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The Woven Tale Press
Vol.III #9
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sandra Tyler Author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and After Lydia, both published by Harcourt Brace; awarded BA from Amherst College and MFA in Writing from Columbia University; professor of creative writing on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including at Columbia University, (NY), Wesleyan University (CT), and Manhattanvill College, (NY); served as assistant editor at Ploughshares and The Paris Review literary magazines, and production freelancer for Glamour, Self, and Vogue magazines; freelance editor; Stony Brook University’s national annual fiction contest judge; a 2013 BlogHer.com Voices of the Year. www.awriterweavesatale.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Michael Dickel, Ph.D. A poet, fiction writer, essayist, photographer and digital artist, Dr. Dickel holds degrees in psychology, creative writing, and English literature. He has taught college, university writing and literature courses for nearly 25 years; served as the director of the Student Writing Center at the University of Minnesota and the Macalester Academic Excellence Center at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36 (2010). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art books, and online for over 20 years, including in:THIS Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Cartier Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sketchbook, Emerging Visions Visionary Art eZine, and Poetry Midwest. His latest book of poems is Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour. www.michaeldickel.info
ARTS EDITORS: Seth Apter Mixed-media artist, instructor, author and designer. His artwork has been widely exhibited, and represented in numerous books, independent zines, and national magazines. He is the voice behind The Pulse, a series of international, collaborative projects, the basis of his two books The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed and The Mixed-Media Artist: Art Tips, Tricks, Secrets and Dreams From Over 40 Amazing Artists, both published by North Light Books. He is the artist behind two workshop DVDs: Easy Mixed Media Surface Techniques and Easy Mixed Media Techniques for the Art Journal. www.sethapter.com Donald Kolberg Sculptor, painter, art marketer and writer. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the U.S. in museums and galleries with his current representation at the Parker Art Gallery in St. Simons, Ga. He has been featured in an NBC short documentary and numerous print and zine publications. He is founder of ArtCore an international newsletter, and continues to be active in art groups presenting classes on marketing and art techniques including workshops on creating Strappo’s, a dry transfer acrylic monotype. A graduate of California State University, Los Angeles, his master work was continued at Otis Art Institute. Additionally he produced Periscope Up an independent television production for a Pennsylvania PBS station. His artwork has been included in the publication ‘Sculpture and Design with Recycled Glass’. Additional artwork and information can be viewed at www.DonaldKolberg.com PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORS: Susan Tuttle Award winning iPhoneographer and DSLR photographer. She is the author of three instruction-based books (published in the US and abroad by F+W Media, North Light Books) on digital art with Photoshop, mobile photography and DSLR photography, and mixed-media art. Her fourth book, Art of Everyday Photography: Move Toward Manual and Make Creative Photos (about DSLR photography and mobile photography) was recently released by North Light Books and has been a best-seller in its category on Amazon. She is currently the Technical Advisor for Somerset Digital Studio Magazine. www.susantuttlephotography.com Charlotte Thompson: Conceptual photographer and owner of Digital Art Transparency Overlays. Besides designing book covers, her works are in individual collections both in the U.S. and abroad, including Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and Korea. She has shown her photography at Photo Contemporary, OPF Gallery One, Raleigh Studios, and in a Hollywood exhibitions. www.opfgalleryone.com/artists/charlotte-thompson
Woven Tale Publishing Š copyright 2013 Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited, except by permission of the publisher
ISSN: 2333-2387
Editor’s Note: The Woven Tale Press is a monthly culling of the creative Web, exhibiting the artful and innovative. Enjoy here an eclectic mix of the literary, visual arts, photography, humorous, and offbeat. The Woven Tale Press mission is to grow Web traffic to noteworthy writers and artists–contributors are credited with interactive Urls. Click on an Url to learn more about a contributor. To submit or become a Press member, go to: thewoventalepress.net
www.samuellynne.com
Joann Moser, Senior Curator of Wiley’s 2009 exhibition
at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, What’s It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect, wrote: “Wiley has created a body of work that anticipated such important developments as installation art, audience participation, a revival of interest in drawing, as well as the use of humor and language as significant aspects of contemporary art.”
For Edgar A. Post Modumb acrylic on canvas 35” x 34.5”
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Getting a Handle on Painting charcoal graphite and acrylic on canvas 33.5� x 28�
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W
illiam T. Wiley’s work
can be found in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Legion of Honor, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Philadelphia Museum ofArt; Honolulu Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
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Monkey See charcoal graphite and acrylic on canvas 61.5” x 74”
The Downer Party mixed media on paper 24” x 19”
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Post Modern Landscape & the Pressure of Just Us mixed media 62” x 33.75”
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Dude Defending the Stare Case acrylic on canvas 60.75” x 65.25”
Burning Car Unfinished Abstraction Kathmandu acrylic on canvas 61” x 63.25”
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www.michaelsaari.com
“Spectacular AO” 20’ tall steel commissioned sculpture commemorating American Optical. Installed on the Southbridge MA commton, 10/10.
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Master metalsmith Michael J. Saari has
over 25 years of experience. He has filled numerous commissions for both traditional hardware and contemporary sculpture and furniture.
Sculpture # 1 cast iron with brushed finish 16” x 10” x 5”
Sculpture # 3 cast iron with oxidized finish 24” high
Sculpture # 2 cast iron with brushed finish 20” high
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Saari’s contemporary metalwork has been ex-
hibited and represented in public collections in the U.S.A., Europe, and Scandinavia. Projects have ranged from sculptures installed in Germany to large gold-leafed weathervanes for individual buildings.
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Architectural hardware includes hinges, latches, locks, slidebolts, box locks, spring locks, open face locks, fasteners and ornamental bolts.
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www.authoramok.blogspot.com
The Day You Quit Me After Bessie Smith I got a hat made of feathers,
Forsythia after Spring Snow
put it on and men start to cry.
Under the snow
I got a hat made of feathers
the world
and someday they’re gonna fly.
has caught fire.
If you ever quit me, honey,
A cardinal, red
they’re gonna lift me to the sky.
as tandoori spice, warms himself
I’ll put on a red dress,
by the flames
I’ll put on my hat, I’ll sing like a robin if you’ll just stay where you’re at. I got this hat made of feathers bluer than the empty sky. The day you quit me, honey, is the day I’m gonna die.
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of yellow blossoms.
Equinox
On the first day of spring the Earth’s gravitational forces are more balanced than a teeter totter, not unlike the way you once sat across from me learning how to hover and when to kick off from the ground. I speak of long ago, before we were married. All the languages I have learned since then have tumbled to the floor, broken. Today, let us be like a balanced egg, the meat of it resting in a white cup with no saucer, the Earth holding us upright.
Laura Shovan is poetry editor for Little Patuxent Review. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt and Stone, won the inaugural Harriss Poetry Prize. Shovan edited Life in Me Like Grass on Fire: Love Poems and co-edited Voices Fly: An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artists-in-Residence Program, for which she teaches. The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, her novel-in-verse for children, will be published in 2016 (Wendy Lamb Books/Random House). 12
www.joangiordano.com
Giordano’s creative practice
merges painting, sculpture and the conceptual with a variety of media and processes including slashing, folding, gluing, welding, soldering, burning, fusing, waxing, troweling and various installation strategies.
Message Up Front handmade paper, copper, steel, encaustic 36” x 76” x 10”
Beneath the Skin copper, cable, steel mesh 72” x 30” x 10”
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Undfolding oxidized aluminum, paper, wax 55” x 45” x 6”
Legend copper, handmade paper, wax 28” x 36” x 3”
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Message Machine rolled international newspapers, corrugated paper, handmade paper, graphite and paint 50� x 60�
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Line Dancing newspapers, lithograph, Asian paper, graphite and paint 24” x 33”
“m
uch of my work
incorporates paper of some kind. Paper’s metaphysical qualities serve both as the matrix of my imagination and the embodiment of the forms I make.”
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Intersecton photo lithograph, with layered Asian papers and mixed media 60� x 24�
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Fantasy Journey newspapers, lithograph, Aisian paper, graphite and paint 40� x 30�
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Media Blitz international newspapers, corrugated cardboard and paper, encaustic, paint, graphite 48” x 108” x 3”
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www.nswearer.com
N
icholas Swearer’s human narrative
installations are a social didactic–raising of questions and searching for answers. While the installations are a record of our time, they are also an observation on the universal human condition, seemingly unchanged throughout time and ever repeating. In the language of the narrative installations, each character is an icon for an emotional or physical state, or for an action. Depending on where, when and how these characters are arranged, different issues are explored. As characters are combined in different arrangements, their meanings can change, as well as their individual and group titles.
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Depression
Tease
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Politicians
I
n order to reach a broad audience, the historic and permanent medium of figurative bronze sculpture is used. Sculpture takes up our physical space and does not rely on written or spoken language for the communication of ideas. Sculpture is its own language, made up of an infinite number of visual and tactile elements.
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All sculptures: approx. 50� high and made of cast bronze.
Explanation
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Vanity and Pride
Innocence
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Gossip and Innuendo
Children
T
he figures are unclothed, therefore independent of past, present and future references. Without clothing and the psychological protection it affords, the naked truth and our fragility as humans are revealed. Body type, gesture, abstraction, and sexuality are elements used to communicate through the work. The classical notions of beauty are intentionally played down in order to focus on emotional and interactive qualities of the work.
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www.samuellynne.com
Pope Creek #51 epoxy on aluminum 17” x 15” x 14”
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T
om Holland
is
the recipient for the National Endowment for the Arts Grant and Guggenheim Fellowship, having shown his artwork in major museums across the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and at the Chicago Art Institute. Pope Creek #50 epoxy on aluminum 27” x 14” x 15”
Pope Canyon epoxy on aluminum 72” x 66” x 20”
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Seago epoxy on aluminum 71” x 48” x 27”
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Red Head epoxy on aluminum 83” x 60”
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www.shadechallenge.blogspot.co.uk
Unturnable I sneak up on you and turn your key. Sometimes I do it when you are asleep, when you don’t hear night sounds like your fridge belching or your floorboards groaning as I tiptoe across them. I turn it just enough so that your good dreams don’t overexcite you and the bad ones don’t go on for long enough to kill you. But when you are awake I have to turn your key when you are not looking. When you are doing simple things like boiling a kettle or peeling a potato or hanging your smalls on the washing line. I have to be careful that you don’t see me and that I don’t drop the key before I have the chance to turn it. I especially have to make sure that I bob down quickly enough whenever you look at yourself in the mirror. I’ve been caught out a few times like that and I see the momentary look of horror on your face before you have the time for your brain to forget seeing me. I sneak up on you and turn your key. I make it all happen. Every sneeze. Every fart. Every annoying song that crawls into your head. It’s me. And I’ll be there for you until your key grows blunt and rusty and completely unturnable.
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April I am the only person that sees her. April. With her ridiculous costume and her lopsided smile that looks like it has been painted by a four year old with a broken crayon. For everybody else she is nothing but a corner of the eye illusion. An ocular event as sinister as the wagging tail of a dog. As devastating as a microscopic particle of dust landing on the carpet. But she’s there all the same. And I see her. And sometimes she sees me and when she does her face drops to the floor and she will stick out her tongue or blow a raspberry across the room at me. And I know then that she is about to do something. Somebody is about to trip over their own feet on the sidewalk. Somebody is about to piss themselves in the middle of a very important meeting. Somebody is about to declare their love to somebody who is going to spit every single ounce of their love straight back at their face like a two day old piece of gum.
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“T
he artworks I create
are shrines, reliquaries, totems, altars, love letters, journals, and collections of memories. I both construct and reconstruct their history, purpose, and meaning. They are products of their environment, pieced together from the detritus of the South where I was born, reside, and work. They are rich, dark, and dirty like the history of my home. The South is steeped in a history of dark personalities and deeds.” –Jason Twiggy Lott
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www.jasontwiggylott.com
Dead Soldier I mixed media asemblage on wood 20” x 40”
Dead Soldier II mixed media assemblage on wood 20” x 30”
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Throne of the Mysteriarch mixed media assemblage on wood 30” x 30”
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Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows III mixed media assembalge on wood 20” x 20”
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So Uviens Toi Que Tu Vas Mourir mixed media assemblage on wood 30” x 20”
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Instructions for Decomposition mixed media assemblage on wood 11” x 14”
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Equation axrylic and flora on wood 30” x 30”
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“W
hen painting abstractly, dirty brush-washing water is just as important as new paint. Every artist working with paints has the jar of water or turpentine that brushes go in and out of while painting. I like the idea of the ‘trash’ that would normally be washed down the drain being on the same level as the untainted paint straight from the tube.” –Jason Twiggy Lott
July Study IV oil, acrylic, flora, fiber on canvas 36” x 24”
Schismatism acrylic on canvas 50” x 40”
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Time’s Past
Desperate Hulls wood, steel, paper and wax 20” x 16”
Jens Norman is at heart a c
with a background in fine woodworking, metal fabrication an mediums and artistic endeavors. Any and everything that tak create and re-create, in search of meaning and aesthetic bea 41
www.jensnorman.com
Untitled 20” x 16” wood, steel, paper and wax
Untitled 28” x 8.8” wood, steel, paper and wax
craftsman
nd ceramics, among many other kes a physical form draws him to auty.
Built-Up Expectations 30” x 11.2” wood, steel, paper and wax
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Moonlight Perception 26.8” x 10.8” wood,steel, paper and wax
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G
rowing up, Jens Norman learned to appreciate the natural world for what it is and how it changes in time.
Covered and Forgotten 25.2� x 7.6� wood, steel, paper and wax
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Untitled 24” x 15.” wood, steel, paper and wax
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Untitled 28” x 9.2” wood, steel, paper and wax
H
e grew up under a multimedia artist and a horticulture professor. For this reason, nature has become a large part of Norman’s focus and helps one understand how his interests influence his artistic vision.
Road-Side Beat Down 20” x 10.4” wood, steel, psper and wax
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www.tessahorrocks.com
Ice Flowers collograph 15” x 23”
T
essa Horrocks is a print-maker who makes original prints
using the “intaglio” technique collagraph. Influenced by microscopic structures and nature, she likes to create images about little worlds within worlds, often describing feelings and energies inside of herself and in relation to her surroundings. She enjoys the technique collagraph for its simplicity and its textures.
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Flowers for Mum collograph 21” x 49”
Ice Flowers (Stormy) collograph 15” x 23”
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Flowers for Mum collograph 21” x 49”
Ice Flowers (2) collograph 23” x 15”
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Pebbles Are Great (Color Series 2) collograph 23” x 15”
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Pebble Hunting collograph 23” x 15”
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www.arthurmdoweyko.com
Life and Entropy–The Conund I think we all heard about entropy. It’s a physicist’s way of measuring disorder. The more random things get, the more disorder, ergo, the higher entropy you get. Thermodynamics is an empirical science, i.e., one based on observation, so when the second law of thermodynamics states that an isolated system will always increase in entropy, you can take that to the bank. There are no exceptions. There are tons of examples. Here are a few. Take a look at the pyramids in Egypt. Over time. they went from smooth and shiny to a stack of broken down blocks of stone. Give them a few more thousand years, and you’ll have a pile of dirt. When you build a stack of cards, you just know that they won’t last. They much prefer falling down. Your car engine works by converting the energy stored in gasoline into heat which results in expanding gases and the movement of pistons. However, not all that stored energy makes it into mechanical energy. The less that 100% conversion is true of every machine ever created, and it’s due to each system losing out to friction which results in wear and tear and the eventual demise of the engine. At first blush life seems to spit in the face of the second law. From the moment of conception we have an organism which gathers material from its surroundings and grows into a increasingly complex and ordered system. This is the opposite of entropy (sometimes called negentropy). The level of organization is incredibly high - organelles, cells, nerves, brain, and organs, all communicating and synchronized. And all this is accomplished automatically without anyone’s assistance! Well, there is the DNA molecule. In fact, the DNA (our
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drum blueprint) does orchestrate the whole shebang from a tiny group of cells all the way through to our final days... which is of course true for all life on Earth, not just us. So if we only look at the organism, it does appear to violate the second law... but not really. We are not isolated systems. It’s true that we take in food and water, and organize it into living tissue, which decreases entropy. However, if you look closer you’ll see that we also excrete a lot of things... like heat, gases, urine and feces. These bits increase the entropy in our environment. Heat stirs up things. Our breath contains a variety of gases that weren’t there when we inhaled. Urine and feces contain the remnants of the food we took in, i.e., those nicely-ordered fruits and vegetables have now become something quite a bit less ordered. When we eventually deteriorate, this is just the second law catching up with us. No machine is perfect, and even the DNA replication process picks up mistakes (mutations) with time, which makes us less efficient. Add to that random changes that occur to proteins due to external forces like radiation (cosmic rays, sunlight). These entropic forces, the tendency toward disorder, will bring down the biological wonder that is life just as surely as the pyramids will become dust one day. You could call it the circle of life, but perhaps more accurately, the CIRCLES OF LIFE, as DNA seems to have been designed to insure it’s survival by constantly making copies, each temporary, but resulting in a chain that may go on forever.
Arthur M. Doweyko is a scientist who writes science fiction. His blog features cutting-edge insights, ranging from philosophy to quantum mechanics.
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www.clsaari.com
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“L
ampwork glass beads
are a wonderful canvas for my designs. Using opaque glass, metals, and enamels I build layers of subtle color, sometimes adding a minimalist sketch in glass to create suggestions of light, texture and place.” –Cynthia Lieber Saari
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C
ynthia Liebler Saari is a glass bead maker in Woodstock, CT. Drawing from images in the natural world as well as art and architecture, her pieces express abstract landscapes and simple forms. She has exhibited, taught, and been featured in publications throughout the United States. Finished jewelry often incorporates semi-precious stones, wood, and vintage components.
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