PA 100

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Issue 92 | March 2018

10th Anniversary Issue Featuring PoetsArtists Publishing Prize Awards and Arc Finalists Members

www.poetsandartists.com GOSS183 PUBLISHING HOUSE 604 Vale Street Bloomington, Il 61701 USA

PUBLISHER Didi Menendez CURATOR | WRITER Jay Menendez MANAGING EDITOR | WRITER Lorena Kloosterboer JURORS Steven Alan Bennett Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt

DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION Magzter PRINT-ON-DEMAND Blurb COVER ARTIST Nick Alm

Copyright Š 2008-2018 All rights are reserved by PoetsArtists, GOSS183, Didi Menendez, and contributing artists, writers, and poets. All writings, artwork and images are copyright of the contributors and may not be reproduced without explicit permission. This publication may not be reproduced electronically, digitally, in print or any other form, format, or media without the explicit, written permission and approval of the copyright holders. All images and artwork are used with permission of the authors/creators or their representatives. Unless otherwise noted all sizes are in inches.

10th Anniversary Issue poets Diana Adams Nin Adrews Grace Cavalieri Eric Coyote Ricky Garni Bob Hicok Mark Hopping Rebecca Politzer William Stobb Ken Taylor art renewal center publishing prize Nick Alm Mary Chiaramonte Randalf Dilla Rose Frantzen Saul Martinez Rodriguez artists Erin Anderson Donna Bates Stacy D’Aguiar

Gemma Di Grazia Matthew Alfonso Durante Eva Evangelista Natalia Fabia Jeff Faerber Jason Lee Gimbel Maryam Gohar Alexander Hayden Daire Lynch Susannah Martin Hannah Moghbel Sarah Muirhead Vanessa Newell Lis Pardoe Nadine Robbins Viktoria Savenkova Tina Spratt Ken Taylor Megan Van Groll Conor Walton Anna Wypych Daryl Zang & ARC Finalists Members

Janne Kearney | ARC FINALIST | Me too | oil on linen | 12x12 | 2017 | ARC AWARD | FWSD AWARD

Bob Hicok

Grope, grasp, clasp, sand Somewhere in this house is one of those things sailors used to navigate by the stars. I know but can’t locate the word. Not astrolabe or orrery, micrometer or nautilus, pizza or palazzo, and am writing this poem to prove to myself I don’t have Alzheimer’s yet. As soon as the word shows up I promise to stop what I’m doing and let you know how happy I am, since forgetting is never just forgetting anymore, now that we know moths get in the brain and devour faces and the story of how honey comes to our tongues and Rome if you’ve been there tell me what it’s like, if it’s worth braving all the tourists and their tourist teeth and being rude to the Italians who never asked me to come. Maybe the thing itself could help me navigate to what it’s called and feel less like the ashes of a map of Atlantis, like a shoe beside the road trying to hitchhike, like a cloud asked to take dictation from Edith Piaf. It seems

like it’s an s word, not spinnaker or spinet, salamander or Salamanca, I like syzygy for the way it hordes ys but always have to look up why I’m looking it up, what treasure is buried there to carry home. Well kids, by this poem’s own measure, since the sound or sounds haven’t found their way to my ingers, I have Alzheimer’s now. You think I’m kidding and I think I’m kidding but all that matters is if my brain thinks I’m kidding and it won’t tell me.

Do you like how private our insides are compared to our taste in clothes?

It’s just not there, whatever the name of the widget is that helped us ask stars for help, that thing we need so much of at the start of life and the end, also the middle, also this very minute I’m sitting here pretending I don’t hear dirt falling on my head, so let’s move on to another topic, shall we, like armor or if there’s a name for irst light other than irst light.

Lis Pardoe

Paradox Persona | oil on panel | 24x30 | 2016

Weight | oil on panel | 21x26 | 2016

Retrospect | oil on panel | 24x24 | 2017

Self Portrait | oil on panel | 14x18 | 2016

Bob Hicok

A melancholy man will use Occam’s razor in a melancholy way hese little cuts were appearing on my thigh I assumed not from my cat jumping into my lap but from s & m shit in my sleep, either an ant or bulldozer tying me up and making me beg for sea salt caramel ice cream, since it could have been nothing else When they stopped appearing, I was convinced life was no longer sweet and called the police, who zoomed over with lights lashing to laugh at the human condition to my face, and we cried together in the back yard over how few stars can see us anymore After they broke all the plates and left, I glued eating back together best I could and wrote a letter to my dead dog, Dear Sasha, I have yet to learn to fetch or be at peace. You were right to chase cars and mistrust the moon, and burned the letter so my love would get where it needed to go, “ashes to ashes we all fall down,� except for smoke

Kim Peters | ARC FINALIST | Poured Out (cropped) | oil on canvas | 65.5x149 cm | 2017 | FIGURATIVE HONORARY MENTION

Conor Walton

The Bull | oil on linen | 45x60 cm | 2016

The Joker Wins Again | oil on linen | 45x60 cm | 2018

Asymmetrical Warfare | oil on linen | 45x90 cm | 2017

Thoroughly Modern Danae | oil on linen | 45x60 cm | 2017

The Barbarians at the Gates | oil on linen | 50x60 cm | 2017

Bob Hicok

Refugees (cropped) | oil on linen | 45x45 cm | 2016

Big he rat who manages to swim through shit into our house will be a valued addition to the community if I have my say, a bit bitey for sure and scary coming out of the toilet, but this is something evolution or god or the god of evolution has deemed a good thing to have, rats who can swim through shit and carry the bubonic plague and get electrodes put in their heads to help us cure cancer or understand why we like putting electrodes in the heads of mammals, and not just because insects don’t have brains. Am I screwing that up?

Do they have brains? Do I? For not so long ago, I thought a person could stand where a rainbow touches down and chased one in Alaska at two in the morning, ignorance kept me driving through that day-night that suggests we’ve gotten basic things wrong and have no business saying “plain as day” or “the soul is a myth of silly people who vibrate at a strange frequency” or “I own four acres in Blacksburg,” as I don’t, not if you ask the mountain if it agreed to share. he rat is a guest and I’m a guest and even the sun is a guest who refuses to leave Alaska alone for much of the year, and I’m glad I was stupid enough to chase what I’d never reach, not if you gave me a million years and Big Daddy Garlits’ drag car from when I was a kid, which sounds like a car wearing a dress but was steel wearing speed, steel that now and then exploded due to our love afair with gasoline and ire, which is just as strange as rats swimming through shit in my book, which is the book you’re holding in hands that resemble mine but would never tear bread apart or wave at the sun the way I do in my head all the time, returning a greeting that tries to touch everything in the world at least once a day, setting the standard for ambition or empathy or having nothing better to do.

Jason Lee Gimbel

Time is a Steady Persistent Illusion | mixed media on canvas | 49x41 | 2017

The Nuclear Woman (cropped) | oil on canvas | 40x72 | 2017

OblivioEssevet | mixed media on canvas | 16x14 | 2017

Bob Hicok

A description of wisdom as what’s missing from this picture Every tree is the tree of life, I wrote in a poem that wasn’t about global warming but should have been, it’s the biggest problem we have, Earth-sized, sky-sized if you ask any reputable micrometer or giant. he problem’s so big, I’m no more than a thumb-tack in comparison, no more than a poet burying his chain saw in the woods, no more than a shark at heart but otherwise ill-equipped for the aquatic days to come. I like roses in February and using the snow blower for a paper weight and wearing nothing to the committee meeting as much as the next lorist, bureaucrat, or nudist, but choral is dying and when I asked my vice-grips how to save it, I got nothing back. I don’t know why the problem isn’t part of every conversation.

“Do you want to make love as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise?” “I’ll have the cheeseburger and a side of cost/beneit analysis of recycling, please.” “I think the soul is real but dies when the body dies and will you stop drilling for oil in my bed while I’m trying to sleep?” You get the idea that I’m afraid, but do you see that I’m also petriied, do you believe we’re capable of forethought, of acting the part of creatures who can act on what they know, or are we bits of ash in a wildire lit by mistake, when evolution said, What the fuck, let’s try self-consciousness, symbolic reasoning, parallel parking, and cable TV, and evolution did, so now what?

Sarah Muirhead

Savour | acrylic on canvas | 89.7x60 cm | 2017

Saccharine Siren | acrylic on board | 60.7x91.5 cm | 2017

Object in Foreground | acrylic on canvas | 89x89 cm | 2017

Ken Taylor

cloud in the shape of a hat on a bed the system you return to is asymptotic bend approaching an ininite wildcard ending advancing your coonass name hasty blood hostile to the big exit reproaching perpetuity despite trying to lip for parlay to iner despite the fraying straw of your cypher said to keep all from harm resisting certainty & marginal advice part of your charm dispensed with a cloth over your shoulder stirring a roux talk of a priest’s last vestment of indoors the crown of a king on a tomb just the ticket to hinder lice chalked up to eclipses sizzling dice or any kinship to the spread your dead harken back as traces inside the space of apnea between breaths & darkening feet where shame doesn’t need a bump from the side room to play the same numbers to count on rosaries worn by a chided thumb protecting your embrace of beauty as if connected to the valorized nimbus of moving pictures a farmer out standing in his ield is busted balls is ribbing by namesake roast & one of many locks strayed from the art of giving up the ghost is two doors out your rule for ever entering the school of hard knocks the hall of unearthed chicory cans illed with tamped down currency & pinning c-notes to a clothesline loating dampness in blue until your eyes wind down to petals & what remains is bound for ire this is not pining comeuppance or a fall by desire or a harbinger of luck run out this is lagniappe in a gulf wind calling

Donna Bates

Left Eye | oil on wood panel | 12x12 | 2018

West Side | oil on wood panel | 10x10 | 2018

Take These Broken Wings And Learn To Fly | oil on dibond | 36x24 | 2018

Goddess Rising | oil on dibond | 36x24 | 2018

Stacy D’Aguiar

Aphrodisiac | acrylic on aluminum panel | 17.5x25.5 | 2018

Drop into Fourth | mixed media on canvas with lower of life texture | 40x40

Ken Taylor

cloud in the shape of dice night bowls passed clockwise then counter until they lose the discrepancy of clock in unfolding smoke exhaled over six chances on ive thrown to felt something near feeling is hazards scored by working hands that grasp acidity & alkaline of dirt as the shaker of bones tallies & guineas rally in a cedar to roost under the turn of constellations we’ve ixed to a kind of idelity from aloofness when we glance up & see the past a doe stamps warning as her fawn burns hard eights unnumbered times in seeming indivisible speed & streaks of defeating invisible clout a cut-out of plywood as hanging light names the place & is bigger than this assemblage all sorry for the same thing recalling his recent fall he would laugh in wood church if he knew mechanics felled him that he should’ve igured incline fulcrum toll of gravity how seraphs roll his smile on the wrong side of oak was a mask or unhitched glee helping us to fathom his leaving & restitch community left in a lurch olson said his morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water‌ we are after what we always were & ever shoving of to porous thresholds to recollect as adoration or some mineralized other or tumblers without shores

Anna Wypych

Anna Wypych

ARC FINALIST | Too sweet to be serious Boson 3 | oil on canvas | 39.5x27.5 | 2017

Anna Wypych

ARC FINALIST | Paradox Boson 5 | oil on canvas | 39.5x27.5 | 2017

Anna Wypych

ARC FINALIST | Double Freedom | oil on canvas | 39.5x27.5 | 2017

Ricky Garni

Memo from Miami here are lightning bolts on the sidewalk and an ancient Aztec ireplace for sacriicing wieners to a God named Neil. Don’t forget the honeysuckle or the Hockmuthes. And what about the young girl in the pool, your body pressed close? I bet you’ve already forgotten the library, made of coral. hat’s because it wants to be at home if the surf releases the sea. Inside will be all the stories you need, called Life, safe as can be. Not the big Life mind you. Just the magazine one. Loaded

like the bubblegum of future whiskeys and cigarettes and car tires so black and scored, you could eat them with a spoon. How do we know? he baby girls sees it through binoculars made of golden lives. Not the magazine – no – the ones that make you cough and sputter and wink one more time as someone who will love you if you still know why. Let her report all of this to you upon some future date. Let her give you this form of love.

Erin Anderson

The PHD Chemist | oil on copper | 21x18 | 2017

The MD | oil on copper | 21x18 | 2017

Brianna Lee

ARC FINALIST | Approaching Storm | oil on panel | 14x11 | 2017

Ricky Garni

Cowboys and Space I always thought I wanted to live in the past, until I saw my irst cowboy movie and realized that if I did live in the past, I would be beat up, knocked down (in the mud) shot or shot at (or both), kicked in the shins, wear a hat that was too small because my head is so big, make clinking sounds when I walked, have to learn how to shoot a gun without hurting myself, give up my fridge, have to pretend to like whiskey, stop bathing, eat bear, say “reckon”, grow a stupid-looking mustache, have pants that were droopy, be made to dance among reckless gunplay, be sunburnt all the time and fall down of a horse and the ladies on the dusty boardwalks would giggle at me and also I wouldn’t have a radio or a bicycle that was cool looking, just one of those old cruddy bicycles and no radio, and not even a bicycle at all if one of the times I was shot I was shot dead and even then by someone who probably wasn’t called “he Kid” or “Johnny Ringo” - most likely “Hubert” or “Fred.” Now I am not saying I am happy that I am living in the present, but now that I think about the past I don’t think the past would be so great, either. So that just leaves the future. With jetpacks.

And space food. And hover baths. You know, already, I see a problem with this.

Eva Evangelista

Moon and Mars | oil on canvas | 40x30 | 2018

Zephyr | oil on canvas | 42x26 | 2017

Lucas Bononi

ARC FINALIST | Unveiled | oil on panel | 18x24 | 2017

William Stobb

Existentially Accurate Mollusk Substitute If you’ve ordered calamari in a Canadian bar this century chances are it’s been chewy. hat’s because a secret protein innovator one day chewed pig rectum or just closely examined pig rectum or even vividly imagined pig rectum and experienced a eureka moment: you know, I bet if I batter -fried this circular sphincter— the only currently unused part of the pig carcass—I could pass it of as a slice from the tubular body of the cuttleish, once a European delicacy now standard fare at every mediocre bar & grill from Prince Rupert to Halifax. Hell, just say it with some vaguely Italian lare —calamari! and some rube will hand you ten bucks. he texture’s sort of edible.

Overcooked and smothered in cheap cocktail sauce it passes.

And the price is right. We’ll scrape these bungholes right of the slaughterhouse loor clean ‘em up, package & freeze ‘em slap calamari on the box and rake six loonies a dozen, wholesale. hough the process is illegal, it may be instructive. After all, luxury is relative and arbitrary and life consists of experiences that do not correspond to labels.

Tina Spratt

ABOVE Are You There pastel 22x39

LEFT Morning Light oil on linen 36x18

RIGHT: ARC FINALIST Breathe oil on linen 46x22 HONORABLE MENTION FIGURATIVE CATEGORY

Tina Spratt

ARC FINALIST | Cocooned (cropped) | oil on linen | 30x38 |2017

Grace Cavalieri

Beneath he hick Glass Window We were in Paris once before 200 years ago, another lifetime— hen I worked the streets to earn your paints while you created art— large magniicent canvasses, a small grey garret.

At night, in the closeness of an oil-illed room you didn’t care of other men I’d seen that day.

I don’t know much more about our past but now that I’m no longer young and worse— that you are dead— I like to think of Paris and that fractured room, that tiny lumpy bed where we will meet again someday.

I talk to the moon asking how long it takes for young sex in Paris, with my love, in a future life. he moon answers, speaking your voice, It may be forever, or it may be sooner, however long it takes.

Matthew Alfonso Durante

Clenched Hands | oil on panel | 8x8 | 2017

Figure 2 2018 | graphite and wax pencil on paper over paper | 14x17

Figure 1 2018 | graphite and wax pencil on paper over paper | 14x17

Rebecca Politzer

he Melon Times We were borrachas Searching the Mercado Central For a melon. he sweet smell Of overworked hands held out Oranges, chirimoyas with almostScaled skin. Borrachas through the night To the amanecer of the sun making the Blonde-hued sky. Beyond the bottles of pisco, We wanted to ind a melon: hick almost bruised with ripenness.

Past the pig’s head and the chorizo, Silver piles of jurel, smell of seaweed and lesh, We bought machas to eat raw with lime and salt, Sucking the bodies whole from the shell.

In a red apron, a woman stands behind Fruit and vegetables, callampas secas, Radichas, limones—200 pesetas a kilo.

She slices a melon open with her sharp knife— he juice weeps over her hand and Her ingers scoop out the seeds.

Por la mañana, she says, and gives us the fruit.

We ill our melon with pisco and drink it, Burning our eyes and staining our clothes.

Rebecca Politzer

[where is the garden in which we sit] read the signs along the roadside a dog stands at the fence line the moon hides its body in the clouds above

you tell me secrets in a language i do not understand

the smell of skin rich in summer wafts over me

crickets chirp in the grass i shiver from cold your vespers whisper like snakes

you are the nature in my mind the birds evening song the leaves falling to the ground you become what i imagine the world to be the sound of waves not so far away

Megan Van Groll

Crush | oil on canvas | 24x24 | 2017

Spiral | oil on canvas | 20x20 | 2017

Flush | oil on canvas | 24x24 | 2017

What Came Before | graphite on paper | 11x14 | 2017

William Stobb

Poem with hree Worlds he apartment’s a little farm—everything grows everything is tomatoes garlic onions carrots everything in its own lit space because power is ine easy with all the water.

When they ight the unexpected guy wins. he world is like what?

I thought we were supposed to get better and better until all the problems are solved!

he tomatoes do look good. And after the wrong guy wins he slices three and eats them on a cracker with salt and something that looks like motor oil.

If two people play pool and drink and walk through the alley unadvisably at this hour they’ll each give their sweater to the wheelchair man sleeping in the doorway and he’ll say he has an appointment with his case worker Monday and are you sure you’ll be alright it’s cold and yes I’ll make it to Monday. I think Monday’s gonna really help.

Marty says the material of choice isn’t bone, muscle, etcetera. No one really thinks about the particles that come and go through you and what they do after. In life, science mantras pulse against need, like structure equals energy grasping within entropy, self equals perception gathered into memory, good is a word that will cease to exist along with its speaker.

he light in the room comes through water. One guy shot people suring under northern lights.

I mean shot ilm, i.e., pushed spectral light through a cellular medium for others later to see. I thought it was real to the point that I dreamed running the length of a diminishing swell on a longboard and earning lucrative sponsorship by kicking it back to inish the night sky light.

he clone that comes in focus at 33:24 illustrates the connection between the two distinct worlds.

I also believe worlds 1a and 1b mirror each other according to some category. Within each the participants would have no way of knowing of the other’s existence. Neither would they know if they themselves were real or invented.

Erospassion | mixed media on board | 20x16 | 2018

Javascript | mixed media on board | 20x16 | 2017

Jeff Faerber

Nanette Fluhr

ARC FINALIST | Reisa | oil on canvas | 16x12 | 2017

Mark Hopping

Languishing My best days are far behind me People look, but they can’t ind me ‘cause I’ve disappeared As a functioning being I close my eyes To ease the pain of seeing People wonder what’s become of me While I languish silently Inside a memory.

Alexandra Tyng

ARC FINALIST | Triumph of Light | oil on canvas | 60x84 | 2017

Susannah Martin

Salon Dogs Meet the Death Worm | oil on linen | 102x71 | 2015

Le De jeuner sur L herbe est ini | oil on linen | 27.5x27.5 | 2016

Bavaria (cropped) | oil on linen | 66.9x95| 2016

ARC Nick Alm – Elevator

Nick Alm is a classically trained igurative artist whose portraits and igure paintings have an ethereal,

dramatic quality. Alm skillfully stages his compositions, putting emphasis on soft lit chiaroscuros and

executes his paintings by juxtaposing more reined against rougher brushstrokes, breathing movement into

static artwork. Alm states, “I aim to communicate what is inherently and universally human, transcending cultural codes and trends. It’s not my goal to criticize or change society; instead my work addresses itself primarily to the inner world of the individual.”

Alm’s captivating painting, entitled Elevator, explores the human condition of modern urban life in a situation familiar to most of us—a group of strangers, packed together in a conined space, mentally detached from one another, absorbed in their own existential agonies. From the roughly painting background onwards, the brushstrokes gradually capture more detail towards the foreground, masterfully imbuing the dusky scene with difuse light and atmosphere.

Jurors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Schmidt bestowed Nick Alm’s Elevator with the PoetsArtists Award, stating, “Every time one steps into an elevator with strangers, there is this strange, compulsive desire to retreat inside oneself, look away, reorder the position one has in relation to the others in the car with you. his painting captures the introspective retreat of the passengers as the man in the foreground studies the numbers of the loors as they change. he young urbanites depicted all seem to be wondering where they are going or, perhaps, where they’ve been. his is realism at its absolute inest!”

Alm’s Elevator also won the Purchase Award as well as Second Place in the Figurative Category in the 13th International ARC Salon Competition.

LORENA KLOOSTERBOER

PoetsArtists Publishing Prize ARC Recipient | Elevator | oil on canvas | 25.5x37.75 | 2017 | SECOND PLACE FIGURATIVE CATEGORY | PURCHASE AWARD

ARC Saul Martinez Rodriguez – Doña Maria is a Punk Rocker Saul Martinez Rodriguez is a realist artist whose work method mainly using dry media aims to

capture a great variety of visual detail in order to create ine realism that transcends reality. he visual perspectives created by both in and out of focus areas, the striking chiaroscuro, and breathtaking

precision in his artwork clearly show he’s an alumnus of the Ani Art Academies Dominicana, where he currently works as an assistant. In regards to his work method, he states, “It’s of utmost importance to keep my work as clean as possible, in order to achieve the highest quality end result.”

Martinez Rodriguez’s splendid drawing, entitled Doña Maria is a Punk Rocker, is a portrait of Doña María, an elderly woman which he describes as a “señora campesina”—a peasant lady. Inspired by her daily struggles and her love for nature, Martinez Rodriguez captures Doña María’s timid, sweet smile and kind, perceptive eyes while she prepares food. he wooden shack with dim light iltering through the eaves of the corrugated roof clearly illustrate poverty, yet the hip t-shirt and trendy bandana reveal her eforts to assimilate modernity. he most important message in this portrait can be found by observing Doña María’s attitude, showing her inner strength and humor despite the harshness of the life she was born into.

Jurors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Schmidt bestowed Saul Martinez Rodriguez’s Doña Maria is a Punk Rocker with the PoetsArtists Award, stating, “Doña Maria comes alive in this charcoal drawing of near photographic clarity. She is a igure with a past that infuses her spirit. She also exudes a competence that makes one know that she is wise, strong and going to be alright, no matter what happens. She may be old, but she is not afraid. PUNK ROCK INDEED!”

LORENA KLOOSTERBOER

PoetsArtists Publishing Prize ARC Recipient | Dona Maria is a Punk Rocker (cropped) | charcoal and pastel on paper | 8x10

ARC Randalf Dilla – Tribute to Luna The Parisian Life

Randalf Dilla is a igure painter whose monumental artworks habitually include philosophical and sociopolitical narratives that heavily rely on allegorical imagery. Dilla not only masterfully captures his subject matter in exquisite

and minute detail—be it the human igure, an interior, or a landscape—but also infuses his paintings with surprising surrealistic features and a dramatic sense of movement.

Dilla’s impressive painting, entitled Tribute to Luna – he Parisian Life, was inspired by Juan Luna, renowned Filipino painter and revolutionary activist of the 19th century. Luna’s most famous and controversial painting depicting three historic Filipino heroes, entitled he Parisian Life, is shown in the background. Dilla explains, “I portray in exaggeration the feeling of going back into the past. To the left you see Luna’s painting hanging on a museum wall which violently transitions into the Parisian scene of said painting. he loating men are the Filipino revolutionaries in Paris who stared at the Parisian girl. he bound seminude man on the loor symbolizes the agony of Filipino people under Spanish colonial regime.”

Jurors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Schmidt bestowed Randalf Dilla’s Tribute to Luna – he Parisian Life with the PoetsArtists Award, stating, “he momentum in this painting is extraordinary. In addition, the depiction of these igures conveys both the frenetic nature of their activity as well as their helplessness in the face of forces beyond their control. In the big and sometimes overwhelming city, it can seem like an explosion or a strong wind is overtaking everything and everyone, and there is nothing one can do to resist. Also, sadly, as the igure on the deep far right shows, there are those among us who live outside the frenetic, on the edges: forgotten, left out, run over.”

Dilla’s Tribute to Luna – he Parisian Life also won Dual Category Awards and the Rehs Contemporary Galleries Award in the Figurative Category in the 13th International ARC Salon Competition.

LORENA KLOOSTERBOER

PoetsArtists Publishing Prize ARC Recipient | Tribute to Luna-The Parisian Life | oil on canvas | 60x84 | REHS CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES AWARD

ARC Rose Frantzen – Spring Corn

Rose Frantzen is a realist artist whose oil paintings from life bring a contemporary perspective to the

traditional alla prima approach. Her subject matter includes the human igure, portraiture, landscape, and botanical still life, sometimes incorporating additional stylistic elements along with gilding, stained glass, and mosaic to create innovative, allegorical pieces. Frantzen’s body of work is impressive, proving a keen eye for the natural world and often including elegant design elements and surrealist touches.

Frantzen’s poignant painting, entitled Spring Corn, was inspired by the loss of a family barn which had been dismantled and skeletonized, hastening the imminent passing of its owner. Frantzen portrays the surviving 92-year-old brother sitting on a handmade quilt covering his bed, eagerly awaiting springtime while his bare feet symbolically touch his cherished Iowan soil where he used to grow corn. Frantzen pays homage to the artists Grant Wood and homas Hart Benton by adding a vista of young corn through the window and borrowing the igural and perspective distortions of the Regionalist Movement of the 1930s.

She beautifully captures the moving emotions of an elderly man missing the outdoors and a life lived farming in a bygone era, when weather and seasons dictated the pace of his days.

Jurors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Schmidt bestowed Rose Frantzen’s Spring Corn with the PoetsArtists Award, stating, “he lighting in this painting is immense and the quilted bedspread looks like a gift this man has received from a signiicant other. he igure betrays weariness and a certain kind of wisdom. It’s late afternoon and one wonders, is he just about to take his nap, or just waking up from it?”

PoetsArtists Publishing Prize ARC Recipient | Spring Corn | oil on canvas | 72x48 | 2016

LORENA KLOOSTERBOER

ARC Mary Chiaramonte – Little Tornado Mary Chiaramonte is a realist artist whose keen observations of the world around her shape the narratives of her igure paintings. She pairs the soulfulness of human nature with intricately detailed backgrounds, imbuing her work with ambiguity, a sense of melancholy, and wistful

dreaminess. Chiaramonte aims to represent and chronicle the wonders and mysteries of life, thoughtfully capturing those eternal unanswered questions through whimsical and ambivalent compositions, inviting the viewer to frame a personal interpretation.

In her striking painting, entitled Little Tornado, Chiaramonte portrays an adolescent woman against a backdrop of tempestuous skies and lying leaves that symbolize those turbulent, iery, and volatile formative years. Chiaramonte states, “I tend to hold onto a sort of lamentation for the sense of energy, poetry, and beauty I felt surrounding me at that age. he tornado is representative of that energy and the change inside of our youth.”

Jurors Steven Alan and Dr. Elaine Schmidt bestowed Mary Chiaramonte’s Little Tornado with the PoetsArtists Award because, “his woman is as powerful as a tornado and the background and the subject are perfectly matched to one another. Her gaze pierces you with this sense that she has real attitude. he subject shows a resolve that communicates her strength and solidity. You want to talk to her but you can’t be sure she wants to talk to you...”

PoetsArtists Publishing Prize ARC Recipient | Little Tornado | oil on panel | 16x12 | 2017

LORENA KLOOSTERBOER

Viktoria Savenkova

Blue 2 | oil on canvas | 47x40 | 2018

Alexey | oil on canvas | 78x40 | 2016

Andrei | oil on canvas | 40x40 | 2016

Alexander Hayden

Photo by Alex Massek

Prelude No. 10 | charcoal on paper | 30x18 | 2017

Panicburn #1 | charcoal on paper | 20x30 | 2017

Ch. XX Verse 284 (Disregard) | charcoal on paper | 10x13.5 | 2017

Panicburn #2 | charcoal on paper | 18x30 | 2017

Michael Van Zeyl

ARC FINALIST | The Gamer | oil on linen | 36x24 | 2017

Shana Levenson

ARC FINALIST | Home | oil on canvas | 36x22 | 2017

Vanessa Newell

Sewing Paraphernalia | acrylic on canvas | 100x75 cm | 2017

The melodrama of dressing | acrylics on canvas | 100x100 cm | 2017

The second itting | acrylics on canvas | 100x100 cm | 2017

Shana Levenson

ARC FINALIST | The Blessing | oil on dibond | 39x46 | 2017

Shana Levenson

ARC FINALIST | The Beginning | oil on dibond | 28x26 | 2017 | CHAIRMAN’S CHOICE AWARD

Daire Lynch

Wear Your Wounds | oil on paper | 20x14 | 2017

Forest of Fevers | oil on panel | 30x22 cm | 2017

Opened Once | oil on panel | 14x12 | 2017

Nin Andrews

Venus after Amy Gerstler She said her name was Sea Foam. She said her name was Wave Girl, Delicious, Myrtle, Grace. (None of these names are right.) She said her mother raised her in a sunless sea. She was washed ashore in a tsunami. Or was it a hurricane? A sudden summer rain? She was all alone, clothed in strands of sticky hair. For weeks she took shelter in a cave. Or behind a dune. Or a sailor’s unmarked grave. Sand and pebbles clung to her skin. She stayed alive, sucking periwinkles and sea urchins from their shells. Drinking the dregs of whiskey from grimy bottles, beer from crinkled cans, water from cracked gull eggs. She spoke only with the cormorants, sandpipers, crabs, terns. She was discovered by a man who swam inside her like a ish. A woman who taught her arithmetic, penmanship, grammar and how to wash her grubby hands. By a genie who gave me one wish. You. hat’s a quote.

Such a pickup line, yes? hat was years ago, back when you hated nature, lips, her slimy clitoral scent. he irst memory was of her singing for ive days straight. All those oohs and ahhs. Followed by a fever, a thirst, a ire torching everything you knew. Every word you said. You tried aspirin, opiates, logic, toweling her of. Screaming. Long chilly baths. Skinny-dipping in the night. Diving into the whole cosmic reservoir, as she put it. When you inally closed your eyes, you dreamt in whale music. Bubbles rose from your lips. No matter how you tried, you could never utter her name.

Michael Van Zeyl

ARC FINALIST | Lo Tienes | oil on panel | 48x36 | 2016 | REHS CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES, INC AWARD

Claudia Kaak

ARC FINALIST | Untitled (Series 6, Nr. 8) | oil and acrylic on panel | 180x90 cm | 2017

Ricky Garni

A I woke up to a tone of A-440.

You can play this on your Minimoog. here’s a little toggle switch that you switch from down to up (I think) and then you hear this tone.

It sounds like the tone you hear when your doctor is about to draw blood.

When you are three years old and trying to look out the window but can’t.

Also the sound you hear that protects you from other sounds: like someone who says: “She doesn’t have much time left.” Or “the body was never found” even when it was. And then you hear the sound: somewhere between a hornet and a honey bee.

It’s also the sound of Rachmaninof, the man with the large hands, who had troubles in life, many troubles, but nice big hands that made him play things that others simply could not play SO THERE he said in a manner of speaking.

Rachmaninof with a capital A. Hey. I shouldn’t forget the Minimoog in all this.

Or the splendid EMS AKS “Suitcase” synthesizer or the ARP 2600 synthesizer

which sounds like it was named after a frisky dog and is a joke but I assure you it was not. And were it not for Moog we wouldn’t have the beautiful sounds of Abbey Road (or they wouldn’t be as beautiful). And without ARP we wouldn’t have the beauty of Baba (Teenage Wasteland) and Pete Townsend playing in a way that was not at all wasty. Syd Barrett would never have heard Dark Side of the Moon, although he never did, probably, and never played on it anyway. By then, young Syd

had walked the long walk from London to Cambridge, settled down in a tiny house and now was old, his hair no longer matted with Mandrax and Brylcreem, the girls no longer chasing the elf who would lock them in a closet and feed them biscuits.

No, A-440 brings a tuning to our life, but a tuning we cannot fully trust, like Syd, living in a simpler world painting sorrowful paintings and riding a small bicycle to the store for toothpaste, and then back to a small beige room for the remainder of his quiet days.

Daniela Kovacic

ARC FINALIST | The Knowledge | oil on canvas | 60x48 | 2017

Sarah Lacy

ARC FINALIST | I Am Everything | oil on linen | 24x18 | 2017

Daryl Zang

Pieces of You | oil on canvas | 36x36 | 2017

Presence | oil on canvas | 48x42 | 2017

Queen Ann’s Lace and The Last Magical Summer | oil on canvas | 48x42 | 2017

Lesley Thiel

ARC FINALIST | Bird In The Hand | oil on panel | 39x22 | 2017 | ARC STAFF AWARD

Nanci France-Vaz

ARC FINALIST | Goddess of Light | oil on canvas | 32x44 | 2017

Brianna Lee

ARC FINALIST | Lily | charcoal on paper | 19x12 | 2017 | HONORABLE MENTION IN DRAWING CATEGORY

Laura Atkins

ARC FINALIST | Ariadnes Thread | oil on panel | 32x32 | 2017

Erin Milan

ARC FINALIST | Whoever Is Calm And Sensible Is Insane | oil on linen | 65x40 | 2017

Erin Milan

ARC FINALIST | I’m Caught In This Curling Energy. Your Hair (cropped) | oil on linen | 32x70 | 2017

Jan Anders Nelson | ARC FINALIST | Pressure 1 | oil on canvas | 40x60 | 2017

Alessandro Tomassetti

ARC FINALIST | The Queen Is Dead | oil on aluminum | 24x18 | 2017 | ARC AWARD | FWSD AWARD

Alessandro Tomassetti

ARC FINALIST | How Soon Is Now? (cropped) | oil on aluminum | 27.5x19.75 | 2017 | ARC STAFF AWARD

Tina Garrett

ARC FINALIST | Ginger & Johnnie | oil on canvas | 30x40 | 2017

Tina Garrett

ARC FINALIST | Moment To Moment | oil on canvas | 56x28 | 2017

Brianna Lee

ARC FINALIST | The Glade | charcoal and gesso on panel | 2017

Doug Webb

ARC FINALIST | Support | acrylic on linen | 20x16 | 2017

Anna Wypych

ARC FINALIST | Red | oil on canvas | 70x90 cm | 2017

POEM

Eric Coyote

Wired Twelve tons of muscle And a xylophone Dragged across the tarmac By the Mercury drone.

Drunken astronauts swing From coaxial vines Wiring a country hat’s choking on time.

Petri dishes Point at the sky Serving as conduits For God’s wandering eye.

Every word that I hear Every image that I see Beams your aura Back home to me.

Venice Beach I’ll dress like Andy Warhol And stand out in the mist You’ll come to me cloaked in torn roses To beg me for a kiss I’ll raise my arms to the sky And ask the Lord for rain You’ll clamp your hands upon my wrists And ask me for my name I’ll press myself against your thighs And shake my head like snow As the rain comes down And distant sirens sound We’ll body-surf the undertow.

Kathleen Carr

ARC FINALIST | Bird of Solitude | oil on canvas | 24x18 | 2017

Kelli Kaye Fountain

ARC FINALIST | Myles | charcoal on paper | 12.5x9.5 | 2017

Twosome | oil on canvas | 18x24 | 2017

Smoking Dragon | oil on canvas | 20x16 | 2018

Nadine Robbins

The Green File | oil on canvas | 48x36 | 2017

The Fierce Bowman | oil on canvas | 20x16 | 2017

Matthew Alfonso Durante

ARC FINALIST | Angelica | graphite wax pencil and pastel on paper | 13x10 | 2017

Gayle Madeira

ARC FINALIST | Young American, February 2017 | oil on dibond | 24x12 | 2017

Nicole Moné

ARC FINALIST | Pete | oil on board | 9x6 | 2016

Nicole MonĂŠ

ARC FINALIST | Natural Selection | oil on paper on panel | 14x11 | 2015

Nicole MonĂŠ

ARC FINALIST | Relection (Portrait of Aaron Shikler) | oil on board | 12x24 | 2015

Regina Jacobson

ARC FINALIST | Where Are You Going? | oil on canvas | 54x48 | 2017

ARC FINALIST | Lace 1 | oil on canvas | 32x47 | 2014

Viktoria Savenkova

Viktoria Savenkova

ARC FINALIST | ALES [Refraction] | oil on canvas | 100x120 cm | 2017

Teresa Elliott

ARC FINALIST | Agua Fria | oil on metal | 24x30 | 2014 | CHAIRMAN’S CHOICE AWARD

ARC FINALIST | We’ve Been Here Before | oil on linen | 100x120 cm

Arina Gordienko

ARC FINALIST | Narada | oil on linen | 100x130 cm

William Stobb

Poem while Reading Instructions for a Blowtorch Spark into pressurized fuel.

When we played tennis summer nights at lighted courts by the river maylies descended in luminous clouds.

You shot out the post oice loodlight with a BB gun and ran up in the dark to steal the D out of United.

One night watching movies in a lightning storm the girl I was dating said she wanted both of us together.

hat spark didn’t catch.

Our window of time mattered to me. he girl left and I was okay but when you left I felt stuck in that northern town. hese years later when you emailed to say your wife died last spring and you wouldn’t attend the reunion I remember the painting of a hole in the ground—circular crater charred black, smoking, surrounded by a cluster of stripped and winter-fringed Aspen trees that you made for an art course and hung on the wall in our kitchen.

Ann Moeller Steverson

ARC FINALIST | Steward of Hope | oil on copper | 30x20 | 2017

David Cunningham

ARC FINALIST | Formation | oil on panel | 24x28 | 2017

Diana Adams

he Moon We will have to re-create our oceans, tides, rivers & a plain full of animals ind real people to talk to & glue them to the parlour furniture secure the future by hanging around for birthdays & funerals feed them cheese headaches & smart heartbreaks pretend that help is on the way as sunlight stabs our eye sockets but the moon is plastic & juicy, it hangs in bloom all day

Natalie Holland

ARC FINALIST | Lady Luck | oil on canvas | SIZE | YEAR

Natalie Holland

ARC FINALIST | Anou in Pink | oil on canvas | 60x50 cm| 2017

Gemma Di Grazia

Opening Day | soft pastel on paper | 44x79

Meet the Peppers | soft pastel on paper | 22x27

You Say Tomatoes | soft pastel on paper | 29x27

Floral Frieze | soft pastel on paper | 32x86

Wikiwi | soft pastel on paper | 18x27

Tanja Gant

ARC FINALIST | Promises | charcoal | 15x27 | 2017

Eric Coyote

Crinoids

Buzzard’s Bay

My ingers drag

here’s a room in the penthouse

Across the limestone wall

Of my private hotel

hey feel the loneliness Of crinoids buried beneath An ancient sea hree hundred million years ago

Where the carcass sleeps And the harpoons dwell.

Where you gnaw on the bone Like a jet engine sucking up air Slurping down marrow

hey feel the echoes of friends

hrough contrails of hair.

Who forget birthdays and favors

We’re both alone

Who never write or call

In this moment we share

hey feel the pressure

Two planes without fuel

hat makes stones of us all.

Life rafts or lares.

Kelly Birkenruth

ARC FINALIST | Clementines with comics | oil | 14x18 | 2017

Diana Adams

Avoiding My Aunt Tell her I can’t make it I’m down in the lettuce patch in a coma

dinner with her is cruciation

I’m watching a video instead of a naked Icelandic man playing the violin in a bathtub

he wears a Viking ring of Odin’s spear

my aunt uses the bath to wash sardines

Alexandra Tyng

ARC FINALIST | Possible Space | oil on canvas | 56x48

Alexandra Tyng

ARC FINALIST | Brief Window | oil on canvas | 32x50 | 2016

Diana Adams

How To Build a Canoe It’s a kind of purgatory hammering away in green gassy light ingers yelling cramped with hope all those people overstaying boredom leading to this itinerant disorder a jaunty plot, with snow-white slices of ish, odd islands & a degenerate tent you paddle fast to get someplace else desolate yet refreshing

Rusty Barnes

Realization I have begun to tolerate assholes. Before I could write them of in my mind or curse them out to my wife in private before we make sweet love on the sofa before bed as a kind of perverse pillow talk: see how those assholes are?

But now I just wonder what made them that way and how I can help them through this world of woe and then I remember as I am deep inside my love and gazing into her baby blues that no matter what happens, these assholes only get the dregs of Joy in this life where I have loved it and cried about it and reveled in it with both hands grasping.

John Joseph Hunn

ARC FINALIST | Zoey | oil, palladium leaf and 23k gold leaf on panel | 40x20 | 2017

Lorena Pugh

ARC FINALIST | Memories | oil on aluminum | 60x30 | 2016

Rusty Barnes

Father and Fixer of Lies, God Tourniquets fail at preservation, while stanched blood requires a new wound in another place. O father at the last you have failed me.

Beyond the land of wind and sighs, the overtorqued wrenches of a thousand broken lives like mine titter and wink at God in the mess of a truck engine like the ones you used to ix. Where do I go to ind you and what will I do if I do? he pale eyes of women chase me through sadness over to some other shore where I can see you blazing a trail among the trees with forked lightning and lying tongue. O father you fabricator, ixer and iend, the lackhand sign of God in the grease of your crossed palm, what can I do in your absence but moan? he sign of the cross a black hand in the mist. he black hand raised. Over the chest a red X marks the spot. Hit me here, hard as you can. hrust your ingers through my ribs to my dusty red heart.

Diana Adams

Storm Season Sweeping up bits of buildings that never get thrown away like the dream I had mannequins in dance sequences sequins laking of falling into cracks now the sound equipment all goes of at once I’m in a broken kitchen trying to strike a positive note something minor yet efective, clanging pots between the booms followed by a yelp or two the roads are out they only go in we sit in the rubble our bones showing their silver linings depressions appear on my knees & forehead best stay out of it all these people sleeping on discarded sofas they might as well be painted in

Tina Garrett

ARC FINALIST | The Teacher | oil on canvas | 34x28 | 2017

Tanja Gant

ARC FINALIST | 1992 | colored pencil | 24x15 | 2016 | BEST SOCIAL COMMENTARY AWARD

Maryam Gohar

Tide Jewel | acrylic on paper | 10x7 | 2017

Old Fire | acrylic on paper | 11x15 | 2017

Tahminas Bearings | acrylic on paper | 9x15 | 2017

Hannah Moghbel

She Wasn’t Doing A Thing That I Could See Except Standing There Leaning On The Balcony Railing Holding The Universe Together | oil on canvas | 20x20 | 2017

You Are The One I Will Never Stop Searching For In A Crowded Room | oil on linen | 8x8 | 2017

Light Flooded My Heart And Overwhelmed My Senses oil on linen 8x8 2017

You Opened Up Your World To Me oil on canvas 20x20 2017

I Still Remember The First Time She Smiled At Me oil on canvas 30x40 2017

Ricky Mujica

ARC FINALIST | Exhausted | oil on linen | 30x40 | 2017

Ricky Mujica

ARC FINALIST | House Of The Rising Sun | oil on linen | 30x40 | 2017

Natalia Fabia

Różowe Żabk | oil on panel | 16x20 | 2017

Natalia Fabia

ARC FINALIST | I’m OK | oil on panel | 10x8 | 2017

Grace Cavalieri

Reading St. Vincent Millay On he Champs E’lysses Sitting in a sweet cafe, reading poetry to my 10-year-old, she listens because this is my idea of play.

I read, ‘We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.’

She munches a croissant and says, “Leah’s mother measures her tablecloth so it’s always straight, and they have a toilet seat that’s soft and squishes when you sit.

Leah has a toothpaste holder that turns a wheel and the paste comes right out. You may be pretty inside, because you’re a writer,” she tells me, “but outside you’re just too ordinary.”

I say, “Look, tonight we’ll go to the Eifel Tower and walk and talk.

See here the brilliant red lowers lining the street.”

She drinks her chocolate. I say. “Do you hear the rhyme in this: ‘My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!’ “Do you like this poem?”

“I do. I do,” she says, “Why don’t you write that poem so we can go.”

Julie Bell

ARC FINALIST | Bridge | oil on board | 30x30 | 2017 | ARC AWARD | FWSD AWARD

Julie Bell

ARC FINALIST | Speak Softly | oil on linen | 48x60 | 2017 | FIRST PLACE ANIMAL CATEGORY

Julie Bell

ARC FINALIST | Jackson Redhead | oil on wood | 18x24 | 2017 | HONORABLE MENTION ANIMAL CATEGORY

Julie Bell

ARC FINALIST | Unfolding Rainbow | oil on board | 30x30 | 2017 | HONORABLE MENTION IMAGINATIVE REALISM CATEGORY

Ricky Mujica | ARC FINALIST | Applachian Trail | oil on linen | 24x12 | 2017

Diana Adams is an Edmonton, Alberta– based writer with work published in a variety of journals. Her fourth book of poetry, Lights on the Way Out, was published by Finishing Line Press. BlazeVox also published her novella To The River.

Diana has three poems in Best American Experimental Writing 2016.

college at Indiana University and then migrated to Southern California, where he earned his master’s degree from USC’s ilm school. His debut novel, The Long Drunk, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2012.

He is also the author of Glamourville and Dante’s Tail. Eric currently lives in California with one cat and his dog Pickle.

Nin Andrews is the author of 7 chapbooks and 7 full-length poetry collections. Her most recent collection, Miss August, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2017.

Ricky Garni grew up in Miami and Maine.

He works as a graphic designer by day and writes music by night. 10022, a book upon a zip code, will be released in the Spring of 2018.

Grace Cavalieri is celebrating 41 years on public radio, with “The Poet and the Poem” now from the Library of Congress.

She holds Associated Writing Program’s “George Garret Award,” for service to literature. She’s the author of 20 books and chapbooks and 26 produced plays, short-form and full-length. She’s poetry columnist/reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Her new book’s a compendium of poetry, plays and interviews, Other Voices, Other Lives (2017.)

Eric Coyote was born hours before President Kennedy’s assassination and grew up northwest of Chicago. He attended

Bob Hicok’s ninth book, Hold, will be published by Copper Canyon in 2018.

Mark Hopping is Head Cross Country Coach at Blackburn College in Carlinville, IL. He has previously worked as a Vice President at a large Midwestern corporation as well as working as a teaching aide at an elementary school. He has a B.S. in Business Administration from Illinois State University.

Mark has been a musician/songwriter for the past 30 years as well as photographer.

He enjoys observing and capturing everyday life in the Midwest. He has been

a competitive runner for the past 35 years and has ran the Boston Marathon 5 times as well as numerous other races in the Midwest.

Rebecca Politzer is a writer and artist living in San Diego, CA. She has an MFA in Fiction and studied under Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham.

William Stobb’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Conduit, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, THE DIAGRAM, Kenyon Review, and many other journals.

He works as Associate Editor at Conduit, and on the English faculty at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse. His collections include Nervous Systems (Penguin Books) and Pointless Channel (Goss 183).

Ken Taylor lives and writes in North Carolina. He is the author of self-portrait as joseph cornell (Pressed Wafer, 2016) and the chapbooks: dog with elizabethan collar (selva oscura press, 2015) and irst the trees, now this (Three Count Pour, 2013).

His poetry has appeared in Hambone, Volt, Blackbird, Southword, Blackbox Manifold, PoetsArtists, Ocho, MiPOesias, Carolina Quarterly, Gigantic Sequins, Clade Song and others.