M iscellany VOLUME LVII ISSUE 1
Georgia Southern’s Magazine of the Arts
MISCELLANY 1
COVER DESIGN
STAFF
Magazines Editor-In-Chief ARIELLE COAMBES Editor DUSTIN TILLIGKEIT Production Manager JOSE GIL Design Editor MATT VEAL Designer BRITTNI FAVORITE Designer KELLY SLYFIELD Designer ALEXANDRA TOBIA Business Manager CHLOE DOUGLAS Distribution Manager BRADLEY YORK Distribution Assistant MANUEL GIRBAL Distribution Assistant MARCELO SANDOVAL Marketing Manager MARISSA MARTIN Projects Coordinator AYANNA BEYAH Public Relations Coordinator PEYTON CALLANAN Branding Coordinator EMILY SKOLROOD
OFFICE OF STUDENT MEDIA Interim Director KERRY GREENSTEIN
The Miscellany is copyrighted 2012 by Miscellany and Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Ga. It is printed by South Georgia Graphics, Claxton, Ga. The Miscellany is operated by GSU students who are members of Student Media, a Georgia Southern student-led organization operating through the Dean of Student Affairs Office and the Division of Student Affairs & Enrollment Management. The magazine is produced three times a year by GSU students for the Georgia Southern University community. Opinions expressed herein are those of the student writers and editors and DO NOT reflect those of the faculty, staff, administration of GSU, Student Media Advisory Board nor the University System of Georgia. Partial funding for this publication is provided by the GSU Activities Budget Committee. Advertisements fund the remaining costs. Advertising inquiries may be sent to Office of Student Media, PO Box 8001, or by calling the Business Office at 912-478-5418. Inquiries concerning content should be sent to Magazine EIC at 912-478-0565 or by emailing magseditor@georgiasouthern.edu. All students are allowed to have one free copy of this publication. Additional copies cost $1 each and are available at the Office of Student Media in the Williams Center. Unauthorized removal of additional copies from a distribution site will constitute theft under Georgia law, a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine and/or jail time 2 Fall 2013
Transit
Alexander Smith Graphic design major Digital artwork “I was born in Colorado Springs on April 2nd, 1992. Because my dad was in the military, I did a lot of traveling in my childhood, especially around Europe and America. This exposure to different cultures fostered my interest in the arts. I dabbled in traditional arts until my freshman year of high school, when I started teaching myself to use Adobe Photoshop. From that point on I developed my skill with a number of digital design programs, such as Cinema 4D, Terragen, and Adobe Illustrator. I am currently studying Graphic Design at Georgia Southern. My designs fall within a number of genres, but I’m especially passionate about science fiction and space themes.
The concept for this piece is a large structure used for faster-than-light travel, a staple of space sci-fi. It was inspired by a number of stories that share this concept. The design for the actual structure was intended to be organic to imply a very futuristic civilization that merges aesthetics and functionality. About a week was spent modeling it in Cinema 4D. The planet it orbits was created in Terragen over a period of days. Finally, I took the two elements to Photoshop and spent another few days doing things such as adding the stars in the background, brushing in the lighting for the structure and planet, and adding the spaceships in transit.” MISCELLANY 3
EDITOR'S LETTER I would like to thank all of you brave enough – and crazy enough – to submit your amazing work to the Miscellany. Without you, this publication could never exist. As a fiction writer and a past submitter, I understand the difficulties and stress that comes with this process. You have to pick out your best work from a dozen other pieces and then you have to wait for weeks at a time while it’s judged. It is a stressful process, but in the end, all of that is worth it. It is an awesome feeling to see your work published and I am very happy that all of you took the leap and sent in your work. This issue of the Miscellany is somewhat different from past issues. That I am the editor is not the only piece of newness to accompany this publication. Going into this semester, everyone who worked on this issue was absolutely dedicated to improving the magazine wherever possible. We wanted to do this not only to produce a quality magazine, but also to give our submitters something to be proud of. We wanted to host an even larger release party to honor all of our submitters. We wanted to build a website where every submitter could be featured, rather than the small few we are able to print in this edition. And we wanted the magazine to be produced with the highest standards of quality in mind. In order to do this, we decided to enact submission fees. I understand that many of you may have found it difficult to submit because of the fees and our new process, but please understand how necessary it is. With your help, we are able to stretch our limited resources even further and give you guys the celebration you deserve. We wanted to create a publication that reflected how much effort you have all put into these submissions, so we chose to strive for better and we have achieved it. As is typical of any project as complex as this, there were hiccups in the process. As always, the Miscellany is dependent on the work and creativity of the students of Georgia Southern. You guys have certainly delivered and in order to present your work in the best possible way, my coworkers and I have worked hard to deliver a publication that you can be proud to be in, so I hope you enjoy it. It has been my goal since I started working with Student Media in 2011 to work on this magazine and seeing all the wonderful art and writing that goes into it makes me immensely proud to present the fall 2013 Miscellany Magazine of the Arts. Sincerely,
Dustin E. Tilligkeit Miscellany Magazine of the Arts Editor 4 Fall 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS Student & FACULTY Work 6.
Bonding Ashley Alabo
16.
The Owl and the Rose Mallory Morgan
7.
Rocephin Kendall Arakawa
17.
My Monster Jessie Reese
8.
Zaynsational Courtney Bath
18.
Bourbon Kimeko McCoy
9.
The Calm Before the Storm TeKeya Carter
20.
Windows Aleyna Rentz
10.
Koi Series Brooch 1 Haley Coker
21.
SuperMoon Jeff Schmuki
11.
Dat Thorax Chase Chalker
22.
Zealots Will Price
12.
Infidel Nadia Dreid
24.
Spirit Bear Ileana Silivasi
13.
Leaping Turtles Erika Jordan
25.
Trifocal Snapshot Toni Todd
14.
Bridge to Washington State Kayleh-Marie Law
26.
Togetherness and Loneliness Toni Todd
15.
The Other Side Tasha Lund
27.
Worth Less Carlie Ayn Williams
JUDGES 28.
2D Art Elsie Hill
36. Fashion Judge Ashley Newsome
30.
Photography Judge Jessica Hines
38. Nonfiction Judge Danny Bauer
32.
Digital Art Judge Santanu Majumdar
40. Poetry Judge Zach Bush
34.
3D Art Jason McCoy
42. Fiction Judge Jared Sexton
MISCELLANY 5
Rocephin Kendall Arakawa Nursing major Poetry
A darkening morning awoken so selenic. Down he drove me to the clinic With my nose buckled into tears. I got a shot in the left shoulder and He petted my hair while I cried: An elegy of getting older- now forgotten fears And though sick- we were- surrounded, We founded (he and me, his afferent moll) A daring to meet our staurolite burning And tanzanite Thursday morning stroll: Caring and tipsy with one and the other. And the dawn we, though with proffering, stole.
Bonding
Ashley Alabo 2D art major
Digital artwork
6 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 7
The Calm Before the Storm
TeKeya Carter
Studio art major
Zaynsational
Acrylic paint
Courtney Bath
Studio art major Colored pencil
8 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 9
Koi Series Brooch Haley Coker Art major Enamel on copper, sterling silver
Dat Thorax
Chase Chalker
Journalism major Photography
10 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 11
Infidel
Nadia Dreid Journalism major Poetry you have built entire shrines to his mouth, living in a cathedral shaped of all his harsh words and discarded teeth. stop writing psalms about his tongue, prostrating yourself at his lips. he does not understand you are hanging your moon on him, this is sacrilege. neither he nor your god deserve that. his jaw you’ve made into a hollowed out ship you ride home from loneliness. on the sea of your insecurities, he is fresh water, scarce. how many pilgrimages have you made into his body? how often have you offered your burnt hopes to the holy space inside his throat? the way you breathe his name is blasphemy. i know you think burrowing yourself into the inside of his cheek each night is paradise.
Leaping Turtles
Erika Jordan
Graphic design major Tempera paint
but when he swallows you whole, the false gods you found in his wisdom teeth will only prove wood to the fire in his belly.
12 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 13
Bridge to Washington State Kayleh-Marie Law Art major Photography
The Other Side Tasha Lund
Studio art major Photography
14 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 15
My Monster Jessie Reese Journalism major Nonfiction
Those first few days, my life went by in flashes. My friends surrounding my hospital bed in a circle, the harsh looks of concern on their faces, pulling the corners of their lips down. The monster in my chest beating on my ribcage, ripping me apart with every breath I took. A nurse smiling at me as she pushed the syringe into the tube that stretched the skin of my hand. The monster lost the fight against the morphine, lessening his bite to a dull nibble. The pale green eyes of my mother, tearing up as she rubbed my back and I screamed. I was hooked up to machine upon machine, one read my oxygen, and was constantly beeping, telling the doctors my levels were too low. One read my heartbeats, and left sticky pads and wires that even if I could move, I’d never escape from. One delivered fluids that made my skin puffy and had a small port that could hold the magic that quieted my monster. I had been in that small bed for a few days, but when my monster finally let go of me enough to go home, I had been stuck in those sheets that were constantly wet with fever, and paper-thin gowns that left little to the imagination for fifteen long days and sixteen longer nights. The first night was by far the worst. The monster had been yelling all that day, but he had waited to show me what he was really made of for that night. I felt him awaken and begged my mom to call the nurse. She said it was too early for another dose. The monster stretched his arms far too wide for my chest to hold, trying to break me, trying to rip me to pieces. He took hold of my lung and pulled. He won and his victory spilled out into my ribcage. I screamed over and over as tears spilled down my cheeks. My mother watched in horror as I begged and screamed until the nurse broke protocol and delivered salvation in a little syringe. She had quieted my monster, for now, but the damage had been done. He had taken part of my lung, and laughed as it died and my chest filled, making each thick gulp of air my body demanded the hardest struggle I’d ever have to endure. That night, during the battle, through the screams, I had decided to give up. A part of me whispered her surrender, let the monster win. Through the red-hot pain, it’s hard to see the other side. It’s hard to see that things will get better. It’s hard to think about what you’d leave behind. It’s hard to fight. Part of me, though, was waiting for something. Part of me knew that I had something worth waiting for. Something that was then speeding down an interstate, far too fast, in the pouring down rain.
The Owl and the Rose Mallory Morgan
Studio art major Block print
16 Fall 2013
After that nurse quieted my monster, my head was a foggy mess. All it remembered was how to close my eyes, and let the warmth of my blood carry me away. When I awoke from my medicated, mutated sleep, the room was dark. My monster was still quiet; more of a gnawing than an attack, and a monitor was steadily beeping, suggesting that I was still alive. Though my brain was hazy, and thoughts hard to articulate, I felt a large hand holding mine and a heaviness resting next to my leg on the sheets. I must have moved, because I watched a shadowy figure reach up and turn on the light above my head. I then stared into the dark green eyes that my heart had been waiting for and I made out a smile as lips pressed to my forehead. I whispered, “You’re here.” Then the warmth took me under again. MISCELLANY 17
Bourbon Kimeko McCoy Journalism major Fiction
“Won’t you come in Mickey?” “Yes. Thank you.” “Can I get you something to drink? I have white wine, bourbon and sweet tea.” “Definitely bourbon.” “Alright. I’ll get it for you.” I went in to the kitchen as my cat, Ezra Pound, followed closely behind and just as unsure as I was of what to make of the situation. Pulling down a glass cup and bourbon that I had received at my 30th birthday party and had not yet managed to finish, I peered to see. My best friend’s husband Mickey was sitting on the couch with his hands on his knees tapping his foot quietly. There was no rhythm to the tapping. Just tapping. I finished pouring the drink and poured a little for myself before walking back out to meet Mickey on the couch where he sat. He’d been to my house once before to take my best friend and his wife, Katherine, home once after we spent a day out together but I did find it peculiar that
18 Fall 2013
he’d found his way back to my house without Katherine this time. “So you must tell me what caused you to come pay me a visit.” “Oh nothing really,” Mickey started. “I just wanted to come by being that I was in the area. I was just taking a walk really. You know the doctor’s in the paper say that type of thing is good for you?” He swirled the cup around a few times before raising it to his face to take a small sip and then continued to finish most of the drink. I had set mine down after a small sip, I had more of a taste for wine for as long as I can remember. “Of course. I’ve heard that as well.” “Well yeah, I decided to try it out and here I am.” “Certainly. If you don’t mind me asking, where is Katherine?” “Home. You know Kat don’t believe in that stuff and she don’t listen to much that I say, so I left the house. Kat hasn’t had too much to drink yet, so she’ll be fine.”
“Oh of course.” I gave a nervous laugh and took another sip of my drink and we sat in silence for a few minutes monitoring the walls as well as one another. “It is getting rather late isn’t it Mickey?” “I figure it is. The sun’s started setting. You don’t mind if I stay a little longer do you?” “I suppose not,” he turned and looked at me. “Red’s a nice color for you. It reminds me of the dress that you had on yesterday. It was a fine dress.” “Thank you.” I finished the last of my bourbon and went to stand up to avoid what seemed like a train wreck that I couldn’t prevent from happening. “Would you like some more to drink? I have plenty.” Mickey tugged at my robe and slunk his arm around my waist. “That’s quite alright. I figure I’ve had enough to drink. Honest. Why don’t you sit back down and talk to me for a while?” It was true that I had felt a little woozy and I did indeed want Mickey but not enough for me to act upon all of my thoughts. He was a fool anyways. A plain faced fool. I stood
up and wobbled to find my balance.“I need to lie down. I’m a little tired dear.” I left my drink sitting on the wooden coffee table before us and started for my bedroom in an attempt to encourage Mickey to leave. That’s what normal guests, though I didn’t have very many, did. I looked for Ezra Pound and was comforted by the fact that he was in the same spot as always in my room, which was the bottom left corner of my bed. “If it’s no problem, see yourself out. Goodnight Mickey,” I called down the hall. I hung my robe up on the small golden coat hanger that was attached to the back of my door, closed it and got in the bed with hopes that he would take the hint. Knocks came at my bedroom door and Mickey stood before me again with his hands in his pockets and smiled at me until my legs felt like they were attached to 30-pound weights. “You never finished your drink darlin’.” I’m not sure if I wanted Mickey to stay, but I didn’t want him to go either. “Come in.”
MISCELLANY 19
Windows
Aleyna Rentz Writing and linguistics major Fiction Hannah was thinking about windows. She was thinking about Mr. McClellan’s bedroom window that Tom had shattered while playing catch with those older boys from down the street. She was thinking about her own windows that could have used a good scrubbing. She was thinking about the kitchen window. As Hannah doused the afternoon’s dishes in the soapy sink water, she recalled that, as far as she could remember, all the kitchen windows she had ever seen were right over the sink. She wondered why that was. She remembered washing the plates and glasses after dinner each night when she was eleven, hands deftly and unconsciously working through sauces and suds, lips humming some melody, eyes wandering out the window and onto the scene before her: A pastoral poem written on the horizon, grass as high as Hannah’s forehead clamoring towards the pink evening sky, set ablaze by a weary sun- what if the sun caught the field on fire? Never mind that, God wouldn’t allow it. And the white picket fence, its whitewash sweating in the sleepy afternoon and its gate swinging lazily on a rusty hinge, and the horses
20 Fall 2013
grazing- Fancy and Glory, Sol and Luna. Sol and Luna- those were the colts, and Hannah knew that one day they would grow up mighty and strong and she might ride one of them through that field, beyond the limpid gate, to wherever the field ended- but Hannah liked to think that the field never ended, that its tall grasses stretched on towards the sky, towards the rising sun, towards anything… Hannah had happily accepted the honor of naming the colts. Hannah’s curiosity, always running, never resting, had inspired her to flip through her older sister’s high school Spanish textbook one day: Luna was “moon” and Sol was “sun.” And they stood in the field, growing as swiftly as the grass, while Hannah’s hands flew and she imagined where the moon and the sun would one day take her. A wasp flew into the torn window screen and bounced angrily back into flight. Hannah wasn’t eleven; the sun had burned to ashes, the moon had waned, the poem had been ripped from the sky. All Hannah saw was the back of Mr. McClellan’s house, the shattered glass of his bedroom window, and little Tom pulling at the grass that barely tickled his ankles.
Super Moon Jeff Schmuki
Faculty in the Department of Art Photography
MISCELLANY 21
Zealot Will Price Business intelligence major Fiction
A young boy dressed in his older brother’s hand-me-downs was wandering up a hill somewhere outside of London. The boy was searching for a mansion his older brother had spoken of. The old mansion just outside the city had burned to the ground long ago. The house took the inhabitants with it in the inferno. He was bent over sifting through the tall grass looking for singed rocks and burned roots when he lifted his head and found what he came looking for. The boy saw four, maybe five stone columns strewn out across the hilltop, all charred and blackened. The boy shifted his gaze over his right shoulder and noticed a dark, ash-covered headstone standing in solitude amongst the rubble. The boy sheepishly brushed the thick layer of ash from the old headstone and read, “Moderation.” The ruins confused the boy. In his bewilderment he lost focus and stumbled over an old birch tree.
22 Fall 2013
A girl came into view. She carried a tray made of the finest silver with the man’s tea resting on top of it.
hope where it’s hard to find, and drives them through struggles that seem impassible!”
“For the Queen’s sake, finally.” The old man spat.
The old man’s anger grew linearly with the fire behind him. “Hope. Hope cannot be quantified, appraised, or calibrated. Hope isn’t numbers. Only a feeble mind can put their wellbeing in the hands of something they do not control. Hope. Ha!” The old man beamed at the girl while the fire behind him sprawled to the almanacs and encyclopedias.
“What are you reading, sir?” The girl queried.
The top of his head crashed into the unforgiving side of one of the fallen pillars. The boy’s vision began to falter. The corners of his eyes grew darker and darker as he fell into sleep. He began to hear voices and see faces. The voices and faces were both foreign to him. At first he strained to catch a word or two from their drabbled speech. “Tea… Where?” a man said. Like a camera the voices began to come into focus. “I asked for tea twenty-seven and a half minutes ago and it remains absent from my sight. I believed this to be a relatively simple task, even for the dimwitted like yourself.” An old man hissed. The old man was dressed in a hunter green lounge robe and silk sleeping pants. His affluence could be felt by his south London accent alone. Sitting in his great room at a throne made of leopard skin the man puffed on a pipe made of briarwood. He sat surrounded by a semi-circle of encyclopedias and almanacs and other scholarly works.
“It’s none of your damned business,” The old man grumbled. “But, if you must know, I am reading an account of the Spanish Inquisition.” The old man shifted in his seat. “Disgusting, isn’t it? The brutality a man’s religion can force him to commit.” The old man said in a self-righteous tone, as if getting on a soapbox. “It disturbs me something as trivial as a religion can manipulate even an intelligent man’s brain to the point of absurdity.” The old man huffed. “Well, I do not claim to know much about the Inquisition, but I don’t think a belief system to be trivial,” the girl started towards the old man. “Don’t you think it’s a good thing? To have everything planned out for you?” Instantly, the old man became furious, “I live my life empirically, dear, there is no evidence pointing to an intelligent creator therefore there cannot be one. To think there is one is childish.” The fireplace situated behind the man’s chair hacked out a small contingent of sparks on to the fur rug adorning the man’s feet. The rug was set ablaze. The girl reciprocated, “Childish or not, believing in things gives people
The old man continued, “Even if this creator exists, who’s to say he is infallible and worthy of leadership? Throughout history gods have thrown floods, plagues, and great storms at the people of earth, even starting wars for their own pleasure. Hardly qualities of great leaders, I’d say!” The blaze now reached the ceiling and had consumed the entire room. “The creator works in mysterious ways!” The girl cried. “We cannot know, nor should we question their intentions!” Gasping for air, the girl shrieked, “We cannot question things we cannot understand, that’s hogwash! Nothing that happens needs any explanation! To think otherwise is nonsense!” “Everything must be questioned! Everything that happens can be explained numerically and evidentially! To think otherwise is nonsense!” The old man gasped as the flames took him. The boy opened his eyes and held his stare at one word. Moderation. MISCELLANY 23
Spirit Bear Ileana Silivasi
Anthropology major Watercolor
The Trifocal Snapshot Toni Todd
3D art major Charcoal
24 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 25
Worth Less Carlie Ann Williams Poetry
Togetherness and Loneliness Toni Todd
3D art major
75 Print that on your face The price of womanhood Stitch it on your clothes Red embroidery running down Blood pulsing through wood and silk 75 Sing it to your daughters Standing proud in their black robes Their armor’s not thick enough For the battlefield of wealth And the warfare of being 75 Carve mud and plaster Weave straw and bone Until it stands tall above your head An effigy of worthlessness Let it Burn 75 A penny for a penny A dime for a dime Word for Word For richer or poorer 100 That’s the equality I will fight for
Charcoal
26 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 27
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
Elsie Hill 2D Art judge
Elsie Hill has taught painting and drawing at the City of Savannah Visual Arts Department, Harlem School of the Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, Savannah College of Art and Design and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University. She has exhibited her paintings continuously since 1995 and was most recently selected as a finalist in the Natural Resource Defense Council Environmental Art Award in New York City and awarded second place in the Inaugural Armstrong National 2-D Competition Exhibition, in Savannah, Georgia.
Nest
Elsie Hill Painting
28 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 29
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT JESSICA HINES digital Art Judge
Artist and storyteller Jessica Hines uses the camera’s inherent quality as a recording device to explore illusion and to suggest truths that underlie the visible world. At the core of Hines’ work lies an inquisitive nature inspired by personal memory, experience and the unconscious mind. Hines began to cultivate her creative disposition early in life and her love of the arts led her to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Continuing to pursue her interests, she studied photography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. Hines is a winner of the PDN Magazine’s Photo Annual 2013, The Annenberg Space for Photography, War/Photography presentation, Los Angeles, California, The Kolga Award for Best Experimental Photography, Kolga Tbislisi Photo in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2012, Humanitarian Documentary Grant in the WPGA Annual 2010 Pollux Awards, juried by Philip Brookman, Chief Curator and Head of Research at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, First Prize in Fine Art Portfolio in the World Wide Photography Gala Awards 2010, Grand Prize for portfolio in the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010 and exhibited in the New York Photo Festival 2011 PhotoVisuara’s In Love and War, NYPF!!, curated by Adriana Teresa, and exhibited in Subjective/Objective, curated by Elisabeth Biondi, 2011, New York, New York. Jessica Hines’ work has been widely exhibited and published throughout the world in North and South America, throughout Asia, Europe, and Oceania, Her work continues to be seen in The New Yorker magazine.
The Remembrance #20, My Brother’s War
Jessica Hines Photography
30 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 31
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
SANTANU MAJUMDAR
BRBLA LOGO Santanu Majumdar Digital art
digital Art Judge Since the last decade, Santanu have lived in India, England and USA. During this time, he worked with designers, craftsmen, engineers, architects and professionals of all these nations. Santanu gathered experience in exhibition design, retail design, packaging, signage system design, interactive design, short films, game design and print production. At present his interest has grown to technology based communication design. The last few years have given him exposure to different work cultures, languages, local customs, learning styles and political perspectives. Santanu speaks four different languages. English, Hindi, Gujrati and Bengali. Santanu has received several national and international awards, which makes him recognized as a successful designer. He has worked professionally for well-known organizations like the United Nation, UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme, Help the Aged, Design C, JWT, Tesco, Londis Super Markets, Day Lewis Pharmacy, Government of Madhya Pradesh, India, and Government of India.
32 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 33
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
JASON MCCOY 3d Art judge
Jason McCoy is an artist living in Statesboro, Georgia who holds an MFA in Sculpture and a BFA in Ceramics. Jason is currently the Studio Supervisor for the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University. His bodies of work are comprised of large scale hand hewn timbers that he uses to construct sculptures that manipulate space and balance, abstract figurative cast metal works, and functional pottery. His most recent exhibitions were in The Kinsey Institute Juried Exhibition, and a solo Exhibition at Middle Georgia College.
34 Fall 2013
Cantilever
Jason McCoy Sculpture
MISCELLANY 35
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
ASHLEY NEWSOME Fashion judge Ashley Newsome earned a Masters of Fine Art degree in Fashion from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a Bachelors of Art degree in Art and Design/Apparel Technology from the North Carolina State University College of Design and Textiles. Study in these areas has directed her interests towards apparel design, manufacturing, and textile development. She is currently a visiting instructor of Fashion Merchandising and Apparel Design at Georgia Southern University, teaching courses in fashion design, theory and development. She is passionate about the advancement of craft culture as well as the implementation of sustainable practices in the fashion industry. She views her works of wearable art as a marriage between historically inspired techniques and modern aesthetics. Outside of teaching, she creates apparel and fiber art collections and conducts research on the sociology and ethnography of dress. Her work can be viewed at www.behance.net/ashleynewsome
Heart Strings Romper
Ashley Newsome Fashion design
36 Fall 2013
MISCELLANY 37
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
DANNYBAUER Nonfiction judge
38 Fall 2013
Dan Bauer serves as chair and professor in the Department of Writing and Linguistics. He came to Georgia Southern after ten years as a faculty member at Georgia College in Milledgeville, and seven years before that at two small private liberal arts colleges, one in upstate New York and another in Iowa. His wide research interests bridge many disciplines but focus especially on the genre of the essay, writing assessment, the crucial intersection of composition and epistemology, and the legacy of public educational institutions with regard to racial equity, opportunity, and curriculum. He has published in College Composition and Communication and The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, among other places, and he is currently at work on a book that simultaneously aligns the work of Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee, the Harlem Renaissance, and important black leaders and educators who emerged out of Hancock County (just 30 miles east of Milledgeville) in the early 20th century. A former secondary language arts teacher and debate coach, he held a joint appointment in both Middle Grades Education and English at Georgia College, which included directing a local site of the National Writing Project, parallel to the site housed in his new home department at Georgia Southern. He has been recognized for his teaching and his involvement with students beyond the classroom on all campuses where has worked in the past, and he currently serves, along with one of his Georgia College colleagues, as research publication editor for the Association of Middle Level Education (AMLE), which includes oversight of both Middle School Journal and RMLE Online.
From "Beyond Written Off: Surviving and Thriving Through Adolescent Literacy" As professionals, teachers can play an important role in resisting norms and traditions in education that lead to writing students off and accepting failure for some. We revolt against all practices and structures that threaten access to equitable, meaningful, and authentic learning opportunities for all students. We revolt in order to blend what we are required to do with what we know fosters student learning, based on both research and experience. High stakes standardized tests too often simply reduce students to a score. These tests decontextualize and compartmentalize. They compact 180 days of school into a few hours. They reduce fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama into short passages and then reduce those snippets to a few questions. In the name of leaving no child behind, these tests reduce reading proficiency to four rigid responses, only one of which is “correct.” Such measures offer little space—figuratively or literally—for the complexity inherent in full engagement with texts. Through the title, Writing On Demand (2000), Anne Ruggles Gere names the artificial, high-stakes conflation of the writing process with often-superficial prompts that allow perhaps thirty minutes for composing. These tests emphasize product over all other aspects of writing processes. We do our profession and our students a disservice to conceptualize writing only in this way. Cognition and complexity often demand collaboration and careful consideration. Revolt requires ensuring that these high-stakes tests do not displace the kind of wonder and inquisitiveness that we hope to inspire in the lives of our adolescent students. Multiple external pressures create the need for revolt. Certainly, we cannot blame teachers, who facing budget cuts that result in increased class sizes, may choose to assign fewer papers. We empathize with teachers who face immense pressure from administrators to raise test scores, and who try to foist exercises like daily grammar practice into classrooms as a means to that end. Yet, more than a hundred years of research document that this practice does not transfer to writing and often creates
negativity toward writing, confusion, fear and shame of one’s home dialect (i.e., Braddock Lloyd-Jones, & Schoer, 1963; Smith, 1986; Hillocks, 1987). Furthermore, too many writing classes serve thirty or more students. We know better. Governors and legislators should know better. NCTE reminds us unambiguously that classes should cap at twenty, with no more than fifteen for remedial classes. We revolt against busy work and repeated drills in arbitrary correctness, in order to teach writing as a thoughtful, generative process of discovery that recognizes research and that reaffirms and rescues students. To fully embrace the kind of culture of writing and thinking that most enriches and inhabits an integral place in overall happiness and wellbeing, we must not only rebel against the testing mania and external pressures that have done so much to deaden teaching and learning. We must also restore the ownership of language to all students and teachers in order to encourage many forms of “correct” expression. The Five R model we advocate here welcomes students fully and unconditionally. It reminds us of the importance of a symbiotic relationship, the type of relationship that best honors what teachers and students both bring to the classroom. This environment differs dramatically from more capitalist classrooms where students end up as winners or losers as they compete to become the best learner or simply fall to the bottom of the heap. In considering the purpose of literacy, we remember the words of Tom Romano (2007), Language is not just for expression and communication. Language is for discovery… Language is our canoe up the wilderness river, our bush plane, our space capsule, our magic. Instead of ‘now you see it, now you don’t,’ using language works in reverse: ‘now you don’t see it, now you do’ (p. 170). Writing helps teachers and students learn to see not the obvious, but the sublime. The Five R’s model of teaching writers helps move beyond “written off” toward more rewarding relationships between adolescents, texts, and teachers.
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT Gazing Father Zach Bush Poetry
zach busH
Some stars don’t just fall and disappear, and most don’t explode all at once. It’s not that simple, it’s not like all of the sudden there’s this cosmic Wop Pop-Pop BAM! No, a star death takes time; explosions are a process. It’s like some stars are stronger than others. Maybe there is a universal timeline, or maybe there is no order. It’s probably wrong to expect a star to glow forever, even if you swear your star is unique; the process is impartial to favoritism. So, as I put my sunglasses on, I prepare myself for this final explosion, the one that my unique star is 65 years ripe for. Yet, no matter how much I hope for a different ending, I know that once it happens, there’ll be no brilliant showers of golden dust; nothing will reach down to touch and comfort me.
Poetry judge
Zach Bush is the author of ANGLES OF DISORDER (BlazeVOX books, 2009), AT SWAN DECAPITATION (VOX Press, 2010), THE SILENCE OF SICKNESS (Gold Wake Press, 2010) and COVENANT (*co-authored with Donora Hillard/ Gold Wake Press, 2010). He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry (2010). Bush holds a B.A. in Writing and Linguistics from Georgia Southern University (2007) and a M.F.A. in Poetry from the City College of New York (2010). He is a D.LITT. candidate at Drew University. With all graduate coursework behind him, he is currently writing his doctoral dissertation in Ancient Greek Mythology (Homeric Studies). Bush works as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing at Georgia Southern University. He and his fiancee live in Savannah, GA. He blogs @ zacharycbush.com.
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
Jared sexton Fiction judge
Jared Yates Sexton is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and serves as Managing Editor of the literary magazine BULL. His work has appeared in publications around the world and has been nominated for a pair of Pushcart’s, The Million Writer’s Award, Best of The Web, and was judged by Lee K. Abbott to be a finalist for The New American Fiction Prize. His first book, An End To All Things, is available from Atticus Books and his website can be found at jysexton.com
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When Jared Yates Sexton finished his MFA and returned to his hometown in Indiana, he found a population plagued by the kind of turmoil and tension usually reserved for fiction. Unemployment and uncertainty lurked everywhere he looked. In his debut story collection, this pervasive turbulence tilts into the fantastical as we observe the inspired, absurd, and even horrific moments in the
lives of lost and luckless Midwesterners looking for something to believe in. Through language that’s both striking and unassuming, Sexton creates a dangerous and disturbing world in which everything and everyone teeters precariously on the edge of total chaos; a world that bears a startling resemblance to our own.
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