river: I did not have any dreams, wishes, plans, nothing. I just did not care. Singing in a band was a small weird experiment, nothing really serious. I actually had no talent for singing. But it was something to fill my time. If life offered me something, I accepted it: singing, modeling, making tattoos, and other weird things I did.

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You’ve worked in a variety of fields. You’ve studied architecture, art history, and you are also a painter. Would it be fair to say that you are motivated by a quest for beauty? What does beauty mean to you, and how important is it in our everyday lives?

You’ve said that your series “The Aquatic” is based on strange dreams you’ve had involving water. What are these dreams like, and are any of your other works influenced by dreams?

AZ

Yes, I think it’s fair. Actually this expression, “motivated by a quest for beauty”, could even be my slogan.

Beauty makes life meaningful.

Nothing lasts forever but we can still see that during all the centuries of human history there were people who created beauty. Beauty in stone, beauty in wood, beauty in music, beauty in pictures.

There were other ones who created it in words or just in their own lives by raising children, planting trees, and so on and so on. And as long as it persists, our lives make sense.

It exists in our everyday lives, and I’d really like for people to open their eyes and see it around us.

AZ

Those dreams are mostly a bit apocalyptic and blue but beautiful. What happened in those dreams takes place when the whole world is covered with water. After a huge wave or something like that. In one of those dreams I had even an experience of death. You can think it sounds negative, but it was beautiful.

Many of my “Distorted Gravity” pictures are also inspired by my dreams.

P

Overall, most of your photos incorporate women. What I appreciate about your work is your ability to capture human beauty in a non-sexualized way, even when the models are nude. Would you say that women are overly sexualized in mainstream media?

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Some of your work reminds me of cinema. Your “Distorted Gravity” series in particular reminds me of “House of Flying Daggers” by Zhang Yimou. And in a previous interview you’ve mentioned that you’ve thought about directing a film. Can you explain which filmmakers you admire, and why?

AZ

Thank you. Cinema is a great inspiration for me. By the way, I love that movie but never thought my pictures would remind someone of it.

Yes, I have some favorite ones. First of all, Hayao Miyazaki. from the “Distorted Gravity” series

from “The Aquatic” series

AZ

Yes, I do not like this modern tendency to sexualize the body.

I love the beauty of human’s body but the way it often appears nowadays is..how to say..I have no space to dream. For me it’s too straight - there is no intrigue, no nuance, no halftones, no shadows. It’s boring. Too photoshopped, too perfect, or there is also another extreme to show the body too naturally, with all the imperfections, with all of its ugliness. I really do not understand why. I prefer the middle ground. Perfection and imperfection working together to create some magic.

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He is my hero in the cinematic world. For me his animations are more real than many films. I admire the beauty in every frame and how he pays attention to the tiny details. and the nostalgia for childhood I feel while watching his films. Then I love Giuseppe Tornatore, especially his masterpiece The Legend of 1900. I love everything in this movie. I adore all of Jean Jenet, lots of Wong Kar Wai, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha, Jim Jarmusch. there are so many directors and amazing movies I admire. The last one I fell in love with was Paolo Sorrentino.

I think I love them all because they create their own reality and let us enter it. And they create amazingly beautiful pieces in terms of a picturesque ideal.

P

AZ

Never thought about it. I’m a woman and I just live my life, trying to do what I love and not to make compromises.

I am happy to be born in a place and in conditions where women have many of the same opportunities as men, so I never felt the difference and difficulties which many other women in the world had to endure.

People often ask me why I only photograph women. As my pictures are about my own dreams and thoughts, and I’m a woman and have no idea how to be a man, that is why I portray women.

See more work at www.anka-zhuravleva.com www.instagram.com/anka_ zhuravleva_arts/

from “The Aquatic” series

What does feminism mean to you, and how has your experience as a woman shaped your work?

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Cover Story Melissa Fite Johnson

After picture: triple D’s that look you in the eye, an eternally skeptical brow, a forehead free from worry lines. Ten surgeries in one day. Her ears are pinned back— a procedure my mother considered for me when I was born.

Gently, she pressed the elfish tip of one ear against my skull, her hand cupped over my eardrum like a shell.

At that, my father walked her to the bathroom mirror, removed my mother’s hand from my face.

Isn’t she perfect? he said.

from the “Color Tales” series

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READING A FIVE-YEAR- OLD ISSUE OF VANITY FAIR Melissa Fite Johnson

The cover actress wearing a striped bikini and floppy hat tells her interviewer over iced teas and salads how grateful she is for her father’s remission.

She will lose him in two years.

The actor photographed on page 80 chasing his model wife and three kids around the gazebo he built in their backyard will sleep with the nanny.

No one will remember that year’s it girl after a series of box-office flops, or even the 1963 Oscar winner memorialized in this issue.

Each page features a new face looking up at me with such hope.

I cannot cut new lines into their palms, or even warn them what’s coming.

WHY I CAN’T BE NEAR YOU Melissa Fite Johnson

An answer to “Restraining Order Blues” by the Eels Everybody knows you’re not a violent man, but loving you is like being crushed by the whole weight of an ocean.

Hold this tin can; I’ll take the other.

Let the string dip like a half-moon into the fifty feet between us.

Say what you want, but say it while you’re so far away you could fit in my palm.

Melissa Fite Johnson received her Master’s in English literature from Pittsburgh State University in Kansas. She was the featured poet in the Fall 2015 issue of The Journal: Inspiration for the Common Good. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as Valparaiso Poetry Review, Broadsided Press, Rust + Moth, Midwest Quarterly, and velvet-tail. In 2015, Little Balkans Press published her first book of poetry,While the Kettle’s On, a Kansas Notable Book and winner of the Nelson Poetry Book Award. Melissa and her husband live in Kansas, where she teaches English. For more, visit melissafitejohnson.com

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I am Only Interested in Wild Things

Last night i slept with a dog i do not know

I am only interested in wild things: the withering plant pressing its nose against the glass or the bulbous root shoveling air into its hungry mouth, collapsing on its vase.

Last night I slept with a dog I do not know.

These things shrink away like eggshells found on the shore,

If I didn’t look at him enough, he would rest his jaw on my shoulder.

His head was weightless like the gills underneath a mushroom’s cap.

June Pepper

skeletons of possibility

June Pepper

He had one black eye and kisses for days.

He was curious of the crackly blues recordings I played from the year my mother was born.

He had good taste.

June Pepper is an American writer based in Seoul. Her poetry looks to the simplicity of nature to illustrate experiences humans consider complex. Currently, she is experimenting with cinematic storytelling by co-writing a script for a short film. http://theoneseat.tumblr.com/

He liked the taste of me.

He chewed on my hands until my fingertips started to bleed.

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BEAR WITNESS Tiana Clark

originally published in Thrush Poetry Journal Before I knew how to fill my onyx body with slick measures, dip every curve in my skin with dark sway, I needed a picture.

Before me stood a long black dress I called Woman― you stand opaque

Tiana Clark is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Equilibrium, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University where she serves as the Poetry Editor for Nashville Review. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from Rattle, Best New Poets 2015, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review,The Adroit Journal, Muzzle Magazine,The Offing, and elsewhere.

Find her online at www.tianaclark.com

with your back to me, a statue of witness, the door of Yes― I can Return to the monument of your silhouette to find my longest muscle.

We both stare down the ocean to stillness.

O, Carrie― what are you trying to tell me here?

I’ve been standing by water my whole damn life trying to get saved.

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Maggie Devlin performing at DGBD in Seoul, KR photos by: Douglas Vautour

On Doubt by maggie devlin

I am a haunted woman. I’m haunted within and without by a word; a word I’m sure many of you are familiar with. It’s a friendly looking word, full of round,unthreatening letters, until you reach that final, punctuating ‘t’. It’s the ghost that sleeps beside me, and the breath on the back of my neck. It is the alien weight I carry, self-consciously unmaternal, in my belly.

I’m talking about ‘Doubt’. In the springtime stroll of life, cotton dress billowing, Doubt is the leering masturbator at the bus stop that sends you scampering home, cardigan pulled tightly closed. Shouldn’t have worn that fancy dress in the first place, you think.

When I’m not teaching English, I’m trying to make music.

(See that? “Trying.” That’s doubt.) I’ve always had an impulse to perform. I used to glue balloons with drawn-on faces to wooden

spoons and re-enact West Side Story in its entirety from behind the sofa. There followed puppet shows in my council estate back garden, am-dram, school choir, and a long run of pub singing.

Somewhere in middle of all this I discovered guitar music via The Bends CD I stole from my brother’s bedroom. He was angry, but it was worth it, because I realised I loved guitar music. I mean I adored it. I can still sing every lead guitar line from the first three Radiohead albums. I loved it so much that I did everything I could to get closer to guitars.

In the sweaty, sticky stretch of puberty, it never once occurred to me that I could learn to play.

I even bought a guitar, then lent it to male friends. I think I knew how to play Zombie by the Cranberries. I certainly knew how to hold it and look at myself in the mirror. I only ever saw one girl play on telly: Alanis Morisette. I was amazed. I turned to my brother: ‘That’s so cool!’ He changed the channel.

‘Fucking tacky’. That was the end of my brief love-affair with Alanis.

When I eventually bought an acoustic guitar at 19 with the intention of learning, I discovered to my horror that I bought every gear magazine my male friends had 6 or 7 I could. Glued every picture years of experience on me. It of every guitarist I liked onto seems that in-between teenage my school art folder. My wall masturbatory discovery and was a shrine to skinny, sullen Key Stage 3 exams, they were shredders. I even wore a pick learning Led Zeppelin and around my neck on a dog Weezer songs. What was I chain, just like Green Day’s doing in that time? Cutting Billy Joe (judgment graciously out pictures of Pete Vuckovic accepted). I Pepe le Pew’d my probably. Doubt came and way into the arms of as many punched me in the tit. ‘You are guitar players my small town too late!’ it said. So I gave up, could offer—once resulting which is fucking funny because in a broken bone (another now I’m 31 and trying to learn story). I did everything, in again. fact, besides actually learn the guitar.

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On the gallop, your legs begin to slip, your clutching fingers tire. You bounce awkwardly, a burden on the labouring back.

And what if they let go? Your palms begin to sweat, your grip loosens further. Doubt.

Maggie’s first show with her new project Party Fears, and last with the much coveted Gibson Firebird

‘Haha!’ you say. ‘But there are lots of lady indie types!

You, Maggie, are a whiny sow.’ I am a whiny sow, but that aside, there are a relative handful of lady indie types, and while I wouldn’t dream of taking away from their hard work and talent they all tend to have something in common: fortune smiled on them. Real fortune. Class fortune. They were nurtured. Doubt was minimised. My dad’s version of nurturing my musical talent was buying me Elkie Brooks’ greatest hits on tape. He did the best he could. St Vincent went to Berklee, as did Aimee Mann.

Bjork studied classical piano and flute. Have you heard Bat for Lashes speak? It’s lovely. Posh. You can hear the comfortable confidence that comes with money.

My musical hero was Kirsty MacColl but she played fuck all, just pelted us with vocals as clear and hard as her lyrics. She surrounded herself with great musicians, and I suppose that’s what I do too. I piggy-back. But there’s a fear, isn’t there?

So why make music at all? Why not just watch Grand Designs with bed socks on and swoon at Kevin McCloud’s benign haughtiness? Learning a skill so late in the game is gutwrenchingly frustrating, at times shameful even. So why do I bother: If I’m so late, as that bastard Doubt keeps saying?

Because there is nothing in this world that I like to do more.

There’s nothing I’m quite so good at, even in my limited ‘goodness’. Playing in Seoul gave me a bigger bite of the cherry and now I want to glut myself on it. I can’t not write music. I dream of it. I wake up with songs ringing in my head. I suppose music is a kind of ghost too; a bedfellow to doubt, or a panacea to it.

Berlin grafitti quickly appealed to this feminist singer’s sensibilities

Doubt withers in the performance because I’m not me anymore. The multitude fears: that I’m inadequate, that I’m a parasite feeding on the talents of my betters, that I’m a terrible person: a bitch, a dick, inches away from discovery or abandonment. Aging, money, the disintegration of the NHS. Fear of air travel! They aren’t in the performance because I am not in the performance.

I am erased. I have escaped into the shared bubble that floats between the band and the crowd, the mic and the mixing desk. I at once vanish and appear. When everything comes together on stage, it sounds like precisely that: coital, cathartic, creative.

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Scream engine: Maggie’s final show in Seoul

So there I am trapped in the ouroboros of debatably imagined unfairness, and the one genuinely satisfying means of escaping those very regrets and fears. As I tear around the doubt/joy music circuit, I’m learning to say thanks more. I believe I have the best people in my life to help me and teach me, to bring my songs to life—guide me, encourage me. I might start apologising to them less, needing them less greedily than I do. It’s a reasonable goal. I’m trying. I am. And I have the means to try. Many don’t, and that’s a good thought to keep with me. I should cosy up to that feeling more; that I am fortunate.

Freedom to learn, even now in my – gasp! - thirties: is a good companion. A better companion than Doubt. The bastard!

Maggie Devlin is a Northern Irish musician and writer who previously performed and resided in Seoul. Currently she is based in Berlin. Her work has been published in Bust and Lola Magazine. She performs vocals and guitar in Baekma, New Blue Death, and Party Fears. facebook.com/igotpartyfears ballyblogblog.wordpress.com