NOTA Fall 2022

For each question, select all that apply.

1. What is NOTA? a.) A fine arts magazine b.) Good kindling for a bonfire c.) A door stop d.) None of the Above

Answer Key

2. Who/what do we acknowledge and thank for NOTA’s funding? a.) Spare change found in the NOTA office b.) Tips from street performing c.) Student Senate and Finance Commission d.) NOTA’s lucrative, secret side business

3. Who is featured in this edition?

a.) No one. There are only blank pages b.) Chancellor Jim c.) Random people from the street d.) UWEC students

4. Which of the following individuals are we grateful to for their guidance and support as our advisor(s)?

a.) Blu the Blugold b.) Professor BJ Hollars c.) Dr. Dorothy Chan d.) President Joe Biden

5. Who else do the editors wish to show appreciation to? a.) NOTA’s staff, for the labor of love they put into each edition b.) All those who submitted, without whom we wouldn’t exist c.) Our contributors, for trusting us with their work d.) You, for reading this book and supporting creativity on campus

This test was proctored and graded by: Emma Friend, Editor-in-Chief Bethany Mennecke, Art Director

Bennington

Dam Beautiful Books

Van

Collectors put beautiful books up on shelves tucked away in private libraries for only a few to see.

They say this protects the book, This keeps it perfect and beautiful for generations to come.

But those aren’t really the most beautiful books. A beautiful book isn’t the one that looks pretty, A beautiful book is evident through its mileage. The spine may be cracked from the countless hours spent laying on the couch holding it open with one hand, The pages might be wrinkled or a little torn from the enthusiasm used when devouring the story within, The cover might be stained from that one time you were too consumed by the world this book created in your mind and weren’t paying attention and tripped into the mud.

The most beautiful books aren’t the ones hidden from the world, sheltered and protected so they never change, They are the books that you can’t put down, The ones you read a thousand times and still tear up from that one part, The books that leave as big an impact on you as you leave on them. The most beautiful books go where you go, they’re always by your side when you need them.

Collectors like to think they put beautiful books up on a shelf tucked away from the world. They may not see the beauty in your worn cover or wrinkled pages, but I do. And it’s beautiful.

The Mariner: Sun and Moon

Dawson Jollie

“We’re all made of water, ebbing and flowing,” as said by a mind or two or thousand, prone to constant movement, rolling like ocean waves.

But some days my tides can’t ebb. Nor. Flow. Anxiety runs cold. Becomes rigid. Icebergs. Back then. Met your boat. Hammered the hull.

How you persisted, ascended, mariner no more as

You became the sun that makes my water shine, and the moon, whose rhythm these waves dance to. My glaciers of insecurity haven’t vanished, but my fear fades with daylight unto another night:

You, the steady hand, swaying torrents to sleep.

Starry Eyes

Macey Majewski

The Space of my Eye

Aidan Sanfelippo

Stars pierce the emptiness like a spotlight behind a colander. The space between us the size of a child’s imagination

Behind them another space just as long filled with just as much leading to an endless sea of (not colanders)

Billions of stars, worlds, celestials within a space the size of my eye. With this eternal expanse enveloping us— how could we ever look down?

Ode to Truly Mango Lemonades and Sleeping Beauty

Laura Carew

I hate the way I miss you when I drink that one drink, the way it caresses my throat with a cold sting, like your hands used to hold mine.

I hate the way I wish you were here, twirling me around the living room to our Colbie Caillat song. It used to make me blush, but now I only weep.

You were never very nice to me, but I swear, when I drink Truly Mango Lemonades, you’re the loveliest being I’ve ever known.

Your hands that used to hold me

so tightly that I bruised are gentle and forgiving, and your lips are curled up in that

smirk that used to mock my laugh but you insisted it was a sweet smile that tastes like that beer that you don’t even like, but I don’t care that you laughed you always laughed about Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy because I loved you, and you told me you loved me back. I hate the way I lay in my bed and reach for you the way you used to cling to me you reached for me, holding me

while I tried to breathe, a man holding his lover but you wouldn’t let me up for air. like it’s the only way you know how to live.

I hate the way I forget things, how

you used to get mad at me

I can’t feel your lips on my forehead, when I apologized for not being in the mood, and I miss the way your hands used to drug me with those soft touches and sleeping pills, press gently on my thighs, so you could gain access to Pandora’s box, spreading me open on the altar leading your lamb to the slaughter, like I was your sweet angel, your Sleeping Beauty.

I hate the things I do remember. Your soft breaths when you took me away from myself. Even when I drink my Truly Mango Lemonades, your face swims in my mind and I close my eyes when I look at my defiled body in the mirror. You ruined me.

I hate you for making me love you. Or was that even what I felt? How do you know your first love is true? Evidently mine wasn’t.

I hate you for your brutality, masked by an innocent façade that called me yours and took me to paradise.

But most of all, I hate you for the way that I don’t hate you. You made me feel like I was yours, body and soul.

And maybe belonging to someone is as close as I’ll get to being loved. Maybe that’s all I deserve. Maybe the only sweet bliss I’m allowed to feel is knowing that you said you loved me. If not for my mind, at least for my body. I guess that’s all I am to you, anyway.

Woman Scorned 2

Erin Phelps

This piece is actually based off one of my NOTA entries from last year— Woman Scorned (watercolor painting). This oil painting is considered a sequel to the original version of the image I submitted last year. Painting Woman Scorned 2 was a therapeutic exercise for me in my healing process, and by going back and repainting a negatively motivated piece, I was able to revisit many of my thoughts, feelings, and emotions so I could finally accept them and let them go. This year I am stronger than last year.

the sloth and the lampshade John Straub

the sloth could no longer hold onto the tree in which he was home

falling down a crevice in which he already knew he would not crawl out

hitting the ground, a booming thud echoing throughout the dark, dank cave

dim daylight barely breaks the seams glimmering onto raw skin and matted fur recovering his strength took the week his vice weighing down

eventually, the sloth was able to assort the leaves and bark that fell with him into a tiny sanctuary he hoped to find solace in brittle bark into cecropia chair, leafy lampshade to mount the glowing fungi

a lampshade that would filter home like scattered sunlight through tree top leaves though instillation to be simple, he would first reward his initial work rubbing the tired out of his eyes, the sloth slumped into his seat and sat there and sat there and sat there

Cat Slushy

Somerset Seymer

The Fairy Ida Fugoso

Grassy, mossy, rotting

Is what the fairy forged in me.

I went too far. I went to where she flittered. At twilight, as the moonlight flickered.

A mind now her’s firmly fitted, tightly bound.

Her waxen face, Solemn and static. Paste and painted. Beauty that hastened, terror beneath it.

I wanted to go.

I had to go. She made me go— I went. And now I shan’t ever wake again.

Christopher Ehlert

I love cartoons, comics, and illustration, and I have always felt happy when reading or watching stories that include fantasy themes. As shown in both of my pieces, I enjoy making humanoid characters with animal elements — I especially like adding wings and horns or antlers. The medium I use always changes because I like working with anything and everything!

anatomic atmosphere

Arlie Herringa

i think deep inside my body moss clings to my bones vines hang from my rib cage and my heart beats a hollow tune cloudy rain in my lungs and raging seas in my stomach weather that wracks and cracks internally and unending currents and chaos moths in my head

An Ode for the Mother Who Never Waivered

Olivia Rathsack

A blanket of weighted warmth and safety curls around my body arms encircling holding ever tighter there is strength within this embrace. Her voice a soft timbre a lilting reassurance contains the knowledge that it is okay to be scattered like a packet of wildflower seeds in the wind her waiting watering can filled with the tools to revive my broken mind. I am the Rory to her Lorelai. The evolution of spirited yelling matches throwing blow after blow until the other is silent into the sounds of ricocheting laughter piercing the soul with a ray of sunlight. I never thought the bane of my existence would become my best friend. I am wrapped in my mother’s stability her way of feeling that penetrates the soul allowing only empathy and nights of worrying insomnia to spear through her shield of love. Her soft smile and weird sense of humor akin to my own become a state of belonging where imperfections are celebrated walls are nonexistent a state that is irreplicable.

I am born from my mother’s hand untangling the curls on my headI am born from my mother’s melody singing me to sleep with lullabies of Travelin’ Soldiers— I am born from my mother’s perfume of lilacs and peonies— I am born from my mother’s gaze that pierces through the deepest of blues—

I am born from my mother’s love— my life is sustained by its voracious vitality.

The Performer

Sabre Sletten

My motivation in my creation of this piece is to serve as a commentary on performative activism and white privilege during recent political and social movements. This privilege allows white people to participate for superficial reasons (or not participate at all) in activism or other social justice movements with little to no effect in their personal lives. despite having this privilege, they remain blind to it; a privilege that people of color do not have the luxury to ignore.

Paint Splattered Owl

Madison Magnani

Uncle Leo Jacob Weber

We were sitting around the kitchen table when my Uncle Leo walked in. His balding hair was dusty brown, and his patched up overalls were straining to contain his girth. His tired, weathered face looked as if someone snuck a few extra decades into his fifty years of living.

He sat down in the seat across from me. My Pa’s old Mauser rifle was slung to his chest. His massive bulk took up near half the table space. Ma and the boys sat next to us, dead silent. She gave the little gremlins a cold stare in hopes they wouldn’t do anything stupid. I don’t know why she bothered. Even those two could read a room.

The aged brute’s eyes stared at me with a fury so hot that I’m sure I would have turned to ashes if I looked back at them. So I didn’t. I just stared at the smoke coming from my Pa’s rifle. I looked through the window to my right. Out in the hot afternoon sun, Mr. Bennet laid motionless in the dry, Kansas dirt. A swimming pool of blood cradled his punctured head and soaked his ragged clothing. Damn you, Leo. I thought. That’s my front yard. You killed that son of a bitch in my front yard.

I met his eyes with a fury of my own. My voice was soft, but intense. “Nobody had to die, you old shithead.”

Whenever I got mad as a kid, I screamed like hell. So Pa always taught me how to speak soft-like in situations like this.

“Yellow-bellied child,” Leo said, shaking his head. “You pitiful, yellow wuss.” He gestured with his hands. “Mr. Bennet killed Marty. I killed Mr. Bennet. An eye for an eye, Levi.” He pointed his fat finger at me. “A life for a life.” After a pause, he leaned in closer, shifting the table with his monstrous weight. “You should have shot him yourself, son. A vile cutthroat like him didn’t deserve a lick of mercy.”

“Boys. Come with me,” Ma barked. Johnny and Abe stood from the table and left the room without a peep. Ma stopped in the doorway sparing me a quick glance before leaving herself. She wasn’t afraid. She trusted me to handle this. God bless her.

I met Leo’s eyes again. “You wanna quote scripture, Uncle? I’ll play your game. ‘“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ Quoted from the son of God himself,” I said.

My uncle cracked a smile at me. Apparently, I must have made some grand joke. He settled back into his seat claiming every square inch it had.

“You’re a cute one, Levi. A grown man who’s still exposing his cheeks. Save yourself the pain, son. You keep showing people cheeks and someone’ll come along to whip them both raw.”

“Fudge,” I said. “Marty turned his cheek for you.” Leo’s jovial face went sour. I was satisfied to see that I struck a nerve. “That he did,” my uncle said. His eyes unfocused and his pugnacious spirit fled. “I hated Marty’s guts, but he showed me mercy like the forgiving man he was. That’s when he became my savior. My best friend.” Leo looked back at me, his face solemn. At that moment, he pissed me the hell off. “I ain’t a forgiving type, boy. If Mr. Bennet wanted to pull off murder without consequences, he shouldn’t have killed the better man. Marty would have forgiven him. I didn’t.” My fists were clenched, but I restrained myself from yelling at my uncle for his shit excuse of a heart. Instead, I kept Pa’s lessons close to mine. I would not lose my temper. If not on principle, then for the sake that doing so could only end with big irons in our hands.

I turned my head to the hallway surprised by the sound of tiny paw steps. Max trotted into the room on his tiny legs. He was a brown dog. Well-groomed and cute as a button. The little guy had no clue what sort of warzone he was walking into. He waddled over to me and I let him sniff my hand. It was just the sort of distraction I needed at that moment.

A rotten smile parted my uncle’s lips.

“A Dachshund,” he chuckled. “Of course he would. Marty always loved himself German imports. German guns, German dogs…” He looked me square in the eyes. “German girls…”

“You talk about my Pa one more time!” I stood from the table. “One more time, dammit! I’ll–” I stopped. My uncle’s impish face lit up with self-satisfaction. He had goaded me. I could see Pa and Jesus shaking their heads up in heaven. Max whimpered and backed away from me. Leo dawned a grin so sinister that the devil must have molded it himself. “Where’s your cheeks, boy? Didn’t Marty teach you better?”

I undid the zipper on my jacket and held out the left flap to reveal a revolver in my pocket.

“A shoot-out,” I said. “You and me in the front yard. Ten paces from Mr. Bennet.” “I thought you’d never ask.” He set down Pa’s rifle, pulled out his revolver, and relieved the chair of his heavy ass. Looking back, I could have sworn that something in my uncle eased as we walked out into the Kansas sun.

I buried two bodies that night. At the end of it all, I sat back down at the kitchen table feeling like the biggest fool in the world. The old shithead let me win.

Port Rat

Cy Matousek

Paul Emily Popp

This digital drawing is a portrait of my partner. It was a challenging exercise in lighting and shape but also strips his features down to line work and pencil strokes, the simplest of marks built up to recreate him. I made each mark with care and love, striving to depict him just as perfectly as he looks to me in real life.

Home is a Shrine to My Father

Atalissa Wells

The walls have become your tomb, entrapping the rest of us in your grave. I’m the one who put up the pictures, waters the plants that people gave instead of apologies — what do you say to a ten-year-old girl when her father dies?

Coffee cups sit on the drying rack expecting you to come home. I guess they’re just as hopeful as I was, your optimism bled through soul and ceramic until the moment your body poisoned you from the inside out and it took two years to admit that you’d never complete the book still sitting on your night table use the theater ticket taped to the fridge finish the bottle of shampoo in the shower watch the movie still in our DVD player wear the shoes on the Welcome Home mat

never visit all 50 states like you and Mom promised we would. A trip you dreamed of when your faith still held a piece of shattered truth. A way to create memories when you could still stand in pictures. Now, I bring souvenirs home pretending you helped me pick it out.

In our garage, the minivan that drove us to school every day remains parked, gas gauge stuck at a quarter of a tank, no one will drive in case they erase the indent your hands made on the steering wheel,

radio station playing at a volume fit for a soccer-coaching father who taught his daughter how to predict movements on the field, let her blow the whistle just for fun, sat her down on his knee when a ball hit her face and told her everything would be

okay even though neither of us predicted the chemotherapy port bulging from skin, the way you started to smell more like hospital than your aftershave and cologne. Your bathroom still smells like that though, like golf polos, fresh air, and home. A before so tangible it feels like Saturday morning pancakes Sunday cartoons. Mom keeps the bathroom door shut, worried about pieces of you escaping

through our loosened grip like how we poured your ashes into little bottles and hot-glued the cork to the glass so we couldn’t sprinkle you across our bedroom floors. My bottle sits in a box engraved with your name

next to a neon yellow golf ball clay shark I painted myself dried carnations from three years of daddy-daughter dances where I stood on your dress shoes and learned how to feel like the center of someone’s

the princess to the king of my kingdom who built castles out of cardboard boxes rolled the backseat window down on the highway and taught me to wave like the whole world was watching. Our house became the world until it became the only way to keep your memory breathing.

Now, our kitchen smells like meals brought by our neighbors another apology covered in sugar and spices — hard enough to look at a widow and her two children harder to look at the house that’s still paused waiting for the moment you walk through our front door, shoes on the Welcome Home mat, joke poised

on your tongue, ready to eat the leftovers from the meal collecting mold the color of the dress I wore to your funeral. Made back when real life wasn’t a nightmare I tried to wake up from and our house wasn’t a living monument to a dead father.

We kept growing up going to school living a life no longer including you. We hugged picture frames, pretended they were arms left the house unchanged while we kept changing.

Mom wants to move because she can’t move on while she sleeps next to your untouched side of the bed. She takes down pictures tricking the house into believing it had only ever been three of us. She packs up your clothes

reducing your space to two black suitcases disappearing to the back of the closet –your shrine shrinks every day that we try to move on. Do you blame us? Me? Life is much lighter when you don’t have chokeholds on the past for-sale signs in the front yard dandelions and wishes lanterns on your anniversary a new house in a new neighborhood starting over

How do I start over? Catch myself believing it had only ever been three of us. The new house never touched by you, slate wiped clean, redoing everything is easier than deciding which pieces of you to bring along. Soft

memories, whispers of stories passed through our lips, finding a way to live outside the shrine I built for my father. Keep moving on until chest stops caving in when someone mentions your name –find a way to live in a world where everyone else kept spinning.

Piece of Home Megan Miller

Witchblood

Halcyon LeRoy

My heart pumps witchblood, there is dark magic in my veins. I am a kindred spirit with my soul sisters who were burned at the stake as witches.

They were healers, they sang to spirits and worshiped Moon’s divine femininity; they were neatly constructed in men’s minds as demon-women, descendants of Lilith.

There is power in their witchblood, full moons and howling winds, storms rolling in, spells up their sleeves, on their lips, they were women with wings, and oh I am, I am, I am.

There is something poignant in her posture — the archetype of the woman men lust for, simply because she carries herself like she’s tasted power. There is nothing they fear more.

She knows herself; he does not know her name; she knows his secret; she’ll take his blame. He wants her body but fears her soul, wants her broken but consumes her whole.

I have her blood in my veins. I make love, make war, forge my sorrow into power. I wield a wild and unruly magic, a tide I guide in my heart like Moon.

Soon, I will eclipse your understanding, and you will be unable to unearth my secret; so you’ll provoke me until I lose my patience, and we both know I cannot bite this silver tongue.

I am the serpent in the garden, poised to strike, my coils wound around the forbidden fruit; You’re so naive, you seriously believe I exist to tempt you? Don’t take by force what isn’t yours!

You burn me at the stake to avoid the truths I speak, but know my words will haunt you, feel the wrath at my fingertips, the daggers in my eyes, wise words won’t save men like you.

I am a witch, the kind of woman men will always fear and revere, lore that will last centuries, a story you will tell to frighten your daughters into submission — so children, please listen:

You hold power in your blood, know truth in your bones, they cannot tame your wild soul, you owe no one your body nor your peace of mind, so follow your heart, and trust what’s inside.

Madeline McGann

Perhaps, the space that is more frightening to me than the one beyond our vast, beautiful, blue sky, is the space that has grown between you and I

Alienated

Home I’ve Created Erin

Phelps

Similar to Chorus of Silence, this piece was also written based off a phrase from Chloe Falcon’s short story. The phrase “a home I created” was really powerful to me, so I used this as a jumping off point as to where to start my representational paining. The figures pictured are meant to represent my constructed family, Courtney Dayland, Dani Lehto, and Lydia Bernard, my current roommates. The environment that we exist in has become a home to all of us and I will truly look back on this time of my life with absolute fondness. The painting is a representation of a family which I have created not out of blood but out of connection and support.

Boot in the Curtain

Analise LaFrinier

All of my pieces are a tribute to my aunt who passed away last January from cancer. The pieces were made with her watercolors and in her style. Each title is from one of the last conversations I had with her before she passed. Near the end she would tell me what she was hallucinating or dreaming about and often they were beautiful or strange. She dreamed of eating candy under a tree with me, told me about a boot she could see in the curtain even though she knew it wasn’t really there, and at the beginning of this spiral into waking and sleeping dreams she said she wished she could swim with me forever. These paintings and titles are quite sad, but beautiful. They will mean something different to you than they do to me and isn’t that the most exquisite thing about art.

Mud Rainbow

Hazel Woodward

“I’m going out to find that rainbow and there’s nobody in this house that can stop me!” I yelled, pausing only a moment to glimpse the shocked faces of my family before slamming the front door shut behind me. I stomped my way off the porch and into the smoky rain. The droplets fell heavy on my shoulders like pebbles, and I was grateful for my industrial gray raincoat, passed down from my grandfather. I could still hear a commotion inside the house as my relatives tried to sort out what had just happened, but I kept walking. One muddy step after another, I kept walking. I knew that if I stopped, I might have a change of heart. So I had to keep walking.

The thing that had started this all was a news report I had heard on the radio. My family lives quite far from most other people nowadays, who still tend to congregate together like schools of confused and frightened fish. So the report was a little garbled, even with the adjustments I had made over the years, but I got the gist of it: a rainbow had been spotted near the Big Falls settlement, just after five o’clock. This was a huge deal, because nobody we knew of had seen a rainbow, ever. All we had were stories from our greatgrandparents about wildly beautiful phenomena—giant color splashes across the sky. Ever since the Yellowstone Eruption, acid rain has been the only gift from the skies that anyone we know has seen. When I was a child, my siblings and I balked at the idea that the sky had ever been bright blue instead of gray, or that the sun had ever been more than just a lame speck in the sky. But as I grew older, I became obsessed with rainbows.

It started when I realized that I could make tiny, almost imperceptible ones while watering the greenhouse garden, but only if it happened to be a thin cloud day and the sun was at just the right position in the sky. Those glimpses of color in my previously colorless world gave me hope when I thought nothing was left. The acid rain and endless ash clouds leached color from the world, but they could never truly erase it.

Once, when I was maybe nine or ten, my mother caught me using up the last of my great-grandmother’s crayons on a drawing of a rainbow to put up in my room. I’ll never forget what she said next because it nearly killed me:

“Isabelle, I hate to tell you this, but rainbows aren’t real. You know Gramps likes to make up stories about how it used to be, and of course we all enjoy them, but you know he was born after the eruption. Besides, we can’t all run away to fantasy lands - we have to stay here and forge out our lives. Now give me that paper, your aunt is cold and we need to start up the furnace.”

I cried for hours after that at the thought of my only source of hope being burned away by the guiltless fire, but now I believe that my mother didn’t really burn the drawing— after all, crayons are extremely expensive and wasting wax like that just wouldn’t be a very good idea when you could trade it for enough to feed your family for a week. Ever since then I have kept my love of rainbows secret; that is, until now.

My boots made a sucking sound as I pulled them out of the mud for each step. I

barely looked at the skeletons of trees as I passed them; they all looked the same anyhow. The road connecting us to the settlement had long since eroded away, and the only evidence that one had ever existed there was the lack of dead trees and the gravelly mud underfoot. Suddenly I heard footsteps behind me, approaching fast. A shiver of fear ran through me at the sound. Rumor had it that there was a man who lived in the woods somewhere nearby. His family had died in a landslide before they could teach him to run a greenhouse by himself, and in desperation, he had converted to cannibalism to survive. My parents used to always tell me stories about how he had nabbed my cousin because she had wandered too far into the forest. Many of my family members still refuse to travel in the woods alone. I wondered fearfully if I had just made a deadly mistake.

I looked behind me but the fog in this part of the woods was dense. I could barely see the blackened trees less than 10 feet away. The footsteps continued, echoing hollowly between the burned stumps, and I couldn’t suppress the urge to run any longer.

Running was difficult on account of the endless mud. My feet felt like they weighed ten pounds each, and I could barely go faster than a slow jog. Whoever was behind me was catching up quickly, and my lungs were beginning to burn. The acid rain kept landing in my eyes, my ears, my mouth – it burned and blinded me. Still I ran. But I could not run forever. Nobody in those days had very good lungs, and I was no exception. Gasping, I tripped on my feet and fell in an ash heap, too tired to even get up.

“Izzy! It’s me, Onny!” I heard vaguely, in between my desperate attempts to get air into my lungs.

It was my brother! Oh, thank the sun! If it had been the cannibal, I wouldn’t have been able to do much to save myself. In a few minutes Onny flopped down beside me, gasping like a fish out of water. We laid there in the ash piles for a while, practically helpless, and I would have laughed if I had had the air to spare.

When we each finally caught our breath, I asked him what he was doing out here. “Mom and everyone asked me to catch up with you so that the cannibal wouldn’t get you.” On his hip was the emergency pistol that family members were supposed to take with them whenever they left the property. In my rush to make a point, I had forgotten it. “After you left, I calmed them down and explained what you wanted to do and why. Once they realized what it meant to you, they actually seemed okay with you going after the rainbow, as long as you finish your chores when you get back.”

“Oh,” I said. There was a silence as I soaked in the information.

“And of course, as long as you get back in one piece. That’s where I come in.”

Two years my junior, Onny was unskillfully hiding his pride at being trusted to protect a family member. I smiled inwardly at his loving protectiveness, and then poked him in the ribs playfully.

“You sure you’re not out here to look for the rainbow yourself?”

Onny turned to me with a grin. “You really think there’s a rainbow out there?”

I got up and held out my hand to help him up.

“Come on, let’s go see for ourselves.”

The Violinist (Nøkken)

Ida Fugoso

I fell in love.

Moonlight lit the lake— all a glitter, how fine I shiver. I crawled away from the light.

The light of my house, how I cherish it. How fine the splendor beams bouncing on to my ah-fixed eye. The winds caught hold of me, How they pushed, and the trees swayed away. To give way Give a way for me. The cold took hold, dragging solid ground, dragging my feet red. Yet red, they almost glided, my dance to the lake. The figure stood on the water. No— floated on. What manner of spirit was he?

He possessed me. glassy fingers played through a song careening through, whirling through, My world, his. I could see each white lash, and Water drip down his pale brow Thunderous and pleading. I ran to the music! The music! He took me in his Breathe I fell

Ode to the Edge of the Earth Aidan Sanfelippo

I have been to the edge of the world standing on rocky precipice looking not out not down but up up from the rocky craig climbing past the skies a stone Icarus yet to fall

From the edge the sky looks like waters unknown shining with fire that pierces through the bottomless seas. up to this sea of promises my eyes devour and want more as I climb higher than I have before grasping at crumbling stones over the rocks that I once tried to push up in a Sisyphistic dream that if I brought my mistakes with me that I would be absolved of their weight and the belief that this proof of me being unworthy would be wrong.

The ground slopes steeper driving me to go back to stay where I was but I keep climbing ledge after ledge until my hands dig into the top of the rocks pulling me to a new height and the canopy sparkles with lights that look like inspiration within my eyes while stretching lines across the sky in a glowing connect the dots swirling in a dizzying neon sphere as I strain my neck while standing alone on a crumbling peak the earth below all but a distant dot looking up at distant fires floating in a deep sea

I wonder if I am Bellerophon climbing higher than I am meant defying the wishes of the stars above and why I don’t care reaching the edge of the Earth I dream of what I could do as I look towards the unattainable stars and as I imagine higher heights I take a step and fly

Campbell’s Hermit Can

Emily Popp

This intaglio print was done with a sort of environmental dystopia in mind. It’s intended to be humorous with dark undertones. The idea of a hermit crab wearing a soup can as a shell is cute and comical but becomes upsetting when you think of how the scene may have come to be and the increasingly sad state of our environment. It’s also a callout to Andy Warhol’s Campbells Soup Cans and blind mass production.

Gone Bad

Grace Schutte

You’ve just got home from a long day at work and find something in your apartment smells. You smelt it the moment you opened the front door, the comet’s tail of a garbage truck, the stench of abandonment and forgetting.

You set down your briefcase at your desk and go to the kitchen. You crouch by the trashcan and sniff tentatively: coffee grounds, moldy strawberries, last night’s semi-finished pasta dinner, and a potential new life form the government would probably like to know about. It stinks, but in the way it’s supposed to.

You check the fridge. A nearly finished jug of milk, soft tomatoes, wilted herbs you meant to add to the pasta last night but forgot about, half a dozen eggs—all of them whole in their styrofoam carton (you hate how it rubs and screams when it opens), and a rather oozy chicken breast. You think it must be the goat cheese, but it sits in its vacuum zip lock, odorless. You throw it out, all of it, just in case. It’s empty in there now, and you shower the shelves in baking powder as you move on to the cabinets.

The bread, though okay now, will be going bad in the next day or so; you toss that, too. The ramen and Mac N’ Cheese are good and you set one aside for tonight’s dinner. The protein powder is fine. The stale chips, party sized, that you bought for a get-together but never attended, collect dust alongside Grandma’s nice china. You wonder why you have the china in the first place and make a note to text (not call) your mom later asking about it. You throw out the chips, even though it only smells like cardboard and missed opportunities, just in case.

You check the fruit fly trap, an iridescent poison of apple vinegar and crystal pine dish soap. Those remaining sit on the saran wrap ceiling staring through the holes at their lost brethren, and you almost feel bad for a moment, wondering if fruit flies aren’t as dumb as you thought. This definitely stinks, but the bastards aren’t dead yet, so you leave it be.

The kitchen has been purged, but the stench lingers.

You go to the bathroom and sniff the towels—yeah, they need a wash, but that isn’t it. You try the shower where yellow plaque creeps its way bottom up, soap mush congeals in the corner shelves, the razor has pubes in it, the loofa is a limp rag, and a demon lurks in the drain, made flesh by premature hair loss and excessive washing. You check the cabinet where your serums and masks, creams and products smell great. The scale does not. You check the trash can brimming with wadded cotton painted red and bloody. This smells (and it should) but there is a hint of something else in it—Mother’s perfume and Grandma’s soap. This isn’t it, the stench beckons out the door.

You check your shoes and jerk your head back. You sprinkle essential oils—a mixture of peppermint, lemon, and ginger—in the soles and move to the laundry bin. It smells like Mother’s perfume and Grandma’s soap—a pervert’s wet dream. The bed sheets

also need washing, but every two weeks seems like an awful lot of work. You strip it bare and find blossoms of Mother’s perfume and Grandma’s soap—again!—faded but infallibly there.

You have the creeping suspicion that something lives in your mattress—mice, termites, more fruit flies—and you hoist it out the door and down the stairs toward the curb, just in case. The bed frame lays hollow, skeleton arms open for an embrace. You walk past—still the smell remains.

You open the windows, get the fans going, and diffuse every oil you have before scrubbing down the kitchen. The bathroom is next. It is late by the time you’re done. Your fingers are pruney and red past the knuckle; your back and knees ache, and you still haven’t eaten, but you go to your desk anyway. Brian said the proposal needs to be better and done by the end of the week. You think you’ll have to skip Mom’s birthday dinner.

When you sit at your desk, gleaming briefcase at your side, you sense something at your feet. Whatever it was didn’t touch you, but you can feel it breathing—shallow and fast. A million thoughts flash through your mind, but you shut them out, telling yourself to be reasonable. Bending over, you peer under the desk to see what is hiding there.

It is a child. Rather, a young woman, but she is small and covered in dirt. Her hair is matted, her clothes in a similar state of decay and unfitting. She trembles, her eyes pure terror as she presses herself further into the wall, willing herself to pass through and escape. Most notably, however, is the smell; like unwashed hair, body odor, and betrayal. Her chest heaves, and she parts her cracked lips. “Who are you? I want my mom.”

You recognize this girl—you knew her once (were quite close, actually), but that was long ago and she doesn’t recognize you, not anymore. Exasperated, you sigh and go to the laundry bin. From it, you pluck out a piece of fabric. Walking back to the poor creature, you offer it to her. She accepts it but doesn’t understand. Your expression hardens. “There she is. Now get out, I have work to do.”

The girl looks at you, uncertain, her fear still palpable, but I have taught you to forget such things. She will come to understand, as you did, what it takes to survive in this world, what it takes to succeed. Slowly, she crawls out from her hiding place and you make a mental note to get the carpet torn out, just in case. The girl looks back at you when she reaches the door, but you don’t see. You’re rifling through your briefcase as the young woman enters the world with your womanhood—stained with Mother’s perfume and Grandma’s soap—clutched in her small, trembling hands.

Paint Shirt

Macey Majewski

“Where I’m From”

Deyne Yarrington (inspired by George Ella Lyon)

I am from a temporary home, A double-wide trailer never made to last.

I am from a place of shame, Born too embarrassed of where and who I come from.

I am from Spanish curse words hurled from my father’s lips, Words in both a language and an anger I was too young to understand.

And so I am also from a motherland with whom I cannot speak, An aborted child of my father’s mother tongue.

I am from carnitas wrapped in charred corn tortillas, The acid bite of the lime juice mingling with fresh cilantro That was sprinkled from delicate fingertips.

I am from brash booming stadium country hits, Twangy white noise that did its best to drown out cumbia classics of my community.

I am from the thumping of the bass drum, Pep band and high school football games.

From a halftime show under the bright Friday night spotlights, From school spirit and the Star-Spangled Banner.

I am from a town that was more rented than owned. Arcadia, from the Greek province of the same name,

Said to be a picture of pastoralism, in harmony with nature. Edenic, utopian. A paradise.

And who knows? It might have been, But I must not have ever been deserving enough To see it.

A Place Undiscovered Megan Miller

A Soul’s Journey

Scout McKnight

This piece, A Souls Journey, contains inspiration heavily drawn from a story a close friend told me. While the assignment was originally for a class assignment, I'm really proud of what I was able to do representationally with her story — which contained many niche details I wasn't fully sure how to construct while staying faithful to what she told me.

Witnessing celebratory fires is very important in her story and as such I wanted to combine both the bear and fire imagery as I believe both items can stand for very powerful metaphorical concepts. I also wanted her story to feel very dreamlike — switching between events like memories found within the mind, some containing solid backgrounds while others are merely floating in voids. I'm most proud of the second page, as creating images with increasing levels of detail is something I've tried to work hard at in recent semesters.

Blue Orange Study Kyra Place

How Third Sister’s Wedding became My Narrative Poem

Malee Yang

I watch my sister, a girl (girl because she is not married yet therefore not a woman) follow her husband, a man, follow the bride negotiator, also a man, following the traditions set up by men, reminding me of the many girls before her, Victims of patriarchal society.

I envy third sister, she is mother’s favorite, father’s favorite, everyone’s favorite.

My eldest sister has more courage than anyone in the family, But a mouth that talks back to mother,

My second sister is the one that mother relies on the most, but she talks too much for mother,

Therefore, she isn’t mother’s favorite.

I am the youngest therefore, the most spoiled,

Therefore, she isn’t mother’s favorite either.

But I’m not mother’s favorite either.

Mother loves third sister the most, they’re wallflowers. Hmong elders like wallflowers because that is what makes a Hmong girl virtuous saving face was our people’s saving grace

Too bad I’m not a wallflower

“I love you all the same!”

White lies.

I am not a son who will carry the family name, nor third sister who was a splitting image of mother.

In a traditional Hmong wedding, the parents cannot cry: a sign that your daughters would lead a sad married life. In the end, mother cannot control herself.

The daughters’ place in the family stripped away once they are married, reunion between parents and daughters is a stranger’s first meeting. Polite, as if the daughter is not their own.

Marriage for a Hmong girl meant the end of her previous life. Anything she was, is, and will be is now part of her husband. Traditions made by patriarchal society. Her maiden and family name long gone. She will go by: “nyab”, “niam tij”, “niam ntxawm”, “niam hlob” names that relate back to her husband. Names that are engraved in the back of my head, haunting me, reminding me that I will too, associate those names as my own.

If a marriage fails, A daughter that comes back is no longer treated as a daughter. “poj nrauj” is what patriarchal society, tradition, culture, and people call her. The chance to start again is slim.

But a daughter that stays too long, “nkauj laug” is what patriarchal society, tradition, culture, and people call her. Names for women, they created to feed their masculinity.

I envy third sister for leaving first. The burden of being last, gone.

The pressure to stay in the family, but not too long, Hmong daughters must leave eventually (after 18 but before 25, any longer or shorter, they will question you).

Shame brought on by daughters is worse than any shame the sons bring. The sons cannot do any wrong.

The sons born from the mother will be lost to her husband, because they are boys.

The daughters stay with the mothers, because they are girls.

So, mother cries. For the daughter she lost A mother’s love is immeasurable (Love may not be the same for every kid, but all immeasurable nonetheless)

I cry.

I cry for mother who lost her daughter. I cry.

I lost a sister. I cry for her loss. I’m sure she’s happy, but I know she has regrets.

I too, am a Hmong girl, a victim.

But I have a choice.

I have the privilege of not walking the steps that are laid out for me.

I have the privilege of having a mother who lost her daughters to traditions. She is not ready to let me go. I do not want to go. Traditions that raised me up are not going to tie me down.

My story is going under my name. Not my husband, not my family, not my people, ME.

Working in Abstraction

Somerset Seymer

Train Street, Hanoi Mallory Studer

This film photograph was taken in Hanoi, Vietnam in July 2022.

Candy Underneath a Tree

Analise LaFrinier

All of my pieces are a tribute to my aunt who passed away last January from cancer. The pieces were made with her watercolors and in her style. Each title is from one of the last conversations I had with her before she passed. Near the end she would tell me what she was hallucinating or dreaming about and often they were beautiful or strange. dreamed of eating candy under a tree with me, told me about a boot she could see in the curtain even though she knew it wasn’t really there, and at the beginning of this spiral into waking and sleeping dreams she said she wished she could swim with me forever. These paintings and titles are quite sad, but beautiful. They will mean something different to you than they do to me and isn’t that the most exquisite thing about art.

Katelyn Zastrow was is an ugly word

sometimes. sometimes i miss how it was. but how can i miss how it was, when i don’t know how it may be. what more do i say. i feel stuck. in what was. maybe not what was, but who i once was. we are back to how it was. was, was, was was is an ugly word. we want what once ‘was.’ but was is an ugly word. i need what is. is. a beautiful powerful meaningful word sometimes. sometimes i miss how it was. was is an ugly word. but is. is can show me what may be.

Black Walnuts

Thomas DeLapp

My mom squeezes my back, tells me I can touch his hand.

He’ll feel cold. But it’s still him.

I stand on my tiptoes to look above the dark wooden edge of the casket, and my dad lifts me up the rest of the way. I tremble as I reach out, wanting to do anything but touch my grandfather’s knuckles. It is only brief; I pull back sharply. The chill makes them so much less soft, so much less strong.

In the late summer, a dog-eared black walnut tree dusts the house my mother grew up in with its yellow-green pollen, drizzling a sweet-sour-bitter scent as it drops its fruit.

In the fall, my grandfather collects the walnuts from the dense grass and spends his nights cracking, slicing, and hulling, before leaving them to dry in the dark basement. Between their husk and inner shell, black walnuts hold a dark, black dye, a sort of inky sap that soaks into the fibers of my grandfather’s scarred skin, staining his hands. Later, the walnuts dot my grandparent’s bowls of vanilla ice cream and gem homemade fudge. They give bags to friends, save more in glass jars for later.

When I visited my grandparents, I’d spend hot days slamming the walnut’s hard shells into concrete and punching their husks with pebbles from the garden. I wanted to see their kidney-like pits, smell their sweet-musty-earthy stench, stain my own small hands with their juices, but I could never get them open.

The walnut tree I pass in Eau Claire doesn’t have the same smell. Its walnuts lay untouched on the ground. But my palms still sweat humid, hot, heavy Missouri air. I watch as the walnuts drop from the tree, marking their impact with nickels of dust on the sidewalk. Picking a split walnut off the ground, I hold it close, inhaling its mothy, acidic insides. I wish I could gently place this walnut in my grandfather’s clasped hands, slipping it between the folds of his thumbs while no one is looking.

The walnut falls and I keep walking, not seeing the dye slowly spotting across my palms.

Chorus of Silence

Erin Phelps

This piece is meant to be a physical representation of feelings and emotions expressed by University of Eau Claire student Chloe Falcon living on campus during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In her short story, she mentioned the phrase “Chorus of Silence” and I chose to use this statement as a mental reference for my abstract painting.

Abstract

of Arizona

Colton Weitzel

This piece was able to be created due to the courtesy of my Aunt Julie and the enthusiasm of Jill Olm. Many thanks to them.

Blu Haylee Schreiber

Diet Coke and Evil

Spaghetti: Trapped Between Young and Old Sam Johnson

On one of the last summer-like days this September, there was mold in the bathroom during my first shower in the dorms. Little black specks peppered the ceiling above me as I stood, sandal-clad, surrounded by cinder blocks, clutching my soap and towel, wondering what the hell I got myself into.

Not all that long ago, I was an adult, doing adult shit. I spent a summer at home working a respectable job for a school district in Minnesota, getting eight hours of sleep each night, and switching from coffee to tea because I read an article claiming it was healthier. One blazing July Sunday, I woke up early, did some low-stakes car repair — without using Google hopped in, and went off to the library. I picked up a few books, then, satisfied with the day’s productivity, cracked open a Diet Coke and Huck Finn.

Mid-sip, I realized what I was doing. I was 22 years old, which is far too young to be in the Diet Coke and great literature stage of my life. Nothing wrong with 22-year-olds in that stage, but that’s not me. Reading and Diet Coke? It feels like keeping a tiger in an aquarium. Actually — that makes me sound badass — let’s go with meerkat. It feels like keeping a meerkat in an aquarium. Last I checked, I was still young, still cool. I should be watching TikToks all day and drinking all night. 22, in the life I’ve led until recently, was still easily young enough for a new found drug problem. But instead, here I am, drinking Diet Coke, and reading thrilling adolescent adventures. What the hell did I get myself into?

This geriatric renaissance happened at my parent’s house, which doesn’t sound all that adult-like when I read it back, but I made it the whole summer without getting nagged once. I was practically a real adult roommate to them. Between the bubbles of that Diet Coke, I saw the truth; I wasn’t ready to feel responsible and old. From there, I feverishly counted the seconds until I moved back to Eau Claire back into the dorms for the first time in three years — for my last semester of college and, hopefully, more nonsense.

But now I’m here, scared of showers and not as young as I once was. When I was a first-year college student, every shower was a sandal sole away from vomit and hairtainted floors. I didn’t care. Now I’m looking up hotel rates, willing to throw fistfuls of cash at whoever can give me a shower to myself. I’m at least three years older than all of my dormmates, including the roommate I sleep a few feet from and the resident assistant who’s in charge of me. I’ve given him advice on adulthood. That’s weird.

I’m not saying I’m old. I’m just not sure I’m young, either. I strolled beyond youth,

completely oblivious. I’ve been thinking about it, and I think 22 (which I just stopped being) is the first age that isn’t truly young anymore. Before any old people reading are able to finish saying, “22? Not young? You’re just a kid,” let me finish. I don’t think geezers with their Family Feud marathons and 401Ks — are the leading authority on youth. I think it’s up to the young people.

This summer, I was in the suburban gas station closest to my parent’s house at 9 p.m. buying energy drinks, a relatively young activity, when a group of actual young people walked in. I wasn’t snooping, because that’d be weird, but TikTok slang and youthful joy drifted between bags of Doritos and into my ears. I took a look at my reflection, staring back at me through a fluorescent-lit cooler door, and imagined what I must look like to the kids that biked there like I used to. One of them bumped into me, too busy being young to look ahead, and said “Sorry sir.” Old. I work with kids and have noticed a drastic difference between telling them I was 21 and now, telling them I’m 23. “Oh, that’s cool, are you in college?” they used to say. “Oh, are you married?” they now say. It’s not cool, and it’s not young.

Here’s the thing — I’m okay with not being young. It had to end eventually. I had a pretty good run. Surrounded by young people is a strange environment for a newly notyoung person. Young people don’t care about silly things like hygiene, eight hours of sleep, and the future — I do.

The other day, while I was showering amongst the growing mold patches, the water level began rising. It rose and rose, then poured over the edge of my sandal onto my foot. I looked down to find the floor (and my right foot) submerged, the drain clogged with gray sludge, dark strands of hair running through it. Evil spaghetti. Maybe Diet Coke isn’t so bad.

Most of the changes that accompany exiting youth are good. I’m making better decisions, planning ahead, eating healthier, and drinking less. But, damn, it’s a lot less fun. I think I finally understood; young is a mindset. A lot of my friends despite being the same age as me — are still young. They’re out until 2 a.m., working at 6 a.m., constantly hungover, and not giving a shit. I’m not that way anymore. I’m not old, not young, and not really sure what that means.

I guess it means I’ve traded hangovers for boredom. A definite win, if you ask hungover people, but my god I would kill to be hungover and carefree right now. If that were the case, I probably wouldn’t care about — or notice — shower mold and evil spaghetti.

I wouldn’t mind if my dormmates don’t clean up what I hope are beard trimmings, flush toilets, or wash their hands. I wouldn’t even consider not being young anymore and I definitely wouldn’t drink Diet fucking Coke.

But here’s the stupid thing; as I sit here writing (taking occasional breaks to count the hideous posse of gray stink bugs congregating on my dorm windowsill), I know I’m probably going to miss this because I miss all the other (seemingly) shitty periods of life in Eau Claire that were filled with weird, infuriating, and gross situations.

I miss being in Putnam Hall, nurturing and laughing at a dear friend as he vomited vodka into a popcorn bucket. I miss the knee pain from carrying two incoherently drunk friends up Eau Claire’s infamously, steep hill. I miss last year when living off campus with three friends brought ear-piercing EDM, sex noises, and a dog fight. I miss bloody marys being medicinal and life being exhausting. I miss being my current dormmates, with no regard for anything that happens beyond the current moment.

I mourn that era of tomfoolery, now in the rearview. When I arrived in the Wisconsin town I chose to attend school in — without a single forethought — I had no clue what the hell I was getting myself into. Sitting in my dorm remembering the 18-year-old freedom cinder block walls once brought, I realize that version of me is gone, and I now know I’ll miss it.

Hive Christopher Ehlert

Firework

Emily Popp

This lithography print is based on a poem of the same title by Stacie Cassarino— The day my body caught fire the woodland darkened. The horizon was a sea of maids, rushing to piece me back into a girl. Out of the girl came yellow flowers, came stem & sepal. You never happened, they said. The meadow was a narration of lessness. Inside the corral, horses fell from the impact of lightning. They broke down. I heard gunshots in my sleep. I was a keeper of breath, of hay. I walked a field, collecting bones. You can build a house out of bones. You can stand at the doorway quarrelling with your legs to enter or run until you turn to ash.

Megan Miller

breathe It in on a hike through the woods

Carlee Shimek

in trees, It scurries across hairline branches, shaking dead leaves, they glide down to snuggle on snow topped mounds before boots crunch overtop like Rice Krispies,

hops with silence next to It under brambles and vines freshly flush from spring sun hollow boned and sniper-eyed hunters fly It above flags claiming ownership of a mountain It curls into caves for cold naps and smooths over water, weightless

i watch It prowl through backyards on quick hooves, i leave snacks on rotting wooden tables by the trail, It gobbles them up before tomorrow

squeeze the dirt beneath my foot smelling It after rainfall brush my palm on bark grasping Its foundation, sturdy and older and preserving Its memories

i halt and feel It through roots underneath soles hear It from branches breaking and howlers at night see Its pieces of pollen and little balls of nothingness hanging in the air like a million microscopic chandeliers

gladly freeze my nose off in Wisconsin memories of muskrat huts, beaver dams, catfish, resting in the harmony of a river carved by an ancient snake as long as the country— can you imagine if that were true— critters strengthened by It, Its power pumping through veins, feel It as my calves burn from hiking steeper than high-rise hills, sand hides in socks and burrs bite into jeans

all for the worth of witnessing It up close in white-tailed deer, bald eagles, and purple petals, giant icicles hanging from bluffs It is Magic in flawless, multifaceted forms burrowing into the earth and spreading, Magic on the edge of the Mississippi and beyond

Wall Hanging

Hannah Polzin

Swimming with You Forever

Analise LaFrinier

All of my pieces are a tribute to my aunt who passed away last January from cancer.

The pieces were made with her watercolors and in her style. Each title is from one of the last conversations I had with her before she passed. Near the end she would tell me what she was hallucinating or dreaming about and often they were beautiful or strange. She dreamed of eating candy under a tree with me, told me about a boot she could see in the curtain even though she knew it wasn’t really there, and at the beginning of this spiral into waking and sleeping dreams she said she wished she could swim with me forever.

These paintings and titles are quite sad, but beautiful. They will mean something different to you than they do to me and isn’t that the most exquisite thing about art.

Lovely Sight

Claire Anderson

The world is full of color and light. There is the green of leaves in the summer and the bright pop of pink flower blossoms in the spring. In the winter the brightness comes through, the sun glistening on the top of snow. Color is no longer appreciated. Vibrancy is normalized.

In my world there is no color. The view of hair flowing through the wind as a young girl runs away and the brightness a good smile brings are both no longer present. The world I live in doesn’t even have the nostalgic feel of watching a show in black and white, one that is occasionally broken up with static.

There is an emptiness in me. Like there is a tiny hole in my gut and nothing can fill it. They say, “it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” I don’t agree though. I have loved. I have loved a lot, and now that I can no longer see the rain falling onto my sunroof and look at the beautiful sunsets, I feel the emptiness. I can’t shake the feeling, even though there are some times that are much worse than others. At the county fair when I can smell the kettle corn and the delicious fried food but can’t see the deliciousness that beholds me, and then I hear the laughter and joyous screams of kids as they fly on the roller coasters. That’s one of the hard times.

Some days I wish I had been born with my world like this. Then I never would have known what I was missing out on. I wouldn’t have to try to lock the images of my family members’ faces in my mind, wouldn’t feel like I’ll forget the deep blueness of my mother’s eyes, and the way my dad’s forehead wrinkles when he laughs. I would never miss looking out the window during long trips in the car, trying to guess how many cows are in each pasture. I would still be able to watch the embers during bonfires and look up and see the rainbow hot air balloons on beautiful summer evenings.

I do still get to feel the light touch of rain on my face, feel the warmth and softness of my blanket when I get comfortable. I get to feel the sandpaper scraping of my cow’s tongue when she tries to lick me and the way ice cream will still give me a brain freeze after 24 years of life. The way a strong wind will toss my hair around and the way a good pen will glide smoothly onto paper. I wish I was more grateful for what I had when I had it.

I wish I would have seen more of the world when I still could. I wish I would have looked at my family members more and tried to lock their faces into memory. I wish I could still look into someone’s eyes when I tell them I love them. I wish I could still see rainbows forming in the sky. The world is truly magical, but the people in it view it as mediocre. Instead of looking for an eye opener, people should see what living without sight will do to you.

Pumpkin Nyx

Madison Magnani

Man’s Best Friend Haylee Schreiber

static silence

Arlie Herringa

all the silly little thoughts in my silly little head and all the silly little things left unsaid

A realization at the age of 15 after listening to music, Hayden Forbes had to try it out himself. He has since released his own album called A Musician’s Nature, which can be described as colorful in its variety. Forbes mentions that his album was a place for him to try new things and see what works and does not work. One of the songs, “Sunshine Skit” includes a recreated phone call with his friend Nathan also a musician of when Forbes decided music was something he wanted to pursue. Forbes says, “It is a nice nod to the past.”

In addition to “Sunshine Skit,” his song, “Never Tried” is just that; something he has never tried before. Forbes explains this seven-minute, all piano and acoustic song to be very cohesive. The first half is strictly solo and is the first song he sang on instead of only rapped.

Creating music right in the comfort of his bedroom, Hayden will typically start out by listening to beats through various songs and YouTube channels. If any catch his ears, he will think of a song title before he begins writing and falling down a rabbit hole. “We were going to do one song and then five minutes later we had 15,” mentions Forbes when speaking about the new album he is currently working on; a collaborative project called Division Street.

In contrast to his album A Musician’s Nature, Division Street will be serious and black and white. Forbes describes it by saying, “It is equivalent to everyday of October besides Halloween,” but also has another project in the works that is melodic and jazzy.

Eager to release his current projects, Forbes continues to try new ideas into his music. His song “Right Away” is pop with some rap, which is something he and Nathan have never done before. He is also excited for everyone to hear his collab project, Division Street, specifically the lead single, “Pulp Fiction.”

You can listen Hayden Forbes on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming platforms.

green,

Current UWEC student, Gavin Forkash and former UWEC student and lead singer of green,, Sean Powell-Burns, met pre-pandemic, where they would make music in the dorms and work on unreleased projects. The pandemic and asynchronous classes allowed for the two to spend more time focusing on music. “We just made a lot of noise,” says Sean. However, it wasn’t until Sean decided to move back to Minneapolis after spring 2021 semester to pursue his band, green, and later release their first EP, Watering Weeds, in which Gavin produced.

This was Gavin’s first time producing for anyone other than himself and Sean prior to the band, but Sean says, “Gavin blew it out of the water” and that his natural production works well with green, and their style.

While the whole sound of the EP delivers a complete body through its tone and mixing, “Over the Hill” is the driving force that truly ties it all together because of its complete and full sound. “I had trouble with things in the art before that I was able to nail pretty well,” says Gavin in reference to the production of “Over the Hill.” Gavin also happens to appear on “Over the Hill” playing guitar.

As far as production goes, “I am still growing into myself and that is something that is never going to stop,” says Gavin. He continued by saying, “I want things to poke out and bring out more of the energetic and harsher dynamics, or something so it is bouncy and fun to listen to,” and Gavin did just that with Watering Weeds.

Sean explains he finds mixing and producing music being more time and energy consuming than writing it, creating it, and recording it. He prides Gavin on his hard work and says, “I only have plans to work with Gavin” for any and all upcoming projects.

Although there are no current projects in the works for “green,,” Sean and Gavin continue to work together and send recordings back and forth to test new ideas and mixes for future creations.

You can listen to green,’s music on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services. You can follow green, on Instagram: @greenthemusic.

Simon Butler

To be young and in love and making mistakes. There are two sides of Simon Butler’s music: dreamy and romantic, yet with a punk rock sound which alludes to getting in trouble when you are young.

Simon Butler kickstarted his music career at the age of five when he would put on concerts for his family by playing the harmonica. It wasn’t too long after that he took piano lessons and joined the middle school band, where he eventually found his first love: the guitar.

After being in a couple bands as far back as high school, one called Homestretch and another called Theater Mom, Butler aspired of starting his solo music career with just him and his guitar.

Lying in bed or sitting in class, Butler will think of a simple melody or lyric line, which he later grows into a theme and expands on a landscape or story of a relationship. Then, it’s back to the basics: him and his guitar. A simple chord progression turning into a story he wants to tell, centering around falling in love, getting in trouble, and being young.

“Right now, I am most proud of the song called, ‘Meet me at the Hilltop,’” says Butler.

Meet me at the hilltop at noon, Show me your world that’s so new, Tell me that you love me real soon, I might just tell you I do

He explains that this song is about things he has experienced and been through when applying it to relationships and romance. “I wrote this song about finding yourself or new love in a new or unfamiliar place. I always try to establish some sort of setting for the stories or romantic themes in my songs, and here it is the top of the hill, or “The Hilltop” at UWEC,” says Butler. He hopes to relate to other students at UWEC that go through similar things.

Butler does not currently have any music released. “I am just writing for fun,” he says. He is looking to perform his music at open mics while preparing to release music in the near future.

You can follow Simon Butler on Instagram: @simonwbutler.

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