THE STORYTELLERS ISSUE
Featuring the work of
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EDITOR’S
NOTE
A PUBLICATION OF THE ARKANSAS ARTS & FASHION FORUM PUBLISHER Robin Atkinson EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kody Ford
Photo by Kat Wilson
R
ecently, while cleaning out my Gmail, I found a mockup of The Idle Class I made in the fall of 2012 to sell ads for the first issue. I felt a rush of nostalgia. It was only eight pages, full-color, glossy – just a baby version. I placed stories from our website and used borrowed photos with grayed out areas to demonstrate ad sizes. I knew what I was doing somewhat with this venture; back in Conway I’d created and edited a monthly publication for the Log Cabin Democrat, but I’d never run a publication independently. I had a lot to learn, but no clue how extensive that education would be. In February 2013 while selling ads for our second issue, a snow storm hit in Rogers and I wanted to give up and go home. Instead, I played Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulders” and endured the cold, selling one ad that day. It didn’t get me enough money to print, but it got me a little closer to the goal. And that’s how it’s been for the last five years – one step at a time, come rain, sleet, snow or shine. During this time I’ve gone through a few thousand dollars out-of-pocket, two transmissions and plenty of sleepless nights. But I have no regrets. I accomplished everything I wanted to creatively. I achieved my goal of connecting the creative bubbles throughout our state. For five years, I kept The Idle Class going because I believed in our state and all the creatives within its borders. But most of all, to quote Walter White in the final episode of Breaking Bad, “I did it for me. Because I was good at it.” Now I’m stepping down as editor-in-chief. Maybe I’ll go for a hike or start selling essential oils. Who knows? I’m not too worried about it right now. I just want a nap. The magazine is in good hands with our new publisher, Robin Atkinson, our new editor, Julia Trupp, and our new parent organization, The Arkansas Arts & Fashion Forum. Thank you for keeping us going strong all these years. Stay tuned for what comes next. I can’t wait to read it.
Kody Ford
Founding Editor The Idle Class Magazine editorial@idleclassmag.com
MANAGING EDITOR Julia Trupp ASSISTANT EDITOR Jenny Vos GUEST EDITORS Elle Nash Molly Bess Rector INTERN Caleb Patton CONTRIBUTORS Tyler Armstrong C.S. Carrier Meikel Church Caroline Earleywine Summer El-Shahawy Carolyn Guinzio Phillip Rex Huddleston Meredith Mashburn Cassidy McCants Andrew McClain Grace Nast Randi Romo K. Samantha Sigmon Gerry Sloan Erin Spandorf Sandra Spotts Samantha Tillery Karen Jo Vennes Kat Wilson Leigh Wood COVERS Sonny Kay Stuart Lippincott COVER DESIGN Dillon Dooms LAYOUT Kody Ford
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
January 17 – March 10
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THE COLLAGIST Sonny Kay has made a name for himself in the worlds of music and art.
Fri., Feb. 1, 5 – 7 p.m.
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OTHER WORLDS Stuart Lippincott’s digital works transport the viewer to another dimension.
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COMING INTO THE LIGHT Nate Powell brings a long-gestating story to life in Come Again.
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MAKING A MOMENT Jeff Nichols discusses how he crafts an emotional payoff in his films.
DEPARTMENT OF ART AND DESIGN
PRESENTS
ON THEIR OWN TERMS
RECEPTION
Amy Sherald Welfare Queen 2012, oil on canvas
WINDGATE CENTER OF ART + DESIGN ualr.edu/art/galleries 2801 S. University Ave. • Little Rock, AR
The Messengers: A Survey of Work in Metalpoint by Marjorie Williams-Smith Metalpoint on Paper September 27, 2018 - January 5, 2019 Visit Us 1001 Wright Avenue Little Rock, Arkansas (501) 372-6822 hearnefineart@gmail.com Hours of Operation: Monday - Friday: 9:00am - 5:00 pm Saturday: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm Sunday: By Appointment Garbo Hearne, Director
Marjorie Williams-Smith Angels, 2018 Aluminumpoint, Copperpoint, Goldpoint, Silverpoint, Gouache, and Pastel on Black Acrylic Gesso on Fabriano watercolor paper 14 x 22 in.
www.hearnefineart.com
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EVENTS LITTLE ROCK On Their Own Terms January 17 – March 10, 2019 Reception – Friday, February 1, 2019, 5 – 7 p.m. Windgate Center of Art + Design (WCAD) University of Arkansas-Little Rock On Their Own Terms presents African-American art from the mid-1800s to the present. A reception is scheduled for Friday February 1, 2019 from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will occur in the Brad Cushman Gallery (WCAD Level 2) and the Small Gallery (WCAD Level 1), located at 2801 S. University Ave. on the University of Arkansas–Little Rock campus. Artists include: Amy Sherald, Kerry James Marshall, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kehinde Wiley along with Arkansans like Delita Martin, Justin Bryant, and Marjorie Williams-Smith. During the 2019 Winter/Spring semester Dr. Lynne Larsen will teach an art history seminar course on African-American art. Brad Cushman, Gallery Director at UA Little Rock curated this exhibition. On Their Own Terms will be displayed in two galleries, the Brad Cushman Gallery (WCAD Level 2) and the Small Gallery (WCAD Level 1). The exhibit activates a narrative between art created in the 19th-century by notable artists Robert Scott Duncanson, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Charles Ethan Porter, and Henry Ossawa Tanner with art created by modern and contemporary artists. The 19th Century painters are part of the Juan Rodriguez Collection (New York) and Hearne Fine Art (Little Rock) is facilitating this loan. Modern and contemporary works are on loan from Darrell and Lisa Walker, Dr. Imani Perry, Pierrette Van Cleve, other private collections, individual artists, the Arkansas Arts Center, and the UA Little Rock Permanent Collection.
Kehinde Wiley, Peter Chardon Study, 2006, Oil on Paper, 22” x 18,” On loan from Lisa and Darrell Walker
Gallery Hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on university holidays.
The Messengers: A Survey of Metalpoint Drawings by Marjorie Williams-Smith Show runs until Jan. 5, 2019 Hearne Gallery Hearnefineart.com Silverpoint drawings shone in the spotlight for a month at The Messengers: A Survey of Metalpoint Drawings by Marjorie Williams-Smith at Hearne Fine Art in Little Rock. Although she has shown work in group exhibitions at the gallery many times since 2000, this was Williams-Smith’s first solo exhibition which showed a collection of her work since 1987. “I always look forward to exhibition possibilities so I work steadily to be ready when opportunities come my way,” Williams-Smith said. “I am working toward a couple of possibilities so we’ll see what happens.” Visitors can see how silverpoint is used on different colored backgrounds and how it is combined with other metals and media, she said. Silverpoint drawing is a technique that dates back to the Renaissance and can be seen in Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo’s sketches and completed drawings. Because graphite was not discovered until the 16th century, artists used metals to create drawings on surfaces prepared with bone ash, pigments, and animal glue. The overall process of silverpoint drawing is slow and deliberate, Williams-Smith said, and once they are completed, metal-drawn art can rarely be erased. “I have used silver, gold, copper, and aluminum,” Williams-Smith said. “What is fascinating for me is that silver will tarnish over time. This changes the color and tonality of the metal. Thus, the drawing takes on a very ethereal quality.” MARJORIEWILLIAMS-SMITH.COM
EUREKA SPRINGS An Acoustic Evening with Lyle Lovett & John Hiatt Eureka Springs Auditorium February 15 – 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45, $65 and $85 theauditorium.org Legendary singer-songwriters Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt will perform at the historic Eureka Springs Auditorium at 36 S. Main Street on Friday, February 15 at 7:30 p.m. Lovett and Hiatt have been touring together periodically since 1989, delivering one of the most compelling and spontaneous concerts on the road. Lovett has four Grammy Awards to his credit, including Best Male Country Vocal Performance in 1989 and Best Country Album for The Road to Ensenada in 1996. Lovett’s newest album, Natural Forces, was released in 2009. He’s known for his hits “If I Had a Boat,” “She’s No Lady” and “Long, Tall Texan.” Hiatt has 11 Grammy nominations, and his numerous awards include induction into the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award in Songwriting from the American Music Association. Hiatt has released 19 studio albums. His latest, Dirty Jeans & Mudslide Hymns was released in 2011. He’s known for his hit songs, “Have a Little Faith in Me” and “Bring the Family.”
Lyle Lovett & John Hiatt Image courtesy of Eureka Springs A&P Commission
Finding Home Canvas Gallery Show runs until February 1 Canvas and Lens Gallery is the collaborative effort of photographer, Tom Rzonca and painter, Sandra Spotts. It is located upstairs within Eureka and Company, 1 Center Street in downtown Eureka Springs. Their latest show, Finding Home, opening December 15, features each artist’s impressions of settling as residents of Northwest Arkansas. A native New Yorker, Rzonca is a graduate of School of Visual Arts and an award-winning UX designer. His photography features landscapes, architecture and historical sites. Spotts, a graduate of the University of Arkansas and native of Central Arkansas employs abstract expressionism to capture the skies, terrain, and bodies of water around Northwest Arkansas. Featured artist in the gallery will be ceramicist Winston J. Taylor who was designated as an Arkansas Living Treasure in 2011. His current work was created with a variety of forming techniques and firing techniques including methods used by Native Americans as well as Raku. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday – Thursday and 9 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday–Saturday.
Photo by Tom Rzonca (image cropped)
HOT SPRINGS Arkansas Shorts: A Night of Short Film January 5, 2019 – 4 p.m. Central Theater Low Key Arts presents the 12th annual Arkansas Shorts: A Night of Short Film festival on Saturday, January 5, 2019 at the Central Theater (1008 Central Ave.) in Hot Springs. Doors open at 4 p.m. Directed once again by internationally acclaimed Hot Springs filmmaker Jen Gerber (on loan from HSDFF), Arkansas Shorts is the only festival of its kind in the state and showcases emerging talent from far and wide.
As in previous years, the festival features three blocks of short films presented over the course of the evening: an international block containing a grab bag of subjects from around the world; a North American block featuring high-profile, award-winning work from around the US and Canada; and, of course, the juried selection of Arkansas-made short films, including those produced in this year’s Inception to Projection filmmaking program by Lowkey Arts in Hot Springs. Festival passes are $20 and good for all three blocks are on sale now: https://bit.ly/2TLZKpr. idleclassmag.com
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THE 2018 BLACK APPLE AWARDS DRAKE FIELD / FAYETTEVILLE / 9.20.18 WORDS / KODY FORD PHOTOS / GRACE NAST & SAMANTHA TILLERY The 2018 Black Apple Awards took place on September 20 at Drake Field in Fayetteville. The event kicked off Northwest Arkansas Fashion Week, which is now the sister organization of The Idle Class Magazine since we partnered with the Arkansas Arts & Fashion Forum. As in years past, the event proved to be eclectic and entertaining with performances by musical nominees by Ashtyn Barbaree, Rhae Rhae, of.faces and Dazz & Brie. Visual art nominee Brandon Bullette painted during the evening. Grace Richardson danced as a Twi’lek from Star Wars in a costume by maker nominee Sahlah Tepes. Given the new association with NWAFW, the fashion programming was greatly expanded with a “Space Oddity” themed show by 2017 Favorite Designer winner Rosie Rose, the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese’s “Likatus in Majel” show and the AAFF Student Showcase which featured burgeoning designers from the Arkansas Fashion School and the University of Arkansas Apparel Merchandising and Product Development program.
The 2018 Black Apple Award winners are: PERFORMANCE AWARDS Comedy Group: Comedians NWA Comedian: JJ Molinaro Film Fest: Bentonville Film Fest Performance Group: Artist Laboratory Theatre Radio Show/TV Show/Podcast: The Vinyl Hour on KUAF 91.3 FM Reading Series: Ozark Poets & Writers Solo Musician: Randall Shreve Hip-hop Artist: Rhae Rhae EDM/DJ: Theronius Chunk Band: Handmade Moments CULINARY ARTS Food Truck: Cathead Biscuits Cocktails: Maxine’s Taproom Sweets: Briar Rose Bakery Chef: Patrick Lane, Arsaga’s Non-alcoholic Beverage: Onyx Coffee Alcoholic Beverage: Black Apple Crossing VISUAL ARTS Arts Event: The Little Craft Show Maker: Andy Baugus, Second Life Wood Jewelry Designer: Keely Wake, Flora & Fauna Fashion Designer: Dr. Dapper, LFLS Shoes Graphic Designer: Brenna Collins Photographer: Brandon Watts Illustrator: Gustav Carlson Mixed Media: Cory Perry 3D Artist: Amber Eggleton Public Artist: Olivia Trimble Painter: Joëlle Storet LEGACY AWARD Zeek Taylor
fashion
the Power of Visual Storytelling A Photo Spread Presented by Northwest Arkansas Fashion Week IMAGES / MEREDITH MASHBURN
As the new publisher for The Idle Class Magazine, we at the Arkansas Arts & Fashion Forum are thrilled to incorporate visual storytelling into The Storytellers Issue. Fashion allows designers to express their own fantasy on the runway: each garment a sentence, each look a chapter, building layer after layer on the runway to create a complete narrative. Without words, the onlooker is able to attribute their own meaning to the designs and choose to wear parts of the collection to craft their own new stories. A collared shirt can be worn to a business meeting, at a party, or the morning after an escapade - the piece takes on new meaning depending on how it is styled. With a quick glance of the wearer, their story is projected without a word.
Rachel Woody-Pumford Director of Operations, NWA Fashion Week Editorial shot by photographer Meredith Mashburn, model Emily Miller, designer Amy Johnson, hair and makeup by Sunshine Broder, creative direction by Robin Atkinson, and location provided by Hubbard Clothing Company.
music
FULLY COMPOSED
Musician Amos Cochran comes on his own as a composer. WORDS / ANDREW MCCLAIN PHOTO / TYLER ARMSTRONG
A
rkansan composer and multi-instrumentalist Amos Cochran recently released Unscored, his first full-length solo album. After years of playing in Fayetteville bands like Mountain of Venus, String Theory and Cecil the Cat, the Arkansas native became enamored with the work of Philip Glass and the soundtrack work of Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and stumbled into the world of original soundtracks. Inspired, Cochran reached out to his friend Daniel Campbell, who was completing his short film “The Orderly” (2011). “He asked if I could make some music that was ‘’40s Jazz.’ Knowing good and well I had no idea how to make that kind of music, I told him that I absolutely could, and got to work figuring it out! That film went on to win the Little Rock Film Festival later in the year, and that led to more films, commercials, and theater pieces.” Cochran says that Unscored started out as a prospective score for a film. “Some small sketches I made while thinking about a specific film. It turned out that I would not be scoring that film, but I still had some very specific ideas and a sound I wanted to tinker with.” The result is a warm, cinematic journey full of slow-building layers of acoustic sound. It’s airy, expansive, and conveys a peaceful sense of curiosity and adventure. “Most of [the tracks] would start with a improvised guitar or piano bit, I would loop those out and then add the other set of instruments around it... and then one-by-one subtract or simplify what was being played. I had recently finished up the score for AETN’s Dream Land with director/cinematographer Gabe Mayhan. For that score we talked a lot about music that sneaks in and out without you noticing the fact that the music slowly disappears and reappears, and never having a hard cut out with the score. I must have still been in that mindset when I started the album.” Cochran played piano, acoustic guitar and bass on the album. The clarinet on “Sleep Boy (Don’t Grow Up)” was played by Crystal Reeves, and the violin on “Unscored” by Ryan Cockerham. Cochran has scored more than 50 Arkansan films and commercials, including Dayveon, which was directed by Cochran’s friend and frequent collaborator Amman Abbasi and premiered at Sundance in 2017 (currently available on Netflix). He also worked on another Emmy-award-winning AETN documentary, Champion Trees, and was nominated for an Emmy for the Dream Land score. Cochran recently completed scores for a documentary about Mike Beebe and for Odd Happening in a Tiny Tent, his fourth film with director Jesse Burks. Following a recent multimedia installation in Downtown Fort Smith’s Propak building, Cochran is now designing a sound installation for the Spring Arts Walk in Fort Smith, and will release a new album titled Helium Angel digitally on December 14. He will also be the featured artist for February’s installment of the Trillium Salon Series, where he will perform suites from Unscored and A Modern Procedure for Breathing with accompaniment on strings. AMOSCOCHRAN.COM
art
B
y the time artist and musician Sonny Kay was seven, Sonny had lived in South Africa, Spain, England, and California. He performed in bands like Year Future and founded the label Gold Standard Laboratories, which brought the world bands like The Mars Volta, The Rapture, !!! and Xiu Xiu. After stepping down from GSL, he focused on his artwork and eventually released a book entitled Headspaces: Surrealistic Album Art & Collage by Sonny Kay (Robot Enemy Publications, 2017). After traveling throughout the western United States for decades, this past year he has ended up in Hot Springs as the executive director of Low Key Arts (LKA), a multi-disciplinary arts organization that Do-ItYourself (DIY) folks in Arkansas have been looking up to since it started in 2005. Kay seems like the perfect fit to carry on and expand the nonprofit organization’s focus on experimental and educational arts programming that is, at its heart, still DIY.
THE COLLAGIST
From his digital collage work to his time at the helm of a record label, Sonny Kay has made a name for himself in the worlds of music and art. INTERVIEW / K. SAMANTHA SIGMON
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How did you get into art? I was drawing and being encouraged to draw since I could hold a pencil. In college, I kind of rejected art in favor of music even though I was a painting and printmaking major. I started a record label and that brought out the designer, and very slowly, the artist in me. When I finally closed the doors on the label, I started doing art full time. Can you tell me more about your life as a musician? Have you mostly transitioned into the art and administration role? After high school, I didn’t go to college right away. I threw myself into the punk scene in Boulder, Colorado, where I was living, and completely dedicated myself to DIY: organizing shows, making flyers, starting bands, and eventually, a record label. I loved to tour and did so as often as I could, so I got to know a lot of people in a lot of places. When my own bands weren’t on tour, I would travel with other bands on my label as tour manager or driver. I found a lot more musicians to put out records for that way. When I transitioned to just making art, my whole focus was on album covers and packaging, so one thing kind of fed into the other pretty seamlessly. I was lucky in that regard. Since moving to Arkansas, I’ve largely put making art aside for the time being to concentrate on running Low Key Arts. I mean, I still make flyers and stuff, so I get to scratch that itch, but full album art I’m not really tackling right now; there just isn’t time. Having said that, I do make time to play a little bit of music these days. I’m in two fledgling groups who are still trying to figure out what we sound like. I play bass in one and drums in the other, neither very well, but it’s fun and a good challenge. How do you describe your visual art creation process? My own definition [of my style] is always changing, but is something to the effect of pop surrealist digital photomontage, or sometimes just plain old ‘collage.’ Sometimes the politics in a piece are obvious, other times nonexistent, and occasionally there is simply design for designs sake. I rarely set out with a vision in mind. Mostly I free-associate things that seem like they might look interesting together or hatch a meaning of some kind when grouped together. The glue that holds my work together is the consistency and believability of the perceived light source. As an album cover designer, do you see any difference between art and design? I do see a difference, but the precise meanings of those concepts are always changing and more to do with feeling than objective definition. I feel as though I’m constantly blurring the line between them and am not really consciously ever thinking about it. Art, for me, is more about innate thought, deep-rooted opinion or emotion, something perhaps indescribable, but instinctual. Design is more functional, more universal in a sense, and more intended to be understood, like a language. I think design has more rules inherent to it than art does. SONNYKAY.COM
OTHER WORLDS S
tuart Lippincott is a builder of worlds. These dark dreamscapes – sometimes dystopian, sometimes utopian – hint at possibility, hope and even horror. Dimly lit caverns. Distant space ships. Undulating orbs. This is the world of @stuz0r on Instagram. The Northwest Arkansas-based Lippincott has developed quite the following over the last few years after he challenged himself to create a new piece each day and post it to social media – quite the feat considering his day job as a freelance designer. For several years, Lippincott performed in a band called STARKZ, which gained a large audience in Arkansas, and he later graduated from John Brown University. Now he lives in Centerton with his family. He works as a freelance designer and has created work for musical acts like Imagine Dragons and Illenium. Lippincott recently sat down with The Idle Class magazine editor, Kody Ford, and The Idle Class Podcast producer, Dillon Dooms, to chat about his work. You worked for design firms and everything around here, right? Yeah, actually right before doing what I do now. I work for a company called Ivie & Associates and kind of did a little bit of motion design for them. Actually like, 90 percent of it was video, photography and stuff like that so it didn’t relate to 3-D at all really at that point. So you were focused on video and that sort of work. What were the seeds of all of your art? So when I was working at Ivie, every once and a while we’d kind of have dry spells and when we did, I wanted to learn 3-D again because I hadn’t touched it in a year or so. So, I was on Instagram and I was looking through and I saw this one guy who was making these “everyday projects” and they were insane quality work. I was like, “Man, I kind of want to be able to do that.” So I got online, did some research and started challenging myself to start doing these everyday projects. So, when we had that dead space, I’d spend around 30 minutes creating these everyday projects and everything now sort of started from that. So,where’s the imagery coming from? My brain? No, it’s inspiration from other places like photography, architecture, sci-fi movies, music...a lot of it is music. What I’m listening to really helps to inspire what I come up with that day. A lot of your style seems to revolve around the futuristic and sci-fi. Would you say you’re a big fan? I am, yes. I like space exploration. I was a big fan of the new Blade Runner movie. I thought those visuals were just absolutely crazy. Yeah, I don’t know, I guess I’ve always been drawn to the sci-fi aspect sort of things. It just kind of naturally goes in that direction. Well besides Blade Runner, what would you say are some other inspirations? Star Wars, Star Trek, you know, the old school. And you know, it’s weird because I just really like for my pictures to tell a stories as opposed to someone saying, “Oh dude, look how at that dude’s textures on the floor.” I mean, that’s cool and important, don’t get me wrong, but I think that what’s more important for me is the story around the image. Why is this dude walking like a zombie through this weird light? Why are all these cloaked figures around this pyramid thing or what-
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Stuart Lippincott’s works are a peek into alternate dimensions, dystopian realities and digital dreamscapes. INTERVIEW / KODY FORD & DILLON DOOMS ever? What is this giant cloaked things with all these little bitty people walking around it? I like to create all these little mini-stories as opposed to, like, more of the technical aspect. When you’re creating a piece, are you building out these assets piece-by-piece or is it more similar to a collage where you can find a photo, flip it and re-purpose it? It depends, it’s kind of a combination of all of that. So for example, my pieces that have the Earth in the background from space, that’s an image from NASA. Then, my person that I put in the scene is a model that I’ll get from an Adobe software called, Adobe Fuse, that you can get these pre-packaged models where you can build out their facial features and body structures and all that stuff for both male and female. You can also choose clothing for them sometimes and you can take that into a motion capture software online where you can pose them or walk them. Then I’ll take that into a kind of cloth simulation designer where I get the robes and clothing. So really, it’s like a combination of everything because from there I’ll set them up in the scene and I’ll combine all these elements of the figures, backgrounds, lights, and sometimes even structures that I build or find online for free. Sometimes I’m given the assets by companies to help promote them and I’ll just kind of put together whatever I feel like for the day and then render it out. I use this rendering program called Octane, which is amazing, because using Maya back in the day you would render out one image it would take, maybe sometimes like, an hour or something like that. Sometimes more! And so now, you can live preview it just to see what it’s going to look like and it takes three seconds. It’s insane, the speed now is just unbelievably to what it used to be, I mean, you can get live feedback instantaneously now. So yeah, that’s kind of my progress and how I go from nothing to something. You mentioned that whatever you created that day is really inspired by what you’re listening to. What’s some of the music that gets you into that mood? Sure! So I’ve kind of got this weird compilation of music that I like to listen to, so sometimes it’s like Tycho and other times it’s Nine Inch Nails. That and everything in between, it could even just be an acoustic guitar player or classical, it really could just be my mood for the day, I guess. So you’re doing work with a lot of bands now, right? Yep, so right now I’m helping do some work for Illenium. He’s got a 2019 World Tour he’s got going on so I’ve been helping with his album art and some of his visuals. I think last week I helped wrap up an animation for the Nashville Predators Hockey Team and I didn’t know that they did this but apparently they have an ice projection before the game. So yeah, I helped make a little 30-second animation piece for them that’ll show there. Right now, I’m working with a band that’s out of Canada called Haywire that’s got some really cool music. And most of these bands are finding you on Instagram? Yep. Also through Behance, I get a lot of stuff through there, too. Sadly, I usually have my notifications through that though, so I have to be really good about going in there and checking those. I’ve been really lucky on there thought because they’ve helped showcase my stuff every month for like, the last year, I guess? But generally, I post on Instagram, Twitter, and sometimes my Facebook page, though I don’t know why I have that. And, at the end of the month, I upload all of my work onto my Behance. BEHANCE.NET/STUZ0R INSTAGRAM: @STUZ0R
Stuart Lippincott
ARTISTS WE LOVE:
ZEEK TAYLOR WORDS / SANDRA SPOTTS
Entering Zeek Taylor’s studio in Eureka Springs is like walking into the Mad Hatter’s jewelry box. Walls and surfaces are covered with colorful collections meticulously organized into a giant mosaic composed of everything from vintage watercolor boxes to photos with friends and dignitaries. The soft-spoken 72-year-old artist clearly loves creating as much now as when he first discovered art. He continues to bring his florals, featuring his favorite iris, and his opulently clothed and bordered chimps to life in watercolor. Taylor is an experienced speaker and writer, having presented a TED talk as well as making two appearances on the internationally broadcast storytelling radio show, Tales From the South. He has received numerous honors and awards, including The Arkansas Governor’s Art Award for Lifetime Achievement and The Idle Class Magazine’s 2018 Black Apple Legacy Award, and has been included three times in the Arkansas Arts Center Delta Exhibition. What is your earliest memory of making art? I started school at the age of five and I won first place in an art contest. My prize was my choice between a peppermint stick and a Chick-O-Stick. I chose the Chick-O-Stick. The art was a crayon drawing of my mother, complete with gold curls and Carnation Pink cheeks. I still remember Carnation Pink. Where did your signature chimps come from? A company called Marathon At Home commissioned me to create a line of decorator pillows for a series of jungle animals. They requested a clothed chimp with animal print borders. I named them and wrote stories, both fiction and nonfiction, for each of the chimps starting with the first painting. Do you ever run into people who do not get the humor in your work? Sometimes. I can see in their eyes if they get the humor as they come up to me. Lots of people relate to the chimps and will say, “That is us!” Why did you choose one of the most difficult mediums to control and execute such detailed work? I like the challenge of it. I wanted to master it, to tame the beast. I do use a dry brush technique which makes it easier to control. So you like for your work to be challenging? Yes. Sometimes I may have a commission that seems difficult, but I learned that when it is over to be proud that I have become better. I want to continue to get better. What is next for your work? My work has become more sophisticated. I am going in the direction of making shadow-boxes with chimps. I learned to use a scroll saw and the boxes are complicated, layering and a lot of pattern. Lately, whenever I receive awards, it seems to be for the shadowboxes. Why do you do what you do? I am still competing with myself to get better. Every day is a new beginning and I like to bring joy to people who see my art. ZEEKTAYLOR.COM
A message from our
GUEST EDITORS
ELLE NASH
Fiction & Non-fiction
MOLLY BESS RECTOR Poetry
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“When Kody asked me to guest edit The Idle Class’s storyteller issue I felt humbled that he would trust me with such a task. I’ve been editing for literary magazines since about 2015 and can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about myself and the craft of fiction since taking on the task.
tion. My favorite works, such as those selected for this issue, seem to channel ghosts through their words, they haunt me, and I think of their immediacy and how they cull heartbreak from my chest, long after I’ve read them.“
I’m always surprised by the depth of undiscovered talent that exists in the slush pile – it’s easy to forget when you’re bombarded with the polished works of literary stars that seem untouchable. My favorite works often aren’t found in The Paris Review or The New Yorker, but rather in smaller arts magazines like The Idle Class. Generally, they touch on some raw nerve I’ve been completely unaware of— some eternal sense of loss, longing, or quiet devasta-
Elle Nash is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in the June Reading Room of Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.’ Her short stories and essays appear in Guernica, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant, Marie Claire and Cosmo Magazine. She is a founding editor at Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart.
“In selecting these poems, I tried to choose a range of styles and subjects—from Caroline Earleywine’s ‘Teaching High School: A Google Search History’ to Carolyn Guinzio’s ‘Bellows,’ the poems I chose represent a few of the diverse approaches to storytelling these poets engaged. I read with an interest in the connections the poems made, how they moved from image to image or idea to idea. The poems I selected represent new and interesting turns of phrase or ways of arriving at a conclusion – I chose them because they brought me a sense of delight through their ingenuity, their vitality and their engagement with subjects beyond themselves. I hope they intrigue and delight this issue’s readers as well.”
ABOUT ELLE
ABOUT MOLLY Molly Bess Rector lives in Fayetteville where she co-curates the Open Mouth Reading Series. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas and works as project editor for the University of Arkansas Press. She is the recipient of residencies from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as a grant by the Artists 360 program to write poems exploring human intersections with nuclear technology. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Nimrod International Journal, Raleigh Review, SAND and The Boiler, among others.
WRITING
HOT SPRINGS
NORTH LITTLE ROCK
For almost 30 years, Wednesday Night Poetry has held up a tradition of hosting a reading somewhere in downtown Hot Springs. Bud Kenny, who started Wednesday Night Poetry, says the mission is simple: to create space to share. “It’s one thing to pour what you feel out on a page,” Kenny says, “But what makes that exercise complete is when you can share it with someone.” The reading even spawned other poetry events in Arkansas, including the Arkansas Grand Slam which began in 1997, offering the world’s largest cash prize for a performance poet. The reading series also helped push the Arkansas Celebration of The Arts in Poetry, an annual festival which has featured many notable poets including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Rita Dove and the founder of slam poetry Marc Smith. Wednesday Night Poetry takes place every Wednesday at Kollective Coffee and Tea, 110 Central Avenue, at 6:30 P.M.
When Guy Choate started the Argenta Reading Series, he was worried no one would show up. An avid reader his whole life, Choate began the reading series in part to host a friend who had published his first book. That first reading, Choate said, 72 people attended, and it’s been going ever since. The goal of ARS is to encourage the literary arts in Central Arkansas, but Choate also hopes to shine the light on local authors, to show the community that talent is here and now. The monthly ARS has a three-pronged approach to enriching the arts community in Central Arkansas. He also has a quarterly book club with The Bookstore at Library Square, in which people can read the books of headlining authors at ARS events. Lastly, the reading series works to encourage the craft of writing in young people, in part by hosting an annual high school writing contest which, in partnership with the Laman Public Library System, which gives winning students $2,500 for tuition costs towards an in-state college or university. The Argenta Reading Series is held monthly at Argenta United Methodist Church, 317 N. Main Street, North Little Rock.
THE SPOKEN WORD Across Arkansas, writers are taking the mic to let their voices be heard. WORDS / ELLE NASH & SUMMER EL-SHAHAWY
FAYETTEVILLE The Open Mouth Reading Series is a community-based poetry series co-curated by poets M. D. Myers, Molly Bess Rector, Peter Mason, and J. Bailey Hutchinson. OMRS had an eventful year hosting readings for almost 30 writers, collaborating with a variety of local businesses and organizations, and offering accessible poetry workshops to the community. The organization strives to recognize poets’ work and host accessible events like fall festivals and a summer reading retreat. Hutchinson, the assistant director of OMRS, said that this year was one for the books. “Our Fall Fest featured a medley of voices active in contemporary American poetry and afterward we all sat down and chatted about the importance of vulnerability and gratitude in creative fields.” She said that 2019 will be just as full and exciting as this past year. “We’re booked through April with some really exciting names and already accepting applications for our 2019 Poetry Retreat with Franny Choi and Nate Marshall.” Hutchinson said she invites the community to experience the joys of poetry with OMRS in 2019.
Ozarks Poets and Writers Collective formed in 1994 in order to promote the written word in Northwest Arkansas and was founded by Lisa Martinovic, Brenda Moossey, Ginny Masullo and Deborah Robinson. Today, Ginny remains an active board member for OPWC. Burnetta Hinterthuer, another member of OPWC’s board, said she is planning a party for the 25th anniversary of OPWC that is set to take place in September of 2019. She said she is hoping to bring back star performers from the past 25 years to celebrate this milestone. “Ozarks Poets and Writers Collective is a non-profit organization devoted to the joys of the spoken and written word. We welcome members of the NWA community to share their writing with others in an open, welcoming environment,” said Hinterthuer. A few of the upcoming features for 2019 include Adam Cox, Richard Massey, Noella Young, Cassidy McCants, Nick Clare, Doug Shields and Talya Boerner. OPWC meets the last Tuesday of every month except September and December at Nightbird Books, 7 p.m. and includes an open mic session that precedes and follows the feature performance at 7:30 p.m.
FROM THE PAGE TO THE STAGE Storytelling isn’t always just the written word. Sometimes it can come to life. Here are some of the Playwrights We Love.
RACHEL LYNETT Fayetteville Rachellynett.com
Rachel Lynett had written plays for years before she actually considered herself a playwright. This occurred not out of a self-imposed bar of achievement that awaited, but rather she just didn’t really think about it. She wrote for fun and that was enough. “It’s like when you draw or doodle in your journal – you don’t consider yourself an artist because they’re ‘just doodles,’” she said. “So, the plays that I’d written – and I’d even written plays back in high school – were just like, ‘I’m doing this for my friends, I’m not doing this for me. I’m not a playwright, I just wrote a play.’” The tides turned after she took Script Analysis and Dramaturgy at the University of Notre Dame, which led her to become a stage manager. This sparked a new awareness: most theatrical lead roles looked a bit homogeneous. “I noticed that in all the plays all the leads were white men, for the most part, or the women’s stories weren’t very diverse or exciting,” she said. “That, and the women who did have their own stories were still really just stories about men and I didn’t like that. Whenever I was acting, I was either the maid or the sassy friend or the ‘jerk.’ So, it made me really angry at first but then I was like, ‘I want to start writing better characters for my friends and for people like me who probably could have been great actors but didn’t have roles they were passionate about doing.’ That’s when I got into writing – when my hobby started bleeding over into my college life – and I started wanting to create these stories with friends on the weekends.” Lynett later completed her Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from the University of Arkansas after finishing her bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame, where she studied Theatre and Gender Studies. She has written 22 plays and her works such as He Did It, Refuge and Well-Intentioned White People have been workshopped around the country at various festivals and theaters. - Kody Ford
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“Whenever I was acting, I was either the maid or the sassy friend or the ‘jerk’. So, it made me really angry at first but then I was like, ‘I want to start writing better characters for my friends and for people like me who probably could have been great actors but didn’t have roles they were passionate about doing.’”
CHARLOTTE MCCOMBS Fayetteville
At just 16 years old, Charlotte McCombs is the winner of the 2018 Arkansas Young Playwrights Competition for her play Chekhov’s Gun, which also won the Blank Theatre’s National Young Playwrights Competition. A junior at Fayetteville High School, McCombs has already received recognition for four plays she has written. Chekhov’s Gun is her most recent success, and it was professionally produced at the Stella Adler Theatre in Los Angeles this past June. McCombs said she was able to help with the production by FaceTiming from Fayetteville during the first rehearsals, and was also able to personally attend some rehearsals in Los Angeles where she gave input to the directors about the characters and her intentions in writing. Like many successful writers, her creative process involves a lengthy period of thinking before she writes anything down. However, when she writes, she persists until she feels nothing more can be done. “I always write until the dialogue starts to feel choppy or unnatural – then I step away for a while, clear my thoughts, and get back to work,” McCombs said. McCombs believes in writing characters that are genuine and prefers writing dramas that involve serious characters. “I am a strong believer in the complex character – the people need to seem real,” McCombs said, “and I feel that in reality, a person’s life is created by how they behave and how they interact with other people, and that is something I try to capture on stage.” McCombs said she hopes to attend college for playwriting and theatre, and although she is still in the research and application process regarding college admissions, she is particularly drawn
LATINX
Springdale latinxtheatreproject.com LatinX, a theatrical group at the Arts Center of the Ozarks focused on creating work and bringing awareness to LatinX artists in the Northwest Arkansas community, is developing a series of educational workshops and special performances for organizations and schools. As part of this development, those in the organization are working on a devised theater workshop for high schools such as Springdale High School (because many of the theater participants went there), a teacher’s education workshop for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in April, and an English teacher’s conference slated for July. Artistic Director Ashley Edwards served as a playwright during the production of Follow Me @Tio Sam in 2017 and Scratch That this year, has assisted in development of this project with LatinX’s founding leadership team, David Jolliffe, former Brown Chair of Literacy at UA; Jenni Taylor Swain, former executive director of ACO; Kathleen Trotter, former ED of ACO; and Samuel Lopez, Stitches Gallery organizer and artist. Edwards said her favorite part of LatinX is “working creatively with the group to explore storytelling and new ways to perform stories in a theatrical way.” “I have loved the impact that the company members have had on my own artistic development and point of view, as well
to smaller liberal arts colleges. McCombs said she has big dreams to fulfill. She hopes to self-produce one of her own plays before graduating from high school and her ultimate goal is to have an original McCombs play produced in New York City. “There are so many ways to write a good story,” McCombs said. “There is not a method or a structure that one requires.” However, she believes that writers need to pique their audience’s interest in a specific way. “The only way to appeal to an audience is to appeal to their sympathies, and to do that you need something that they can understand as an individual,” McCombs said. - Summer El-Shahawy
as their significant impact on the community and partnering organizations,” she said. “I love to find ways for the performances to integrate into already existing community events.” LatinX has recently entered a partnership with TheatreSquared as the fiscal sponsor under a two-year grant by Walton Family Foundation, Edwards said. This will allow the organization to hire full-time staff and develop and implement a strategic plan for community development and organizational sustainability by 2020. - Julia Trupp
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WILLI CARLISLE Fayetteville willicarlisle.com breakerfixer.com
Willi Carlisle is at it again with a new show titled A Confederate Widow in Hell. “It’s an experimental horror-dramedy and is my most political and collaborative piece yet,” Carlisle said. “It was developed fifty-fifty with Joseph Fletcher, who is the producer and my partner in our theatre company, Breaker/Fixer.” The show features two performers, Carlisle and Fletcher, and includes musical underscoring. Research and interviews with United Daughters of the Confederacy helped in the development of the work. “I don’t want to give too much away, but suffice to say it’s our most ambitious and provocative work yet, and so far it’s been a great conversation starter,” Carlisle said. “It’s atmospheric, spooky, and a little bit goofy.” In addition to his theatrical work, Carlisle is also a musician. He describes himself as a folksinger, theatre-artist and writer, and likes creating engaging performances to put folksongs into context for modern audiences. “Sometimes I use puppets and masks, usually I use banjos, but there’s a whole slew of cool ways to make things, and I do a little bit of everything,” he said. Carlisle has been playing music for about 10 years, and bought his first guitar after hearing Carl Sandburg play and sing. He admired Sandburg’s early poetry, but he thought he could do better when it came to music. “I just played folksongs from books until I met a few real-life folksingers and fiddlers, after which I started learning directly from them,” he said. “I never looked back: most of my material today is stuff I picked up from somebody else, by ear, or from an archive.” Carlisle plays the banjo, fiddle, accordion and harmonica. The accordion and the fiddle are his favorites, but he thinks the banjo and the guitar better fit the singer-songwriter style. “It takes me years to write songs, but I don’t work real hard at it,” he said. “I usually have an idea boppin around in my head for a long, long time, and then one day it comes out whole.” His music has taken him all over the United States and allowed him to meet many different people. “Boy, howdy, it’s been wild!” Carlisle said of the journey he’s been on with his music. “I’ve been all up and down the east coast, fiddled around up in Maine, called a square dance in New York City, been down to all sides of Florida, over to Colorado, up to Kansas, hell, everywhere but the West Coast at this point. It’s been a crazy ride, and I can’t wait to do it more.” And it goes even better each time he hits the road. “I often go to bed overwhelmed with love and happiness,” he said. “It’s actually a hard feeling sometimes: the next day hits ya and you have to hit the road, leaving that place and those people behind for another six months until you make it back there.” Fletcher and Carlisle plan to travel with their new show and will start the official tour in May 2019. In total, Fletcher and Carlisle have worked together for about six years to cre-
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“I often go to bed overwhelmed with love and happiness, It’s actually a hard feeling sometimes: the next day hits ya and you have to hit the road, leaving that place and those people behind for another six months until you make it back there.” ate multiple pieces, two as part of Breaker/Fixer and four to five pieces at Artist’s Laboratory Theatre in Fayetteville. Carlisle and Fletcher’s first show as Breaker/Fixer was performed about 100 times in the last two years and performed at about 13 festivals. “Willi has a wonderful voice and a wonderful perspective on things,” Fletcher said about working with Carlisle artistically. “We come from different vantage points and riff off each other.” As far as others who want to pursue music as a career, Carlisle’s advice is to “trust your process, distrust axioms coming from other people, and let yourself make a lot of garbage. Practice, but if you don’t, be really good. Be simple, unless you can be complex in simple ways.” - Erin Spandorf
WERNER TRIESCHMANN Little Rock wtplay.blogspot.com
Werner Trieschmann was drawn to theatre because “I was a bad poet who liked to perform on stage. When I found out I could combine writing and theater, well, it was over.” His first exposure to playwriting came while attending Hendrix College in Conway. As a sophomore, he wrote what he describes as a bad play, but knew from that moment onward, it was what he was meant to do. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in English from Hendrix College. He credits his professors at Hendrix – Rosemary Henenberg, Danny Grace and the late Frank Roland – as the ones who taught Illustration by Phillip Rex Huddleston him the basics of how to write a play. They also became mentors, friends and indispensable people in his life. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing (Playwriting) from Boston University. “When I was done with Boston University, I fell in with a group of reprobates that were running an absurdly small theatre company,” he said. “That was great training – and it only cost me my ample free time.” His career highlights include writing and directing plays on Mozart and Shubert for the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in Fort Wayne, Indiana; developing his play Disfarmer through TheatreSquared’s Arkansas New Play Festival; and having former Arkansas Repertory Theatre artistic director Bob Hupp direct Disfarmer for the Acansa Festival. In 2013, Trieschmann was awarded an Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship in Playwriting. He was the first playwright to receive the Porter Prize, a literary award recognizing outstanding achievement by an Arkansas writer. Trieschmann teaches at Pulaski Tech in Little Rock and raises two teenage boys, but still finds the time to put the pen to paper. Recently, he and colleagues John Haman and Judy Goss launched The Rolling River Playwrights Collective, which Trieschmann describes as “a tight group of committed playwrights” who currently hold readings at the Arkansas Rep. “Playwrights need to hear their plays and so this group is crucial. As I said, the paint is barely dry on our collective but we’ve already made ourselves known and done some great work. That’s fantastic as far as I’m concerned,” Trieschmann said. While these are all great achievements for a playwright, Trieschmann still finds the real adrenaline rush in creating something new for the stage. “There is a very interesting dynamic that happens when you write plays,” he said. “For much of the time, it’s a solitary process. Like most playwrights, I write my plays alone – and it can take months or years. Then if you’re lucky, you get to be a part of the rehearsal process and work, i.e. hang out, with actors, designers, director. As a human experience, I find it satisfying on so many levels.” He describes watching his words come to life as a surreal experience. “When something you have written earns a laugh or a gasp, well, you want to hit that slot machine as often as you can.” So what makes a good story? Trieschmann doesn’t have a secret sauce, but he does look for a few things. He said, “I like to laugh, I like to be surprised and I want to care. Do any of those things and you’ll have me on your side. Not surprisingly, that’s what I hope to wring out of my own writing.”
3 FOR HIROSHIMA A poem by Gerry Sloan
1) By Way of Consolation At the Arkansas Military Museum is a console for the Doomsday Machine with its dual ignition system 6 feet apart, to prevent a madman (acting alone) from destroying the planet. Wow! What a consolation. Like a sympathy card from the Pentagon half a century later. 2) Because We Always Worry about the Wrong Thing We used to worry smugly about Arkansas Nuclear One while 18 Titan Missiles sat secretly nestled in their silos, the payload for any one of which was three times greater than all the munitions used in World War Two, including the two bombs dropped on Japan. Formula? 18 X WW2 = {GAME OVER} 3) For the New Time Capsule Instead of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” we should commission R. Crumb to design (in material that would withstand thermonuclear meltdown) a statue of our human likeness, with head stuck deep up its ass just after kissing itself goodbye.
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COMING INTO THE LIGHT Graphic novelist Nate Powell brings a long-gestating story to life in Come Again WORDS / LEIGH WOOD PHOTO / KAT WILSON
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ut bluntly, stories are conduits for our understanding of existence. Imagine having to navigate the concepts of love or honor or betrayal or sacrifice without a character to lead us through those paths. In a graphic novel those landscapes can be mapped out for us both literally and visually. Nate Powell, a New York Times bestseller, National Book Award winner, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, illustrator, author, collaborator, musician and native of Little Rock has told big, historically significant stories and the stories of quiet, everyday experiences. In his most recent graphic novel, Come Again, Powell tells the story of a few members of an intentional community nestled in the Ozarks, whose long buried secret is finally coming to light. And with it, something unknowable and monstrous. The power of Powell’s storytelling is in that mixture of daily life and enormous forces and in the black and white artwork that dominates his pages. We asked him about how his stories come to be, how the visual intersects with the narrative and why he is driven to write. As this issue is focusing on storytelling, do you mind walking us through your process? Does the narrative come first or do you have images you want to create and they then influence the story? The plot to my stories usually solidifies last. Generally, I have a clear sense of the questions, themes, and bigger ideas I’d like to convey in a book, and it takes a few years to merge those with a character I care about, and with any number of smaller scenes, vignettes, and images floating around in my head. Often, the plot details are a product of reverse engi-
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neering – a means by which to find a fitting destination for scenes, images, and even a character’s out-of-place appearance. At the same time, the whole narrative package is refined and tightened throughout, incrementally. In that way, the writing process is very much like sculpting with clay. Come Again is filled with pages that bleed to the edge with blackness and others that are full of white negative space. Were darkness and light and negative space always elements of this story? Did they emerge more starkly as you began drawing or did you always envision it that way? The use of negative space definitely increased from my previous books, but it’s been a pretty consistently used tool for over a decade. Come Again was always envisioned looking the way it does, but as the larger themes of openness vs. privacy and the all-consuming nature of secrecy moved to the forefront, so did the importance of visually representing that dichotomy. I wonder if the process of creating takes you in different directions than you first envisioned. Do you ever create a drawing that changes the way a story is told? Absolutely – it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it’s really the fabled moment any cartoonist awaits. For Come Again in particular, I tried to actively embrace the satisfaction of drawing what I wanted to draw. Process-wise, this means building a story around these early sketches and vignette scenes, and doing so requires being mindful and observant of details which may reveal new dimensions to the world that’s being constructed. Sometimes it’s simply a
VISITATION
A poem by C.S. Carrier Nurse came down from heaven He was smoking a cigarette His complexion a dingy yellow His body fraying at the edges, an old flag Sawdust poured from his ears Salt crystallized his hair His lungs popped from his chest Tarballs in the azaleas I invited him in and we sat Around the table, drinking some homebrew We shared stories about travels We joked with each other and laughed A golden pillow stretched over everything A golden pillow and some cream We talked of love and hope We mused over the need for a new left He praised my progressive ideas Yeah, none of that happened No sharing or joking or laughing No love or hope or praise Instead, the house filled with thick, white fog Everything became covered with jagged blades He talked about how he loved Nightingale How he saved the world from Communism How the Bible speaks in frames, wooden gestures I said we’re not apples He coughed and spit in a cup I folded my hands into crows and bit my lip We looked past each other It was too hard to look at a stranger stylistic shift or revelation. While it’s important to establish a consistent visual delivery for a story, allowing oneself the room to evolve is even more essential, helping to revitalize a project that may take years to finish. So many elements of Come Again seem to be a part of your childhood and adolescence – alternative ways of living, rural Arkansas, punk music and a tight-knit group of friends. Do you draw from your life to add color to a story that’s already in your head? Or do you think these elements were integral to how the story came about? Come Again is straight fiction, but that just means the personally relevant elements embedded themselves in a less direct, less referential way. For this book, it’s mostly through reflections on those intersections in my life. The strongest two avenues of thematic reflection are shifting perspectives as one raises small children (particularly as both parents and kids shift awareness of darkness and danger in daily life), and reflections on the grand endeavors undertaken by devoted friends who love each other (but especially reflecting on the imbalance within that kind of working-for-each-other’s-dreams). Diamond Mine, and the fictionalized emergence of punk in Arkansas,
was more of a fun, satisfying rabbit hole for me, but it did wind up tying into the bookending of the 1970s and a new generation’s endeavors not yet spoiled by ego, ambition, or lopsided ideals. The fictionalized folklore and ghost stories in the book are hybrids of two central Arkansas haunts, the Woodson Lateral ghost and Momma Lou. Paranormal and spirit encounters have been a part of my life experience for decades. What is it like to work on your own, as opposed to collaborating as you did with Congressman Lewis on the March project? Do you change the way you tell a story, visually or otherwise, if the story is not your own? Yes, solo and collaborative work help inform and improve each other’s processes. I actually started what became Come Again before joining the March team, and worked on it periodically throughout the March trilogy. After spending four and a half years doing March, I’d developed a better sense of concreteness and clarity in my visual storytelling, as well as a stronger ability to listen to and work with editors to fuse their input into my vision. Ultimately, it helped the strange, intuitive, free-form elements of Come Again retain their uniqueness while building a much stronger, more readable narrative structure. When I do my solo work, I usually write and sketch in a vacuum, then work through several rounds of editing and reworking after submitting a penciled, rough-lettered version of the entire book. During that revision process, I’m focused on building a from-the-ground-up consistency in the book while finding the weak points. Doing March was much more structured, and necessarily so, but it also required finding those parallel moments for intuitive, free-form visuals buried in between the lines of the script. That, in turn, allowed me to see my own writing with new eyes. What made you want to tell this story? What do you think made you want to tell stories as a way of living? The dominant themes of openness and secrecy, of privacy and compromise, of selfish attempts to cover up problems, were at the core of Come Again, and I knew immediately that a supernatural mystery or horror element would not only fit, but would be lots of fun to explore. The other layers of relevance, reflection, and existential questions fell into place over time, as the story wove its way into my life. My reason for making comics is simple: I have ideas I feel the need to express, and the medium of comics speaks to me in a very powerful way. It always has. I wanted to make a living as a cartoonist since I was 11 years old, from the very day I started seriously drawing comics, but for many years throughout my twenties I’d basically given up on the possibility of making a living doing it. What was most encouraging was that I still knew I needed to make comics, and that I would continue to find a way to do so. In early 2009 I got an opportunity to quit my career and see if it was possible to scrape by as a professional cartoonist, and I’ve been white-knuckling it ever since. That comes with its own set of compromises, and sometimes I envy cartoonist friends who have a separate full-time job, leaving them free to make comics entirely on their own terms. But I feel very fortunate to’ve been able to make a living thus far, to raise kids as a cartoonist, and to continue pushing my stories and voice out into the world. SEEMYBROTHERDANCE.ORG idleclassmag.com
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TABITHA
Fiction by Cassidy McCants Art by Meikel Church
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abitha is a small woman. Normal-sized, really, but small compared to me, a slightly larger than average woman. I trust some of what she tells me. Of what she suggests, implies. I immediately felt safe enough in her dainty hands. Felt as though she used them to cup all of me, me and my big bones, as soon as I sunk into her me-sized faux-leather chair. During one session, probably our third together, I told her about my relationship with my father. Something I normally don’t talk about. But I talked and talked—I felt my face and neck grow hot, felt a stinging under my arms and in my eyes. I wanted to change shirts ten minutes in. But she listened. Holding a cup of Earl Grey, she listened. She heard me when I said about him, drugs and women and car wrecks and jailtime jailtime jailtime. When I told her about my calling the cops during one of his parties as a kid, she said, Wow, Anna, you became your
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own hero in that moment. And I could see it in her eyes. I’d truly impressed her. This woman had to have seen, to have heard, everything by the time she met me. But I’d impressed her. I remember—throughout the rest of the session her eyes were not only softer but more respectful, as though she regarded me as her hero. I’d never been my own hero. Herohood sounded nice. She looked at me like I was big in more ways than one. So I couldn’t stop there. I lost sleep some nights—and sleep continues to escape me—thinking about what else I could pull from my childhood, moments when I might’ve been my own hero without realizing it fully. When I’d fall asleep the week following that session, I’d dream about diving into pools of various substances. Myriad materials, textures, patterns. I remember a slow descent into paisley, a quick dip into Kleenex. Falling into forks, dunking into apple
cider vinegar. But there was never any pain. Just my expectation of it. She started the next week’s session, as I’d hoped, with I think there’s more to talk about regarding your father. I have some moments, some seconds, shortfalls and fallings I’d like to address, I said to her. I think I said to her. Perceived failings. Let’s dive in. I told her there was something I’d been struggling with. I told her about the time I fed the fish in the backyard pond one morning following one of my dad’s coke binges, about how our dog, our stupid dog Danny, Daniel, had slipped in, how he couldn’t swim, how I hated that dog but grabbed the fish net and scooped him up anyway, not without trouble, not without the nearly paralyzing fear of falling in myself, into the green goop, into the scum. That’s brave. What about that memory do you think you’re struggling with now? I had to think quickly. Wasn’t that story about struggle? She’d been somewhat intrigued so I didn’t think it had been for naught, the lie. But what to say now? I’m allergic to algae. I put my life at risk for that dumb dog, a dog my dad loved more than he loved me. How fucked up is that? She said nothing. Her head made barely discernable movements up and down; her eyes were asking me for more. It’s fucked up. I don’t regret it, but my loyalties were wacky. He woke up hours later and was mad at me for breaking the net. I broke the net. That session fell a bit flat for me. I could see some surprise in her, but I didn’t get the reaction I wanted, didn’t get the sense that she was impressed by me. Maybe you can only impress someone once. But I also didn’t want to unimpress her. I had to stay on my toes, poised for a dive into the scum. I couldn’t decide whether it’s more impressive to be scum or to call attention to the scum, to rid it of itself. I still don’t know. People, their expectations, their reactions, always surprise me. He was all you had, she said to me that day. You saved his dog thinking it would save him. That response was good enough, I suppose, and it got me thinking. For the next session I need something new. I need to dive into a different realm. My dreams are guiding me. Slowly. Maybe I’ll tell her I’ve fallen in love with a therapist before, which is almost true, because my childhood crushes—Stevie Nicks, Fiona Apple, Billie Holiday—were my only accessible therapists at the time. I’m not sure if this would flatter, impress, or scare her. But I want to find out. I want to descend right in front of her. I want to transcend myself, my big bones, right in front of her. I want to see her eyes come alive for me. I don’t want dullness. I want her to impress me. I want to be surprised by her surprise. About Cassidy McCants Cassidy McCants is a writer and editor from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her B.A. in creative writing from University of Arkansas and her M.F.A. in fiction writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has worked as associate editor of Nimrod International Journal since 2013. Her work has appeared in The Lascaux Review, Gravel, Liars’ League NYC, and other publications, and her stories have received honorable mentions from Glimmer Train Press.
TEACHING HIGH SCHOOL: A GOOGLE SEARCH HISTORY A poem by Caroline Earleywine
How to deal with rude ass students How to get students talking more How to get students talking less Teacher burn out What does “bae” mean? How to make students feel loved Help! My students keep saying “that’s so gay” What does “cringy” mean? Help! My students wear Confederate flag t-shirts Help! I teach in the South How to not get in trouble with bigoted parents What does “get off my top” mean? How to deal with asshole parents Can I be fired if I’m out to my students Last five teachers in Arkansas fired for being gay Teacher union protection Teaching jobs in my area Nondiscrimination policies of public schools in Arkansas Any jobs in my area What can you do with an English degree? Are there any jobs for an English degree How to support shy students How to support students in poverty How to support students with horrible home lives How to help students who have experienced trauma How to help depressed students What to say to your class when a student dies What to say when a student What to say Suicide in teenagers How to not grade papers all the damn time When is dabbing going to go the fuck away? How much sleep do teenagers need? Students who sleep in class How much sleep do teachers need What does “that’s lit” mean? How much wine do teachers need How to motivate students in an English classroom Who is Whiz Khalifa? The power of literature and stories Inspirational English class stuff Characteristics of a good teacher How to be a better teacher How to survive teaching How to survive How
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MAKING A MOMENT:
WRITER/DIRECTOR JEFF NICHOLS DISCUSSES HOW HE CRAFTS AN EMOTIONAL PAYOFF IN HIS FILMS INTERVIEW / KODY FORD I L L U S T R AT I O N / P H I L L I P R E X H U D D L E S T O N
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ince Jeff Nichols released his debut film Shotgun Stories in 2007, he has garnered a reputation as a meticulous storyteller with films like Take Shelter, Loving and the hit Matthew McConaughey feature Mud. Before the cameras roll, Nichols crafts each tale to be as emotionally engaging on the page as it is on the screen. Such attention to detail has cemented his reputation as an auteur. The Idle Class spoke with the Little Rock native about his storytelling process shortly before the inaugural Filmland event in August 2018, presented by the Arkansas Cinema Society, which he helped start with producer and director Kathryn Tucker. Describe your storytelling process. Usually it begins with an idea that can come from anywhere. Sometimes it – and I’m not too big into artsy-fartsy, mystical ideas – I really like to talk about the craft of writing as a craft, the same a building a home, or building a piece of furniture; you can get better at it the more you try, the more you work at it, and the more you study. That being said, when the ideas hit, they sometimes feel like they’ve dropped out of the sky from someplace and hit me in the head. Each film has a different inspiration, other than Loving. Loving was obviously based on something else. That wasn’t inspiration from the sky, it was from an email. But the first four films which are cut from whole creative cloth, those just strike me in different ways. You know – not to get too specific about it – one thing is, I think, being open to receiving ideas. I’ve made a life out of telling stories, and if you’re going to be a professional storyteller, then you walk around the world open to hearing things. And sometimes that’s a song, sometimes that’s a conversation, sometimes that’s a person’s accent, you know? But when you’re open, and you’re actively thinking, “Could that be a story?” then I think the world starts to bend those stories toward you. And that’s how it’s been for me. So, I’ll get an idea, and then I’ll just chew on it for usually at least a year. And I start coming up with ideas for scenes and characters and moments – really it’s moments. But it’s, at that point, untethered to anything specific. I try not to write anything down too fast. If it’s important enough, it’ll stay in my mind. And so it’s this kind of natural winnowing process of thoughts and ideas. And after about a year of thinking on things – I compare it to kind of putting together a tape ball in my mind – a density starts to collect around those ideas. And then it feels like, “okay, now it’s time; I need to start putting some of this down.” The first step that I take are note cards, simply because, again, I don’t want to make the process too linear too quickly, [otherwise] it starts to break down for me. If I take a legal pad, for instance, and I make a dash, and I write the first scene – because usually I have this first scene and usually I have the ending, sometimes there’s a title (a lot of times there’s a title) – but if I make that first dash of the first scene, it feels natural that the next dash would be the next scene. But you don’t always have the next scene or you don’t always know where it needs to go, but I’ve got 15 other dashes that I don’t know what they attach to yet. So I pull those all down onto note cards, and then they can stay kind of in a nonlinear form. But obviously, some scenes go before others, naturally, and so I put them on the floor and start to look at them, and I slowly start to add connective tissues between those moments. And it’s a cool way to kind of break the linear process of thinking, you know? Because if I was just thinking about getting from A to B to C, the characters might move one way, but if I’ve got this thought down here, and I’m trying to achieve this emotion or this thing, this moment later on in the film, sometimes the
plot starts to take a different route than it would if you were just thinking about plot – if you were just thinking about narrative. And that kind of comes to another thing that’s happening as I’m note carding: it’s these two tracks, really, these two kind of modes of thinking. One is “okay, what’s the story, what’s the plot, what’s going on, what are people watching?” Then there’s this other, less tangible thing which is “okay, well what is all this saying? Why are we doing it? What’s the purpose of all of this?” You know, Midnight Special, I had the first 30 minutes of that film built for years. I could tell you shot for shot what it was going to be, but I still didn’t know what the movie was about. And as it kind of developed in my mind, so too did the relationship with my son. He was born and I was starting to deal with the fears and implications of being a father...I knew that it made sense for it to be a father and son story, but I don’t think, personally, I’d discovered what the hell it meant to be a father. And that’s when the whole thing really started to click: I understood that to be a father you had to accept the fact that you have no control over the safety of your child, or at least there’s certain limits to that control. At some point the world’s going to do what the world’s going to do, and you almost have to free yourself to that idea; which is tragic and heartbreaking and terrifying, but also, that’s life. And so then, all of the sudden, that’s what Midnight Special became. And now it was also a sci-fi chase movie where guys are turning off the headlights and putting on night-vision goggles and driving down backwoods southern roads in the middle of the night. All that stuff’s cool and awesome – and I wanted it to look like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Man – all that stuff’s cool, but none of it really matters without that bigger thought. So, I’m building on those note cards and thinking on those two tracks, and then the note cards go from the floor to the wall, where I have a giant piece of cork, and that’s when I really start to build the thing scene for scene. I start to fill in the gaps and I start to think about the transitions between each scene. So, it’s never not a visual medium for me. I’m always thinking about how this moment goes to that moment within the note cards, but then between the note cards as well. [ . . . ] And then I can stand back and look at that wall, and I can watch that movie from beginning to end – you can see where it kind of ebbs and flows, and based on those bigger, thematic ideas. And I think this is why some people don’t respond to my films and why I think some people do: I’m not always building toward a plot climax. And that doesn’t mean my movies aren’t plotted, they’re actually plotted to like, the nth degree, but I realized a long time ago that what interests me are emotional climaxes, which are built around character development. So the thing that I’m building to isn’t “dun dun dun, look at what happens in the plot.” The thing I’m building to is “oh my gosh, look at what this character’s feeling.” And some people really dig that and some people don’t, but after making five of these things and now I’m writing a sixth, I think it’s just kind of the way I’m built as a storyteller. And so within those note cards on the wall, I can see those emotional spikes; I can see that scene. I can think of one right now in Alienation, and I’ve got a big note card on my wall with a giant red star on it, and it just says “earn this” next to it. Because so many times you watch films and they’ll have the emotional scene – they were smart enough to get that scene put down – but it’s not landing. And you’re just questioning “why?” Like, I understand what they want me to feel here, but I’m not in it. And that’s my biggest fear – it’s the worst failure as a storyteller – to get to that emotional moment and you haven’t laid the groundwork for it. So anyway, I got the note cards up on the wall, I can watch the whole movie, and then fun part starts which is when I start typing. And all that takes – I’m slow, slow as molasses – a couple years. idleclassmag.com
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TO BE, OR NOT TO BE, MY FACE Nonfiction by Karen Jo Vennes
I
was trying to help Misses Poe. I worried that nobody had ever told her that she was mis-pronouncing the word. I thought she’d be glad to learn the correct pronunciation. I was four and it didn’t occur to me that I might embarrass her by pointing out a mistake. Our dachshund had escaped, pulled her clean laundry off the line and trampled it leaving muddy paw prints. Mom and I put the dog away, gathered Misses Poe’s laundry up on the porch for re-washing and she’d offered us a “cheer.” As I explained that the word was pronounced “chayer, not cheeyer.” I remember how my mother’s body stiffened. She inhaled; nose rising, looked at Misses Poe and me through the lacy screen of her cigarette smoke and her eyes said, “I have no idea who this is” as they searched for a secret port-hole beneath the boards. The consequences of my having voiced what I thought to be the benign truth included being unplugged from a love source. Pronouncing words in her dialect was a part of Misses Poe’s identity and I had dishonored her identity. I hadn’t come off as helpful, rather as a toddler with a superiority complex. My suffer-battered relationship with the truth came up in my psychic reading with renowned guru, Prince Hirindra Singh. He wore a white holy man pagri and plastic sandals. He had given up his family fortune in pursuit of learning and teaching from the world’s religions. He lectured to Fortune 500 companies and gave past life, numerology, and psychic readings. His guidance from my session was: “Do Not Be Your Face.” “Your face says you are in love with the truth.” “The truth gets
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you into trouble.” “Nobody cares about your truth.” “The saints lie all the time.” “When you expose a truth to someone before they are ready, it’s like a cruelty.” “Their hearts cannot take it, so, they blame anything that goes wrong on you.” “You will not win at this.” “If you want to succeed; do not be your face.” I’d seen a mountain lion at the edge of our fenced area this past August. She was the color of the crate of rusty chains by the tool shed and the size of a buck. She was panting from the suffocating humidity. The dogs must’ve chased her around. They were panting too. After carrying a bull horn and big stick wherever I went for a few days, I stopped looking at her as a bodily threat and began to think of her significance on a mystical level. Such an anomaly; seeing a mountain lion. They are so private that local game wardens get away with refusing to admit they exist. I searched mountain lion on SpiritAnimal.com. It said, “If you see a mountain lion, the message from the universe is to lead without expecting anyone to follow and to love the sacred knowledge that only solitude can bring.” I often go for days at Bohemian Farm without seeing another human. Alan works out-of-town; I stay home writing and mucking stalls. We don’t have television and our mailbox is at the main road. My initial fears of solitude have been exceeded. My unaddressed wounds have worked their way back up into the epidermis all at the same time.
The sacred knowledge has revealed to me how often I do not show up for my own life. I constantly cede my rightful power in so many little ways. A wounded child survival skill no longer needed. A stocky man, his stocky father, and a stocky friend drove over from Oklahoma to buy our tractor. When it came time to pay for my father’s tractor, he handed Alan a check. I said, “Excuse me, you plan to pay for this item with an out-of-state check?” This was terrifying for me; knowing I’d committed some cruelty for speaking a benign truth and would be instantly unplugged from any support system. I viewed him from Misses Poes’ front porch. The other men kicked the dirt and the buyer explained, “Oh yeah, it’s fine. I’m a teacher and a youth pastor, and I drive the school bus.” I explained that I did not want to have to drive to Oklahoma if his check bounced in order to retrieve my property. “You’ll have my father’s tractor and I won’t be paid for it for three days, as this is an outof-state check.” I looked at Alan as if to say, “is this what you agreed on?” He mouthed an “I’m sorry.” They had not discussed payment. Why should they? Any option they decide will work best for them is the only one considered. What’s mine is his and what’s his is mine, so, I trust Alan to handle these things. But I would’ve clarified payment instructions knowing someone was gonna drive from Oklahoma on a Sunday when the banks are closed. Had I handled it, we would not be in this position right now. But I hadn’t. And now, in order to circumvent taking a risk, I must speak the cruel truth to someone. My honest question, aside from caring for myself, implies that he is self-centered, thoughtless, and thinks the world revolves around him. The amount of energy needed to deflect the pain and anger that gets projected onto you as you as you rightfully defend yourself while being a woman is just too much for me most of the time. My caring for myself causes others pain, anger, and terrifying self-reflection; like it did for my father. My knowing that these others have no regard for me causes me exhaustion and crushing self-doubt. Alan hadn’t tried to walk over me; I’d shrunk into the background of my own life. And when I’d spoken up, I had been completely dismissed while standing on my own land and handling my own business. As a result of shrinking from inevitable pain; I’ve stuffed my soul into a tiny hole at the base of a juniper tree. I’ve broken my own jaw in order to keep my voice from eking out. I’ve compressed my spirit down into a flat sheet of paper. I’ve put myself inside a secluded garden surrounded by a fence of swords. I’ve allowed so much of my blood to flow out that my arms are too weak for embrace. I wait for someone to find my sacred knowledge of interest. I listen carefully. Someone is there struggling to free themselves from a thicket of thorny vines growing up into a chinaberry tree. I hear them straining to escape. Last night I thought I heard them splash across the wet weather creek. I woke up at midnight and sat on the porch crying over some long-repressed wound. I hoped that
Cast Away
A poem by Randi Romo Marooned upon the peninsula of a lime green pool noodle I float belly down in the ocean of a chlorinated basin The sun warm upon my back, as it dapples the bottom below Mesmerizing, iridescent flecks of the universe, caught in a bowl My shadow looms, a twin, yet a stranger, no face nor name If I hold my arms just right, the pool noodle becomes a set of wings Arms horizontal along the noodle, my shadow is crucified for my sins From angel to condemned, condemned to angel, with barely a ripple I slip fully into the water, the blue of the bottom, pulling me deeper into its womb, baptizing the air from my lungs, salvation at hand Until the last vestiges of consciousness, rattling for one more breath hurtles me upward, breaking the surface like a wounded sea beast Beaching myself upon the unbearable whiteness of the pool steps I sit, gasping for the air that will not come for the barrier of my sobbing Standing shakily, wrapped in the shroud of a blue and white beach towel I go inside, leaving a dripping trail of my sorrow, that will dry to the eye, An indelible secret message that is borne in heart, blood, brain and soul I am a mother with no child
Jennifer Lea Bearden June 9, 1974 – February 4, 2018
the owl hooting close by would land on the railing and drop the keys to my life on the front porch. I told Alan over breakfast about having heard it and looked up its spirit meaning. “Death and new beginnings.” “The ability to see through the darkness.” I thought of the owl that fixed his eyes on us the day that our house burned to the ground over a decade ago. I went out to feed Catalunya at 6 a.m. and the same owl swooped right in front of me and landed on a branch. I dropped the crate of hay and stared at it. A blue-jay attacked its left wing. The raptor brushed the jay away dismissively then flew to a branch of one of the giant oaks. The wingspan was like a giant kite made from a chinchilla fringed cape. I moved quickly towards it to get a better look. It sat perfectly still and allowed me to suck in its wild serenity; its eyes so perfectly round and black like ebony buttons. Tears escaped, and I no longer felt alone. I felt immense gratitude for nature’s willingness to interact with me. This owl sees me. Wants to be with me. Wants to bring me a message. He is unafraid of my truth. Something is dying. Something is being born. Something is coming. Being in solitude has given me the space to be able to learn to care for myself. To walk in my own truth is becoming important for my well-being. If I continue to stuff back my soul, she’ll disappear beneath the hot tub to be gobbled by frogs and moles. Cutting myself off from those who do not value me is not a loss. It’s a gain. Even if my only friends are owls and mountain lions, donkeys, goats, and dogs. Now that I finally choose to be my face; the face that trusts her body for important messages, the face the animals come to see, the face that guards her own jaw, the face that sets how transactions are handled; now that I can finally be my face, I am no longer afraid of the mountain lion. I am the mountain lion. About Karen Jo Vennes Karen Jo Vennes has written for publications including the Lovely County Citizen and HerCatwalk.com. She writes for her blog BohemianFarm.com, where she chronicles her experience of moving from a metropolitan area to her remote third-generation family farm in the Arkansas River Valley with her rescue donkey, Catalunya. The collection of blog posts is currently being edited for publication with the help of her mentor, Jo McDougall, the current Poet Laureate of Arkansas. idleclassmag.com
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BELLOWS A poem by Carolyn Guinzio
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