ULTISOL vol I.

ULTISOL is a collective art zine by creatives in North Carolina, for creatives in North Carolina.

NC is full of really incredible artists, writers, and makers of all kinds, yet our creative scene is often overlooked. The goal of this project is to help change that - hopefully, this platform will help facilitate collaborations, work, discussions, and artistic community.

The word “ultisol” (pronounced uhl-teh-sawl) refers to the red clay soil that is found throughout the state. This name pays homage the land we live on and to the clay itself, which has enabled a rich and celebrated North Carolinian pottery tradition.

May our art be as malleable and stain the soul just as deeply.

Organized by Anna Hart Curators

Aurora Figueroa-Benetti @lilrawra / @thekittyriot Jade Finch Phan jfphan@my.waketech.edu RJ Washington @sometimes_sonny Eoin Farrell Anna Hart

Special Thanks to Jane Linville, Chell & Sum, and the Raleigh United Mutual Aid Hub

Bend/Balance, Sanjé James Film Photography

Sanjé James is a multimedia artist with a focus on photography. She received her BFA in Photography at Lesley Art + Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work is fueled by the topics of race, mental health, and self-exploration.

@moosekatt on Instagram sanjejames.format.com

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Jackets, MadCore Fashion Design

I hand sew all my pieces and love what I do :p

@m.a.d.c.o.r.e on Instagram

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Interstellar Traveler, Justice Dunne Digital Illustration @justicedunne on Instagram w w w.justicedunne.com

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Do Not Be Afraid, Wylie Phu 3D Modeling

Hello! My name is Wylie Phu. I specialize in realism and detailed artwork!

@wyliesart on Instagram wyphuu.wixsite.com/wylies-art

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Nature is Queer, Anna Curtis Digital

Anna is a student studying environmental science and health humanities at UNC Chapel Hill, and loves bugs, loose leaf tea, college radio, and printmaking. Inspired by queer ecology theory, poetry by Imogen Xtian Smith, the earthy feeling of sex and the emotions of trees.

@lain.303 on Instagram annamc2042@gmail.com

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Modular Sculpture No. 2, Sea Tong Veng Paper and wire I grew up in Cambodia where I taught myself to make realistic portrait drawings, always focused on beauty and not much else, but going through architecture school has expanded my horizon both in terms of my craft and my artistic expression.

This sculpture is part of a series that explores ephemeral constructions, always changing form due to the modularity.

@real_seabear on Instagram

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NESTS TETHERED BY TIME time begging for time wet sine wave passing over time & singing baritone for loved lovers and hated others whipped into transmission, curdling mucous membrane spread across my bare ribs until pencil sharpened to knife & i stacked it twice more again until my vision turned black. there wasn’t a cost locked in pain until i spoke it into hysteria’s stretched existence. then i laughed. cacophony swelled again and i remembered the taste of water. gunpowder and unbridled joy & swapped contexts & moral’s morale & everything might be replaceable if you die hard enough. cardamom enjoys me insofar as my nose bends. aromas send songs and my nostrils tickled, moved to humming, moved to new summit sitting in my forehead with nothing to look at but reality & it’s there if I’m there but eye tears the map into fucking shreds tipped and toe’d around every good reason that helped me hug the grave but now i live it less. skin and crest and fin in chest since water’s here now. give that sun permission to scorch that again. darken, darken, darken the key can’t fit or else that door would phase through you. killing cords powered by shields and fake nation & fake tribe & fake me & fake you i’m raking in battle cry warm & bloody & coarsing & pulsing Alive signing tents bouncing in all calls for action breaking wind, scale, and motive cluttering for explosion meteorite cuddling with baked flesh cowered in the face of time & seconds & days & hours in the face of clean glass and even paint fluorescent light and corporate musk

NESTS TETHERED BY TIME, julian doaks

Poetry

dj, poet, rapper, producer, seeker, and student of life from raleigh, nc. all work produced by me is a diligent excavation from spiritual recesses and evolving tensions. in these poems particularly, i aim to decimate the rigid structures of european logic and rationalization through freely associative meaning-making. in the end, though, few words will capture the whole — i just hope you can feel me.

@shelf_mover on Instagram linktr.ee/ju_ud

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History of Arson In this fading indigo twilight of a bedroom, see how the evening graces her collarbones.

Pay attention to her fingertips skating across your waist and wait for the fever to come.

When it arrives, search her for exit wounds.

Cradle the tremors in her fingers; tell her to breathe.

Show her what it is to be valuable again; show her that she is not violated—that she is still whole, that her body was not stolen from her.

Remind her that she is new now— Watch her eyes flicker under pinhole stars as she guides your hand across the horizon’s fringe.

Notice how constellations sew the ocean to the night sky.

Remember to be gentle.

—because nobody is ever gentle with the pre-owned.

She still flinches under your palms, your soft palms, despite their promises to be different.

Use the edge of your t-shirt to wipe the sweat from her brow.

Do not leave her alone to blister in the dark.

Lightning fractures a grey summer sky and trees groan under the wind’s fingers.

Allow her to fall asleep to your pulse.

History of Arson, Emma Carter Poetry

Emma Carter is a big sister, poet, and graphic designer in North Carolina. A recent BGXD + BACRW graduate from NC State, she is interested in the dance between language and visuals, and how language and design can (and must!) inform one another. She particularly enjoys layout and publication design, information architecture, quiltmaking and other fiber crafts, frogs, southern literature, and beverages of all kinds. She is a Virgo sun, Libra moon, and Aquarius rising.

@ec.arter on Instagram emmaccarter.com 8

Metamorphosis, Emily Vidovich Collage

Emily is a Raleigh, North Carolina based freelance graphic designer, illustrator, and collage artist with a love of all things colorful and kitschy.

@emilyvidovich on Instagram

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From the River to the Sea, S.M.K. Digital Illustration Free Palestine.

@smkazart on Instagram fromtherivertotheseazine.carrd.co 10

Untitled, reilly

screen print over finger paint

Reilly is a multimedia artist and designer who is passionate about using her art as a platform to bring people together and inspire action and solidarity in the audiences she touches. This monster was inspired by a patch her mother had on her backpack as a college student, over 30 years ago. The original art behind this saying was created by Lorraine Schneider in response to the Vietnam war. It’s continued relevance is angering, but the continued support behind the sentiment is inspiring — calls for peace will never be silenced.

@all.reilly on Instagram linktr.ee/reillyleaver

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Tim, Martina G.B 35mm photography

My work shown here is from a short series of portraits capturing personal narratives beyond the board. Shot on my Minolta X-700.

@marto.graphy on Instagram 12

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Self Reflection, Natalia Lopes Digital

Natalia Lopes (they/them) is a queer Latinx illustrator making queer horror art, comics, and zines. Their retro line work, alluring and horrific subjects all pay a loving nod to horror, anime, and science fiction.

@mystopress on Instagram mystopress.com

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Carmela V Jewelry, Christina Miracola Ring

My name is Christina Miracola I created Carmela V Jewelry to express the art of Jewelry using differnet mediums.

@carmela.v.jewelry and @christina.n.miracola on Instagram

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Lethal Angel: Rebirth, Kaylynn Crowder Comic @giant.squiddy on Instagram

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Fish and friend Pen Cleopatrix Brush pen markers, Juan i love you

@sanarmoire on Instagram

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Her First Name These are the things I know about my Nai Nai. She wore purple almost every day. Her cheongsams and smocks and little faux fur slippers were all mauve or lavender or the color of cheap orchids.

She liked to pin bugs in little glass displays that she kept under her bed. In secret, she would weave little snares from dried grass to catch them.

She never shared a bed with my Yie Yie. Their single cots stood on separate ends of the room.

She played mahjong with the other grannies but they played in silence.

She did tai chi in the beaten earth yard.

She hated my mother.

She only knew two English words - go and run. To make the most of them, she used them in pairs. Go, go and run, run were the metronome for market trips, chores, cooking.

Her hands were speckled with pain. When she sat in silence, they would cup around the pain, grasping it precariously.

These are the things I don’t know about my Nai Nai. Did she grow up in a village where the haze of mists turn the mountains purple, Where sunlight turns the rice paddies to lavender pools?

Or did she live in the city where the shimmer of oil in a muddy puddle reminded her of orchids?

Did her mother teach her to weave lassos for grasshoppers and butterflies?

Who arranged her marriage to a man she wouldn’t even speak to, For whom she bore two children she tolerated?

Why did she not gossip with the other women? Why did she not have friends that would flap about her and ease her mind?

When she moved her body, did she imagine she was running far away?

What did she say when her son brought home a woman with hair like beaten bronze and skin like milk?

Did she stop loving her grandchildren when they grew into a language that sat in her mouth like cumbersome pills?

When she died alone, did she smile at the pain as it curled and caressed her body, as if to say, I am here and you are here and you are not alone.

Her First Name, Andy Li Poetry

Andy is a queer Asian American storyteller born in Southern Appalachia. He currently lives in the Triangle working to preserve and expand civil rights in the South. When not working or writing, he’s doing embroidery, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and baking while listening to Mitski.

@andyisvcool on Instagram

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Your garden I have known you, my friend, Since before I stopped hating myself, I came to know and love you, before I ever learned to love the boy in the mirror, And if by chance life carries you far from me, Know the love I grew for myself came from your garden, And my heart remains full from your spoils, Know I’ll feed my new community of friends the same helpings of happiness you did me, And they’ll bake benevolence within themselves to serve plates of peace to their next community, Because if by chance life carries me far from them, Do not feel sad for me, I will not be lonely, my friend, For the love I grew for myself came from your garden, And my heart remains full from your spoils,

Your garden, Therapy for the kid, Keem Poetry

I feel that most of my inspiration is just observation.

Observation of my surroundings and just me in my human experience.

@hakeemj19.jpg on Instagram

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Always Together (Juntas Siempre), Gabriella Linoleum with gamblin oil-based relief ink

I’m Gabriella, a Black, Latine lesbian multidisciplinary artist living on the east coast. My work tends to center actions and feelings of community, healing, interconnectedness, introspection, love, and passion. I create a lesbian zine titled “Eclectic Collective” alongside art direction, curation, printmaking, sketches, tattoo design, and writing. Created from linoleum with gamblin oil-based relief ink referencing Vashti Persad’s untitled journal entry in Makeda Silvera’s “Piece of my Heart”; an anthology of poetry and prose by lesbians of color published in 1991. “I stare out the back window of her house, mesmerized by the countless stars in the black sky and comforted by the watrees and the smell of curry and rain. I breathe in deeply to capture that energy within myself but realize that it is already inside of me.”

gabriellaanalise.cargo.site @gabriellaanalise on Instagram

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Lotus Picking; Floating Seeds, huiyin zhou 35mm film photography

Born and raised in the industrial hub of Dongguan, China, huiyin zhou 徽音 (they/she) is a transnational queer feminist organizer and communitybased photographer, writer, translator and multimedia artist. Creating with intimate and tender sensibilities, huiyin explores themes related to queer feminism, intimacy, memory, diaspora, and community and approaches photography with a relational, reciprocal praxis. huiyin co-founded and co-direct a queer feminist art and activist collective, Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草.

The photos were taken in summer 2023 on the Hongze Lake of Jiangsu, when the artist took a boat trip to an abandoned island their maternal extended family used to call home. They are part of huiyin’s ongoing project, A Queer Child’s Home Coming, a photo-based multimedia work to be exhibited at Center for Documentary Studies, Durham, NC in April 2024.

@huiyin.zhou on Instagram / huiyinzhou.com 24

Sluggish, bramblebug Block-printing (relief) on fabric

As a printmaker, zinester, and scavenger, my work is inspired by my experiences as a queer transmasc person, my personal witchcraft practice, punk culture, upcycling, and the weirdness of nature.

Carving rubber blocks is incredibly relaxing for me and I find a magical connection to repeating and transmuting images onto different materials—though my favorite print-ground is cotton fabric. It evolves further when others use my patches and clothes to create something of their own. As if I become a part of their magic too.

@bramblebug on Instagram bramblebug.etsy.com

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I Dream of Cena, r. fay

Colored pencils, pen, crayon, marker on bristol page

r. fay is a writer and cartoonist from JAARS north carolina. they live in durham.

@latebutcoming

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on Instagram

First Contact, Dani Foust, Fantasy Artist Digital painting

Artist from a young age, always imaginative, always obsessed with dragons and magic. Lover of fantasy, horror, and tabletop role-playing games. “Otherness” is the major theme of my best work.

@danielfoust on Instagram danielfoust.com

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Kidding, Collage Today I, Embroidery on tear-stained tissue Marty Rogers Maker Marty (born Martha Faith) was born and raised in a few places, but their tail was whipped and heart reared in rural North Carolina.

Currently they live and love in Raleigh, NC with their life partner, best friends, family, stuffed animals, knick knacks, and pets.

@martyrogers.maker on Instagram bit.ly/m/martyrogersmaker 28

Beetle, Hannah H. Digital Illustration

hello! i’m hannah, and i graduated from ncsu’s art & design program, concentrating in animation. i bring my creative ideas to life through digital illustration and 2D animation <3

@rayemafia on Instagram rayemafia.wixsite.com/rayemafia

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