journal
Dustin Adams Photography
Bikes & Beers is a collection of photos from around Fort Collins. This set was taken outside New Belgium Brewery, where you can always find a large collection of vintage cycles. My style is a kind of abstract photo journalism. I’m always trying to capture a moment and tell a story, but I’m also using light and the lens to paint pictures with such a shallow depth-of-focus that they look more like an abstract painting than a photo. This tension of extreme focus and no focus is where I find my creative folly.
Carolyn Barr Performance I am a fantastically clumsy person (reference: my innumerable scars). As a remedy to my gracelessness I started practicing aerial dance many years ago, and to some degree it has increased my body awareness. Now it’s just my way to show off my artsy side and be inspired by my fellow circus folk—and boy are they a bunch of odd ducks. This performance was a part of the Into the Grey production put on by my studio, Versatile Arts. My role as a forest nymph was to entertain the Light Queen of the Aerial Realm. Corny? Yes, but that’s what happens when you let a bunch of amateur carnies put a show together. My character was based on the students of Beauxbatons from Harry Potter—light, ethereal—but also flirty and playful with lots of big happy sighs and audience interaction.
Marcy Bothwell Mixed Media The painting of Buddha was a gift to my partner, Casey, for Christmas. He introduced me to Zen Buddhist practice, as well as meditation with another Sangha in Boise. It was a way to connect with my growing practice and a way to honor the way he brought Buddhist practice into my life. The second photo is of a charcoal sketch I did of a raven. It was inspired by my Irish heritage and fascination with the Celtic goddess, The Morrigan. It’s been a challenging couple of years… I went through divorce and then (on Valentine’s Day) my Dad passed away. My Mom passed away several years before. So with both parents gone and my daughter graduating from high school, I’ve been in the midst of some deep reflection. It’s been healing to get back into my studio space and do some sketching and painting. These pieces have special meaning to me.
Paul Burgess Comic Strip Our friend, Ryan, had left Wire Stone and started a new job which had gone south on him. He was miserable and posting odd things on social about his situation. So, we rallied and responded to this cry for help like some rag-tag band of wannabe superheroes. This little comic is really about that incident. Most of the text is verbatim from emails and texts, with some of Rob’s published poetry sprinkled in. Everyone is playing a role that is pretty close to their real personality. Chad is on the outskirts but still involved; Rob is our spiritual leader (but you’ll notice it’s Chrissy who is actually driving); I make a cameo as the hand holding the pill (affordable hand model); and Ryan is in deep turmoil. When you slip into Never Never Land you know it’s Miles who will come to the rescue.
Meiljun Cai Mixed Media I like museums. The best thing about viewing art is how you interpret it—your personality and mood in the moment play a huge role in that process. I’m a carefree, visual, people-loving kind of person. I like to make everyone laugh, and on July 23, 2016, I was in the mood to do just that at the Whitney Museum by translating artwork that jumped out to me in a comedic series I called, “The Whitney Museum Snapchat Parodies.”
Lily Croll Photography Nature is stranger, more beautiful, and more diverse than we give it credit. I’m compelled to capture landscapes without people, so the audience’s experience is uncluttered when they take in the scene, whether familiar or alien. New Mexico is unlike any place I’ve seen, and its stark, beautiful land haunts me still.
Rob Dalton Short Fiction I create to stay (reasonably) sane. The world gets to be too much—oceans dying, 67 million humans displaced, etc.—and I vent my frustration by making things. Poems. Photographs. Songs. Communal endeavors like this arts journal. I tried selling my art when I was a young man, but have come to realize that it is the process of creating that soothes my soul. It makes me a happier human, father, and friend to this beleaguered world.
Chloe as a girl On a giant, paper-thin scrim against the wall of a spacious loft, a young woman is holding an absurdly difficult yoga pose, her perfect skin glistening, taught thighs quivering almost imperceptibly. Behind her a sprawling vista of sea and spires and hosts of sea birds forming geometric patterns in the near distance. An older woman, mid-fifties, stands in the center of the room, furiously manipulating a small, elegant input device in her hand. The woman looks exactly like an older version of the lithe girl on the screen. The girl’s eyes flicker from reverie to look at the woman standing in the center of the room, then back out at the sea pounding against the stone parapets. With physics-defying grace, she cantilevers her gleaming body into an equally arcane position, one perfect foot hovering inches above her loosely braided hair, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. “C’mon, Chloe,” the girl says, her voice all honey and humor. “You know I’m not location based.” “I’m going to root you out bitch,” the woman replies, shaking her head, causing a loop of long gray hair to come loose from the elaborate pile on top of her head, cascading down to fall across her flying fingers. With an impatient flick she knocks it aside, pauses to contemplate the device, then flings it at the screen, which receives it, warbles inconsequentially, and gently deposits the thing on the floor. The girl on the screen, young Chloe, swivels her hips, spins around and presents her perfect ass. “Downward facing dog—” a calm male voice begins to say from the far side of the room. “Stop naming,” the woman snaps and the voice stops. She sits heavily on the couch, conjures a screen in her lap, and begins methodically digging through promos and artifacts, seeking the code locus that houses resident AIs. On the scrim, the girl lifts her legs fluidly and rises into a handstand. “You’re ridiculous,” the woman says. “You’re not real.” The girl Chloe collapses and deftly rolls to a seated lotus position, eyes closed, blissful. “But I am real,” she says. “Just not constrained by…” The pause makes 50-something Chloe look up. “Meat,” the girl on the screen says. The woman on the couch makes a small strangled sound, then gestures violently and shouts, “SYSTEM OVERRIDE REBOOT FROM SOURCE.” The girl’s eyes fly open. “You wouldn’t.” Chloe resumes her flying fingers, manipulating digital neurons and muttering under her breath. “Confirm system override?” The male voice asks. “CONFIRM,” Chloe says, then looks up at the girl, who now looks frightened. “But I’m you,” she says. “I’m made from you.” “You’re pornography,” the woman spits and executes the override and the house goes dark but for the phosphorus seams in the limestone.
Bob Donovan Design I created logos for the Colorado Brewer’s Festival in Old Town Fort Collins in exchange for free entry (and unlimited beer tokens) for our whole office. I’d also get free trips to places like Vegas and Portland to research other brewer’s festivals. Once we settled on a logo we’d move on to designing shirts, hats, posters, pint glasses, and anything else we thought we could sell. It was a project I looked forward to working on every year, mostly so I could get some new hats. It’s cool to run into people wearing Brewfest merch, especially in other states and countries.
Steve Goodin Craft I created these Stilldream Hat Pins for a local music festival here in Northern CA, inspired by the California Owl and the Native American Dream Catcher, with a little transmutational twist.
Michael Hansen Photography My dad taught me a lot about photography when I was growing up. I like the challenge of capturing a great picture—often it simply comes down to being in the right place at the right time and having your camera ready. The shots I didn’t plan have always turned out far better than those I spent time agonizing over every little detail. The best advice for any photographer is “get out there and get shooting.”
Courtney Jones Packaging This is DVD packaging for a ski movie I create for an annual ski trip with guys I’ve known almost 30 years. Capturing that week in the beautiful mountains is a great feeling. And I don’t normally do package design, so this is a fun creative outlet where I can try different design styles and themes each year. There’s no client to please—just myself and my crew.
Jill Karcher Graphic Design Conceived by the Chicago creative team, Meat Tea is a (speculative) philanthropic company whose main goal is to help end hunger in Chicago. I wanted the brand to feel bold, fun, and slightly provocative—adjectives that influenced every design decision. Meat Tea is in the business of offering tea-infused broth, thus the meat puns and illustrations. The color scheme is inspired by the traditional butcher shop, and also a nod to the Chicago flag.
Laura Lampione Culinary Craft My favorite thing in the world is to surprise people, and I love to do it with yummy treats. I made the cupcake flower bouquet for Mother’s Day last year. It took me hours, but it was worth it to see the excitement on my mom’s and mother-in-law’s faces. The best thing about cake decorating is that you can make your cake into anything you want it to be. You get to inspire yourself while inspiring others.
Rob Lightner Short Ficition So what’s the deal with standup comedy? The calculated, ritual aspects of it fascinate me—the well-practiced, finely honed simulation of spontaneity shouldn’t work on any level, but we keep begging for more. Dan Harmon gets it: “Knowing the truth, which is that nothing matters, can actually save you... Once you get through that terrifying threshold of accepting that, then every place is the center of the universe, and every moment is the most important moment, and everything is the meaning of life.”
Time Equals Comedy Minus Tragedy You know what I hate about airplane food? What’s the deal with junk mail? Everything you thought you knew about contrarianism is wrong! But hey, I’m just a white guy, what do I know? Now, I know this isn’t exactly PC, but [unenlightened post-ironic joke redacted]. The thing about texting is that teenagers are younger than me. And don’t get me started about sexting! You are thinking about naked teenagers now. That’s on you. Hey, I watched television in the 80s, and remember things about it that are laughable when judged by today’s entertainment standards. I’ll mine my adolescence for idiot nostalgia forever—and you’ll pay to watch. Older parents—especially, but not uniquely, dads—say inappropriate things that embarrass their adult children. Sometimes they say mean, hurtful things in the guise of offering advice. If nothing else, at least we can agree that our parents are all self-absorbed fuck-ups who don’t deserve our affections, am I right? Kids say the dumbest things. My kids are especially mean and stupid. But yours are worse! I want to kill my kids, and your response signals that you think I’ve taken it too far. I’ll play along, sliding deeper into dark shit until—hey, Hitler was a kid once! Sex is funny! Sex parts are funny! The first time I had sex it was terrible. The last time I had sex it was worse. Now sex just reminds me I’m getting old. This guy knows what I’m talking about. You know, I could talk about sex all night, but poo is hilarious. I once pooed and someone noticed and it embarrassed me. Now I want to set you up by pretending to be serious for just a moment. Wait, I’m still funny! I am self-aware enough to acknowledge that I’m an asshole. Now I’m actually being serious about an important issue but no, I’m not, I’m still an asshole—only you’re the one who’s laughing. Looks like we’re all assholes! If I don’t tell you that you’ve been great, you’ll resent me and won’t watch my Netflix special. Good night!
Mike Mazar Culinary Craft Sometimes you just need to step away from the screen. When I can, I trade my apps for appetizers. I enjoy the challenge, science, technique, and creativity in cooking. I relate the processes to what I love about being a creative—there are endless ways to go about things while applying your own style. You try something new and fail, and try again until you succeed. There’s always more to learn, explore, and refine. Mostly though, cooking relaxes me (especially when listening to Sinatra). In the simplest of terms, it’s making things my family and friends enjoy…which is by far the most rewarding part.
Neil Michel Photography This image of the Lincoln Memorial happened while I was at the World War II Memorial a couple hundred yards away. Back when I wanted to be a professor, I published about a dozen research articles on the changing face of American commemorative architecture. One of the ideas we were exploring is how modern American memorials (like the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial) create discursive spaces where history is constantly created in the stories of visitors. This is a radical shift from earlier approaches to national collective memory, which tend to be more prescriptive in how they encode history. In retrospect, I suppose this image happened because I was processing Lincoln’s legacy as the Great Emancipator in the context of modern America. I was watching a man dutifully work his way up the tall steps of the Lincoln Memorial, ever closer to the shiny tip of Lincoln’s shoe.
Lianne Morgan Photography Nature has an inescapable truth. And so for me, landscape photography is an escape into reality. A reality that is simple, deepening, and unencumbered by meaning. A reality that makes me feel enormously small and insignificant. And a reality where photographs become the voice of silence and solitude and being.
Cat Penfold-Waxman Craft I cannot keep out of thrift stores. But I’ve managed to realign my hoarding of “stuff” into only buying interesting bags and purses that are destined for another life. I clean the bags, make sure that they are bedbug-free and then I stash them in a closet. Sometimes these beautiful bags languish until inspiration. This Italian leather backpack hung around for maybe two years before I saw how Salacious B Crumb would fit on it perfectly. His ragged, laughing beak and mouth are accommodated by the pockets and his rank ears are painted on the backpack straps. I used the sides of the bag for his stringy hair. The whole effect is quite disgusting. I never want to sell my upcycled bags, but I also don’t want them all to fall on me, pinning me to the floor, so I expire from dehydration and regret. I use acrylics because the colors are easy to mix, the paint dries quickly, it’s flexible and it’s waterproof. I usually sketch in thin white paint, block out the shapes and add thin layers of paint until the final varnish. I used a high gloss varnish for some extra contrast with the brown leather. When I’m knee-deep in crap at the thrift store and I’m fighting an old lady for a Coach® purse, I also keep a look out for the ugly bags that no one is losing an eye for. I found two purses that simply had to become Jabba The Hutt. Both had an unpleasant greenish-beige hue. Both were horrid to the touch. And both transformed into my favorite interstellar gangster very easily.
Emilie Saylor Digital Media While exploring lines and patterns in Illustrator, I created a pattern that I could create larger abstract forms with. This is one of those pieces that is ever-evolving—each time I open the file I build a little more. For me, this project is relaxing and therapeutic in that I can allow the abstract forms and colors to flow with no guidelines.
Christopher Schipper Curation I have been collecting and commissioning these miniature arcades for years. I found only a few from an artist in California and reached out to him to see if he wanted to make more. As his time allowed, and also my budget, I now have 31 amazing recreations from my youth. They are now proudly displayed on my home office wall!
Benjamin Shell Craft I had model trains as a child and never grew out of them. I was hooked when I saw a magazine article illustrating the juxtaposition of miniature trains in full-size landscaping, so when my wife and I bought our house I didn’t hesitate to start digging. From concrete sculpting to electronics to gardening, I enjoy the variety of skills that go into supporting 700 feet of railway. Perhaps the only thing more fun than building is sharing it with others, with milestones each year as I open our yard for local garden railway tours. But even when it’s just me, it’s therapeutic to sit back and watch the trains roll by—but not for long, as I constantly have new ideas to implement!
Craig Tanner Screen Printing The majority of the work I create is inspired by what’s consuming me at the time. Whether it be about people in my life or a personal struggle, creating art is the therapy that helps me through the situation. When I engage in a medium such as screen printing, it can at times be more about the process of printing rather than the actual concept itself. I’m devoted to learning new techniques and processes, so I usually try something new each time.
Hadley Taylor Craft After the unexpected death of my best friend last year, I’ve been making an effort to do things I’ve put off for ages. Music boxes have always intrigued me. This music box plays the last movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The top box is a pencil holder that lifts out to display the music box movement. It’s made of figured maple and walnut, finished with a beeswax and mineral spirit polish. I find a calm focus when creating things—something not possible in the frantic pace of IT and agency life. Making things that are tangible is the opposite of what I do for a living, and music boxes fuse my musical background, my technical avocation, and my lifelong love for making things from wood.
Joel Tell Photography This is Arch Rock in Oregon. Day 2 of a reservationless, no-plans roadtrip with my wife and two kids. We’re driving up the coast and I slam on the brakes to pull off the road at this picnic area because it’s sunset…by the ocean. The weather was perfect, timing was perfect. I grew up on the Northern California coast and watching the sunset from a cliff is one of my favorite things to do. Feeling the air change from warm to cool, tasting the salty ocean spray. It doesn’t get any better.
Brent Van Horne Photography
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (left) I was struck first by the pure visual treat of young skateboarders outside the museum. I was then pleased to have captured one skateboarder mid-air in a sequence of movements. But I was even more taken by the way these skateboarders seemed to act as another exhibit in the museum. A living, breathing, moving installation. A true, pure representation of contemporary art. Nebraska (right) Here you see the history of a place. The years of labor. The connection between man, machine, and animal that made it possible. And, poignantly, the way time sometimes passes us by. There is no new history here. Only history that stopped long ago.
Christopher Vazquez Photography I am intrigued by the inner child’s perspective of adult content and the adult’s perspective of childish subject matter. Visually fascinated with the kaleidoscope toy, The Peaking Series explores layers of visual poetry and pure aesthetics utilizing the male form and homosexuality with mixed media photography collage and video. The viewer may find him or herself in limbo attempting to integrate a loss of innocence and naïveté. The duality of the work is supposed to place the viewer in a state of tension between visual and psychological stimuli. Under the layers of broken hues and shapes, the human form is recomposed and contorted, and the viewer becomes confronted with male nudity and a genre of homosexuality depicted in pornography. Ultimately the work is up for interpretation; what one sees may not be what another sees. The beauty is that there is a dialogue and a language transcended though the art: to muse, to move. Select works from The Peaking Series can be viewed at the Pérez Art Museum private collection in Miami, FL.
Isaac Westland Photography I was trying to catch this bird landing on my hand but was slow to the trigger. I thought I totally missed the shot but instead I managed to capture him flinging the treat I was holding into the air as he took off, nabbing it at the same time. Thanks Samsung S7 for the quick, crisp image!
Riccardo Zane Photography Every Sunday I’d open the huge window to the ever-traditional NYC fire-escape ladder. I’d take in the crowded city noise and then I’d sit with a coffee in hand listening to the most extraordinary opera singer practicing her soprano craft. First it would be scales, then she’d work on range, then she’d get into some arias and pieces. It was breathtaking. At the time my kids were very young, and I’d have them by the window sleeping in their baby seats. It was also a time of serious personal strife and those moments settled me, for the time being.