Conversation with Journalist JACOB WARD · Author of The Loop: How AI Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back · Host of The Rip Current Podcast

Civilization is really a very new and very glitchy thing. If you talk to evolutionary psychologists and people who've looked at how our brains have developed over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, they'll tell you that our sense of wonder and creativity, as well as our ability to be cautious and rational, and to trust people we've never met to govern us, all of that kind of stuff—the vast majority of our decision-making actually rests on a much older, much more ancient system. We are so much more like primates than we like to think. Certainly, that's been the lesson of the last sort of 50 years of behavioral science. I was trying to marry a lot of research looking at the ways in which people are trying to build interesting technologies, but then deploy them to make money, and how tempting it is to throw those technologies at those ancient decision-making systems, especially because so much of our decision-making is instinctive. My worry with AI, of course, is that as we automate decision-making more and more, we use automated systems not only to entertain ourselves but to decide who gets a job, who gets a loan, and who gets bail. I worry that we're going to be in a position in 20 years where we don't have the internal compass we once did. We may have slid away from that higher human functioning—the creativity, the rationality, and all that stuff—and back toward a more primitive version of ourselves, because that's the part that gets played on by this kind of technology. And that's how all these companies wind up making money.

A Conversation with Author DOUG WOODHAM
Fmr. President of the Americas at Christie’s · Managing Partner, Art Fiduciary Partners

All of the great artists are there for a reason: because they rebelled in some way. They created a visual vocabulary that felt fresh and new, which excited people. So, the great artists are not built on sort of anthills of sand. They're built on things of substance and of meaning. Though this is not a sufficient condition to become an icon, it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. I think you have to have an interesting and vivid personality or personal narrative that makes you interesting for people to talk about and want to learn about. I think you also have to have a support network of galleries, curators, and collectors who are excited about your work and want to push it forward, not wanting it to be forgotten. Basquiat's visual vocabulary is distinctive and stands out relative to what was being done in the 1980s. That's the sort of strong hill on which his reputation is built. Basquiat benefited from being the first black artist of note who got pushed forward. As in many things, the first benefits.

A Conversation with International Gallerist, Curator & Podcast Host

Today, the world is very divided, lots of fractures. It is the time for art and culture to come into play because art is about soft power. If we want to resolve misunderstandings, art is the best, best, best way to communicate. So use this.

Starring CLAIRE DANES & MATTHEW RHYS · A Conversation with Showrunner, Exec. Producer HOWARD GORDON & Exec. Producer Writer DANIEL PEARLE

I think there's also something about an unfettered or uncensored id that is so captivating. We all have that fantasy of doing exactly what we want with no consequences and sort of letting that go. I think when you see an athlete at the peak of their game and living that dream, or when someone has actually done horrible things that you would never allow yourself to do, there is a fascination there.

precarious when my view south 
looks back at me & as for place
(say it) a part of me looks down
& in trying to avoid visibility

I am the sea
I am the sun
I am the wind blowing in the world sky
I am the blue eyes 
I am your blue eyes

You slouch in the large chair, legs crossed. 
Nobody watches—unconcerned with posture
or other irrelevant conventions. 
Preparing to write is that exquisite 
and terrible state where even to breathe
too loudly could distract from the truth
just forming in the electric corner of the brain. 

Girl holds what is not baby anymore. Her keening echoes. She dips her finger in clay dust. Places it against the cave wall where she sleeps. One more mark, rusty-red, to show pain. The love of something not fully realized, just dawning.

the waves are waves
they come and go
through infinity’s
song of ebb and flow.

In the dream, I was walking.
I didn’t know where I was:
Woodland, dim like a stage set.
I saw two lady centaurs.
Both wore park ranger uniforms
On their human parts,
Complete with badges and hats.
“Pardon me,” I said to one.
Her nametag said “Phyllis.”
I said, “I’m a bit lost.
Can you tell me how to get back?”

Freudenschreck, or “intense pleasure-fright“ – leave it to the Germans 
To coin a word for the fleeting sense of being seized
By such an inexplicable joy it verges on terror. 
Or maybe it’s inexplicable terror pretending to be joy. 
Also, a physical phenomenon: neurologists say the amygdala 
Glows red as a jack ball whether subjects gaze at images of planetesimals or gallows.

David should have been happy. He had done everything he could to get into this school. The day he was accepted, he had felt as if he had passed through the eye of a needle, had entered paradise, had been rescued from the life of an office employee that was the lot of his brothers, his sister, and his neighbors in Bradford. During the two years he had worked at the hospital, he had dreamt of his future existence and developed a serene patience, knowing that his deliverance would come and awaken him from what felt like a century of sleep. Now he was finally free, but that anticipated, desired happiness that should have been within his grasp escaped him. For the first time, he no longer felt joy in painting. He felt strangely detached from his work, without energy or enthusiasm. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he was just an impostor. His American friend listened to the young twenty-two-year-old, completely at a loss, pour out his anxieties. They also talked about other things, politics, literature, friendship, love, the vegetarian diet that David, like his parents, practiced. His daily conversations with Ron at least allowed him to feel less alone.

I am the delicate ventriloquist
the mammy museum is closed 
to unworthy memorials
of diseased constitutions

Nothing bad can happen: the history of births, weddings, and deaths is gone.
No fire to burst the kitchen cistern and drown the flames. I live here now,

witness to the slow collapse of columns and floors, the rain that floods
Queen Anne eaves and streams in sheets across the walls. I listen 

As the sweat
& tremors subside 
we wish to 
escape to the roars 
of our soaring billon
strong, our souls

Underfeet by Sami poet Niillas Holmberg is a poetic manifesto that underscores the vital connection with land as a central issue for those concerned about the future. This collection honors traditional knowledge while questioning its relevance in the modern world and mindset.

Take all you know, and say goodbye, 
your innocence, inexperience
mean nothing now.  

There’s a poem dying on the sidewalk,
we will bury it with the rest. 

She has never learned
not to look
a wild beast in the eye,
that she can’t fly:
much-bitten, hypernaturally
attracted to light.

The voice of a single unidentifiable bird cracking dark
an electric kettle flicked on as first step toward coffee
red plum from the fridge a small cold body in the mouth
in still-on torchlight paving stones gleam sepia
a car gone the old man his swaddled news on the grass
drenched hem of the long cotton robe heavy from wet
the paper lain on the porch a cat standing on the walk
3 a.m's endless itemizing hear and red numbers banging change
a dream city's mute de Chirico porticoes
naked prowling against a cold window's breath
where was the old cat its death would not surprise

If we are, as some believe, created in God’s image, perhaps our greatest likeness is in the impulse to create worlds. Or maybe we are compelled to prove to the universe that we were here, that our little spark of soul added to the eternal bonfire of life. We are here, stacking stones in a cairn along the trail, or carving our initials in the white parchment skin of an aspen. Maybe our greatest choice is in how we leave that mark, whether to create beauty and uncover truth, or to create a karmic legacy through destruction and the infliction of pain. And what kind of mark will we leave? I’ve left both kinds in my wake.

Let’s invent useless things,
the ultimate freedom.

I’ll make marble eggs,
headless dolls,
and stringless violins.

I found myself on this magnificent, velvety-soft, yellow object with delicate, rounded edges, after a powerful storm on a dark night that seemed as if it was the night the universe was being built from the beginning. The two mountains vibrated to their very core from the thunder. All night long the sky washed the dirty surface of the earth clean, while the flashes of lightning severed the dark horizon into terrifyingly beautiful pieces… The grandeur of Nature one might say. The moment of my own birth, I might say.

We’ve all heard half of the fairy tale:
A mermaid rescued a drowning prince,
swam him to shore, then pined away
because she missed the weight of him

and the heat of his breath against her neck;
nothing at all like the trickle of cool
saltwater flushed from delicate gills
when she kissed the mermen back in school.

Open one eye only — 
the horizon is in the closed eye.

Open the seashell —
no solitude will escape.

The stones on the riverbed drink up time,
the dead fish swim towards the sun.

these characters 
with mirror-magic
eyeballs
collided like two giant comets
pitched a tent in the middle of a loft
to live inside of it 
out of the way
of the masses without sky-high spirits

I want to feed you
Lots of metaphors
bunches of images
I want to dress you
A dress with moon buttons
I will widen the horizon for you

The artist—call him Janus—means to comment, 
with his implant, on “the inaccessibility 
of time,” which Einstein said is part of space, 

or linked with space, or flows by relative 
to space as, tears flowing, relatives flow 
past a coffin, thinking, “He ran out of time”—

There are times you are authentically
the person you slid into being,
one who, for example, rips a corner
raggedly off a bag of bird seed and tries
to shake it evenly across the porch,
although you never quite get it right.

The creative process is important because it allows us to connect to our higher self/intuition; connect to others, express and communicate our internal worlds, as well as help us understand and maneuver through life. The creative process is an amazing teacher full of wisdom and has the ability to reveal things about ourselves.

The truth is I left it on the bus
on purpose. Because I saw someone

else’s religion there and didn’t
want it to be lonely. The truth

is you should never begin
anything with the truth is

Less and less do I think
of my blood as it ebbs.
Where I used to track the days,
now I hold the bark
of cork-oak and grevillea trunks.
I watch the chafer, 
armored in metal-green –
six spiny legs cross the stone.
I see the faded kitchen towels
over the drying line

More and more, I swim towards a rock
that moves away from me, and what I say

seems less real to me than the sparrow pecking 
and scraping at my kitchen screen today.

But after we talked, you and I—or rather, 
I let rip and you replied with a spare

Behind their blinds, the neighbors are whispering. I know they’ll call the New York poetry dicks and, together, they’ll peek in my windows and be shocked by what they see. A horde of saved words lazing about everywhere—in the daybeds, in the fireplace, atop a chest of furbelows and they’ll be aghast to learn that in the freezer, the washer/dryer, even in the shower, are still more words. Foreign words. Miss Spelled words.

Having seen enough of the incompetence of politics and the rapacity of corporations, not to mention the numbing discourse that clogs the Internet and most of the media, I return to the arts, particularly music and poetry, to find the place in which our humanity in all its dimensions can be fully seen. As Miłosz reminded us, “One clear stanza can take more weight / Than a whole wagon of elaborate prose.” I am still trying to write that one clear stanza.

Although the general imaginative capacity
might seem to have been plundered by a man
having set foot on the moon, poets decided,
without deciding, to just keep dropping it
into their poems as if nothing much had
happened. They let it shine down on lovers
as an ancient power and, in the bedtime stories
of children, you still had to say goodnight
to it. My part Cherokee mother was alive

Art is more than a form of expression, it is a language beyond words. It allows us to communicate what cannot be explained directly, bridging the gap between what we see and what we feel. Art is essential because it preserves identity, yet inspires change. It is a reflection of who we are and what we value.

Queen Marie: If one were to divide people in two categories, dreamers and realists, I would definitely count myself among the former. All my life I dreamed of an ideal house, which I chased with the passion of a man with a parched throat desperate to quench his thirst. I knew, of course, that there is no such thing as a “dream house,” I knew that it was merely a Fata Morgana, yet it was my life’s quest, and now that I can look at my life with the dispassionate eye of the one who’s lived it, I understand that this desire belonged to Maria-the-Artist.

There are ten sets
of poem chairs
at the Palais-Royal,
separate, together,
love seats
waiting for 
conversations,

These socks were woven by someone
fallen out of love with poetry and in 

with a commune of alpacas. 

The beautiful thing you did
that no one knows about
or forgot
or no one cares for--
it’s there always: 
light, grainy light--

I built godless cathedrals out of it,
upside-down Chinese pavilions, 
sleigh-bell heavens, stained-glass hells,
tearing, folding orchestral sound like origami.

Blessed olive tree
spirit of land, water and sand
tree strong and free
you know the secret 
the way to the light
the infinite sky
of the raising full moon

In front of me, the sea. I contemplate the Horizon behind the horizon, where waves and ether marry. I’m a grain of sand in an ellipsis, a sun shard mingled with stardust haloing the still bare strand.

no beginnings
only courageous leaps
into the continuous flow of things

no before to glorify
in a false jewel-box darkness
where they hold their breath
bad habits and head packed full
evasively docile

You are 600% hotter than the Sun

Speaking roughly, in terms of heat
generated per every human inch, you give
off more milliwatts—surge/energy. Only 
the Sun is bigger… it matters.

you'll believe me no doubt
each salvo tugs at my hair
each salvo at my breast
in this shell hole
I can only write to you
in my mind
your blue apron

Dans le square des Épinettes,
Les images ne sont plus nettes.

C’était la guerre, c’était la fête…
Des balles percutent la tête.

Being born in Rome, Italy, and living in a city that is imbued with arts and culture makes me very sensitive to the topic. The monuments that surround me have been standing for millenia and are a testament of the creativity of mankind.

there is a poem for you and it may
be like this poem for my wife

who listens to a podcast and sometimes
laughs so hard her earbuds drop

It was always the umbrella floating to the milky clouds. The cow with fiddle, the bride in white, the tilted menorah. And Liozna, your town at the end of the world. Cher, you kept our people alive: the lamb’s blood, the mezuzah donning the doorway, while other tribes clawed at us. The strain of the earth was never in your eyes

I live in the wild/urban interface of Topanga Canyon, so the natural world is all around me. The color green is the most beautiful color--it signifies growth and health on the part of plants.

After weeks in the hospital, nothing is as it was. He takes pleasure in everything he sees. He can’t get enough of watching people, of the smells around him. Only now does he realize that every woman has her own walk and that her way of walking speaks. It doesn’t just say: I’m walking. Usually, she doesn’t even notice she is walking.

Don’t forget me, she pleads, just as she’s
quavering on the cusp of forgetting me.
She utters my birth time—our shared moment
of severing, my astrological starting point—
like a secret code, a charm, the combination
needed to open her built-in wall safe.

After we moved from the downtown apartment, I asked her about her wooden palette, studded with brightly colored planets that seemed to open on an infinite array of possibilities. I also mentioned one of her black-lacquered metal watercolor boxes.

Gangster for some, hero for others, who was really Edward Jones? In the ’30s and ’40s, this descendant of slaves becomes one of the richest men in the US thanks to the Policy business, an illegal numbers game that ultimately became the modern State Lottery.

From the beginning, that was
Only my beginning— I don’t presume
it was anyone else’s—I was difficult. No one
came forward to nurse or clean me. Ashamed
to look away, they could not look at
for I was, if not horned and befouled,

I love the spider and the nettle
Since they are hated;
Their sorry needs are penalised
And never sated;

Darwin can't explain the missing link,
and science, did not invent the goal
of faith in how we think-
but Newton keeps us
sane to find the whole
gravity and reason for our role-
in calculus.

Rudesse de la froidure inattendue ou brûlure lancinante 
Le jour figé dans les glaces ou écrasé de chaleur devient flou
Est-il possible de conjuguer l’ombre et le miel de l’aube 
La déchirure et le regain 
Entre l’encrier et l’enclume 

How fine to be alive, sitting by the Thames
only a month after my second angioplasty.
Then it was Valentine's Day, weeks pierced
by angina, aisles of greeting cards, candy
hearts with "U B Mine" and "Got Cha"

A tunnel of puckish red bud trees blooming on opposite sides of a country road, 
which unwinds like a lariat through river valley towns long abandoned save for motels, 
used car lots, a smattering of fields sporting sheds, RVs, or Camper Vans, and then the ubiquitous car washes and self-storage units. 

I stepped into the leafy stronghold
of the prosperous Finzi-Contini’s grounds—

a phalanx of magnificent oaks and elms 
rumored to be planted by the crafty Borgias— 

I fell in love with an emerald-eyed girl
in an elite, high-walled garden, 

Eden of her “scarcely Jewish seeming” family’s 
redoubtable parkland and estate.

The notion that mothers can simultaneously nurture their children and their careers is often seen as a modern phenomenon, an indication of how far women have come in the march toward gender equity. But in fact, history is full of mothers who reached beyond the domestic sphere—courageous women who overcame societal barriers and changed the world for people far beyond their own children.

Recently deployed Authorial Intelligence (AI2) techniques, composed of drama management components and natural language generation algorithms, combined with a more speculative Reader Intelligence (RI) tool, still in development, offer the opportunity of achieving the long thought impossible goal of autogenerated human-level literary textual events. A small but growing research community is making significant progress toward employing AI2 and RI in tandem to restore integrity to disciplines and industries that advances in narrative autogeneration have inadvertently compromised.

Juniper crackles, and piñon smoke scents the room;

bins of coriander, cumin, red chile powder, fenugreek—

at a keyhole entrance, we gaze into the garden of the Taj;

bomb warnings pasted on glass doors and on walls;

You will be surprised to find
I am writing rather than dropping by
just before dusk as I often do.
But I don’t have the courage to 
face you as you read this.
I hesitated to write as I don’t
want to expose our long 
friendship to danger.

On the night we met, my father gave me Icarus
and a latte. I was made of questions and wore
my mother’s face, ten years older than she’d 
been when he saw her last, the day he’d told her
he was going to marry someone else. The legend
goes that on the day he held my newborn body,
I cried until he handed me back to my mom, as if 
somehow I already knew.

Red is palash, red is alta —
   it is nuptial, it is birth. 

Red is Kali, red is Durga —
   it is Sappho, it is Andal. 

That sometimes a frame can be more valuable than a picture
Always fascinated me as a young student. How can it be
That what is after all only the wax that contains the pure honey
Or a shell that holds in perfect engineering all protein vigour
Of an egg; that such things can be more valuable than the food?

Teach me tonight
the history of love.

I am weary.
I am lonesome. 

The spider had to rethink happiness once it reached the moon.

The moon could not be reached for comment, bored
with its own phantasmagoria, our need for pareidolia
when there’s so much we clearly refuse to face.

Marking words to delete, like
people who do not belong, precious
darlings, a writing teacher called 
them. The clever lines you smile 
about and pronounce defiantly at 
poetry readings, repeating them 
with gusto and fight, hiding 
a well-knowing smile, as you say,
 I CRACK in the DARK. I SHINE
In the SNOW.

The rites of passage from childhood to adulthood are a momentous and exhilarating stage in every person’s life. The summers of 1981 and 1982 were, for me, a period of adventure and exuberance, a thrilling helter-skelter of travel, parties and girls – and even a good war too. Nobody had heard of the Falklands, but for a budding fighter pilot it was a jolly good show, and the excitement was invigorating.

White was sitting behind the cash register in the basement of Stones and Water, the most upmarket bookshop in Dublin at the time. It was a Wednesday evening, and, while he leafed through a very expensive coffee table book by Robert Parker, on the wines of Bordeaux, he couldn’t help but keep an eye on the proceedings above his head.

Been having a long conversation about soup of late (with my mama)
Chatted about what to wear in a revolution (with Pablo Neruda)
Asked for tips about how to survive an attack of invading aliens (with Isaac Asimov)
and what to do in the event of a fascist takeover (with Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

She stands at the microphone and says civility is
needed in politics. But that is not enough. She
goes on to say that insanity has taken over human-
ity. The audience erupts with laughter. Corrupt
police officers burst in and arrest her with hand-
cuffs. She lingers in jail for days without bail.

It is of upmost importance to integrate education in the arts on the world stage.

Night: it's a bird; night bird, bird call.
Screaming at night? 
What fades into the great dark, almost black
echo of gesture without answer 
all the soul of the day is swallowed up in the siphon of these very slow hours.

Was it the full-length mirror in the tacky-posh hotel
that held us naked in its flourished golden frame,
or maybe the slick white dresser and rococo headboard
lined with plush pillows, or the black and silver
wallpaper stripes that ran from floor to ceiling
like a cage lit by moon in a darkness held at bay
beyond this room where the loud chandelier

Le PeTiT CiRqUe, created by Natalie Yves Gauthier has headlined the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo Norway, performed for the Dalai Lama, the consultant of Renée, royalty, the Olympic Committee, and is performing for the United Nations for the year of the quantum in March 2025.

In 2020 I would have believed
the red bird anchoring itself on the lowest
branch of the slumping lilac bush
in early March came to show me that bright 
beauty exists where you least expect it,

in my youth I often played the violin in front of the easel
trying to paint music the simultaneous birth of sounds and colors
until I touched the strings of light in my blood with my soul
I was not drawing lines but I was trying to capture the throb of drawing lines

– After the wall fell there could be Union and in this way a decision – was made from older Directives to protect birds and ecosystems

How old was the first Bird Directive? Very old old as the hills and man- datory for any member state to conclude
that humans transform the earth we live on:

Interfere in its cycles of evolution, its equilibriums Question the costs of the changes we trigger Ignore the economic consequences of inaction

We weren't meant 
to be together – not like that. But we’ll always 
be together, I’ll always love you. And keep writing. 
Finish this virus book. You owe it to yourself, 
to me, and to everyone who’s been moved, 
and inspired by your poems. Don't be shy. Don't hide.
Write. Put it out there. Do it for me. Do as I did:
Put yourself out there One Hundred Percent. 
While you’re still alive. After that, you can’t.

That autumn, we sat by the ocean
eating oysters from another 
ocean, flags along the shore 
warning of bad water. 
By then, we were used
to wearing masks,
hand sanitizer scaling 
the tops of our hands. 

the man
followed the woman
into death
hoping to bring her back.
there was a door
or something he called a door
that led to a long corridor
lit with torches.

Morning. Alone by the water. Walking through dreams seeming

to mean nothing in this waking. Water still as ever. Absent

the slightest breeze. Little birds skittering

over the tiny harbor bed islands, revealed, abandoned

only by low tide, as if they fear disturbing what I wish

into this picture perfect mirror: Two suns.

What it was like to read those pages – the drunken 
wagoneer in the act of beating his mare, body-self 
with distressing dark streaks appearing 
in my underwear – “Becoming a woman”— were

there three words I hated more – my mother, her doe eyes 

entering
is passing from Flatland
to ten dimensions
paint brushes and
miniature rollers
bright-coloured water

drop by drop
dashes & dots
draw around this
fragrance this
dream in your 
eyes this grace 
and power you
have without a
word drop by

During the mid-1960s and the early Chicano Movement, Mexican Americans suffered under racial discrimination and were exploited as cheap labor. Lacking a well-developed analysis and social critique for their American lives, they faced social marginalization, had a weak claim on civil liberties, and had no clear path forward toward economic success.

Each of us has to make an effort to help save the planet.

MERCHAND
I must prepare the space quickly.
(Merchand points or stamps her staff toward the ground. Downstage, light spreads out, like a puff of breath, revealing a blanket and upon it, a banquet of sweet fruits and rich foods. Unseen to Merchand, Glimm, a very changeable fairy spirit, enters stealthily.)

I love this story—
My great grandmother was my great grandmother in Amygdaliés. 
My grandmother always knelt in the chamomile with her. 
They loved the small golden flowers in the field—
This is not a story,
more the truth and a memory, 
a eulogy of sorts by the time I arrived

a WWII Novel-In-Progress
Excerpt

She was still breathing when the Englishman found her face down in the sand, her skin simmering with sea salt, her ear covered in blood—only some of it hers. 

Abilee’s dark brown body had gone purplish like a bouquet of seaweed casually washed ashore, her fingertips bulbous, her wrists limp, her arms and legs splayed on the beach between Pouppeville and La Madeleine. She was still in full uniform. 

It is said the man built a spiral in salt and in six days. 
He wore hip-waders. Waiting.
Ordered rocks. Made it to hold the soul 
of the water. A backhoe scooped and anchored. 
Beneath the crown of sea, hoe on hoe 
had piled to a pattern of metal.

Counterfeit Snow: First a quart of good rich milk. Make sure it has been a year since the cow had a calf. Add six egg whites, one ounce of rice flour, a quarter pound of powdered sugar, whip together like butter. Skim off what comes to the top. That’s the snow. Put it on a plate. 

We were both young, in our late twenties,
vain and full of ourselves and The Arts,
unimportant to anyone out in the world

who might matter, but we mattered to us,
and we mixed up a bowl of plaster of Paris

I’d like to be told to write a song
like Moses was told. This is the kind of
assignment I’ve been waiting for.

Free reign to be an artist and
use my sensibility to pluck the 
right notes out of the air.

Art and music have the power to articulate what we feel before we even have the words, offering us a mirror in which we can finally recognize ourselves. When we hear a song that understands us, we begin to understand ourselves. The right melody, the right words—delivered with warmth and compassion—can create a space where growth and healing are not only possible, but inevitable

Come;
let’s live something together
but not just a life.

If it must be life,
then let’s do something more than merely live.

I remember how sunny the day was — driving home,
me in the back seat wearing a favorite floral dress. 
A special occasion — stopping at the artesian spring
to fill big glass jugs with water flowing directly
from its source. A treat, better than the Jersey tap.

Tentative, curious, uncertain, alive, she followed him into the woods, moving in the direction where she imagined the rest of her life waited. So ready for something to happen. The old secret cottage had fallen to the ground. He acted as if that surprise was inconsequential and spread a thin jacket over the dark forest floor. 

Step by step, and little by little,
he’s gathering dung, the scarab-beetle.

Noises he’ll make, and paw the air,
a trick well-known to the conjurer.

Over lime and dusty ground
with feet together he tries to plough.

There is nothing that cannot be used,
straw, spent matches, salt and lust.

Να ψαχουλεύεις, να ζητιανεύεις, να ζουλάς τη μνήμη σου
ν’ ανασύρει τη βυθισμένη στο χρόνο μορφή του,
μια μορφή σκεπασμένη με σκοτάδι.
«Επειδή έτσι έπρεπε να γίνει» είπες.
«Επειδή έτσι έμαθες να λες» είπα, κλαίγοντας.

Thou Art. I am art, you are art, All is art. We create and are thus re-created in the Unfolding Image as we reveal and are re revealed by the human camera—our inner eye—a living lens…rolling, focusing, capturing and re-membering the moving picture. Images that move us. Images and impressions which leave their imprint, which spark the imagination and nurture the spirit of expression. We are, after all, a shining miracle, a mirror with a memory. We share the same DNA with stars—the stuff that dreams are made of.

What can anyone say that has not already been said. Inspiration, interrogation, and self-reflection are part of art making, whatever kind one makes and are they not part of the creative process?

goes out looking
for instants.

It wants to find
more time
to cheat
the inevitable.

Outside, the buildings sway
like wheat fields
and the pick-up trucks roar
past the lumber yard
and down the darkening highway

Sweet rain on old growth sweeps past in fanning sheets,
this morning each veil brings joy, like someone strumming
mist releasing song, falling to branch above hummingbird
dashing in, out, grabbing nectar in the wet, wet, music.
Dashing in, out, grabbing nectar in the wet, wet, music.
Mist releasing song, falling to branch above hummingbird
this morning, each veil brings joy, like someone strumming.
Sweet rain on old growth sweeps past in fanning sheets.

You hang me on the hanger
of your anger

like da Vinci’s triangle
and vinci is vanquish

and vanquish is
like anguish

The changes that came overnight were toxic to my system. The new leader made me feel I was being poisoned to the bone. Being near his tower made me faint. Time to go back to Brooklyn.Going back to the place I was born, I believed, I would be safe. I would be with my own. 
The first driver was from Congo. He picked me up to take me over the Brooklyn Bridge the first day of the new regime. I was shell-shocked, in a state of disbelief and terror that made me ill. The driver made no bones about his antipathy toward the new leader. 
“What will he do?” I asked.

I am far away
from the market stalls over the Neretva
and no one recognizes me here
or knows that eternal summer reigns
over my childhood. 
I walk through the market. 
I’m dressed in a blue shirt
whose song no one understands.

As the world collapses
Singing stops everything from falling apart.
My wife walks through the living room,
Humming to herself, a hum
That slowly erupts into a song,
Rapturing the quiet with her grace
Her song pierces the rancid world
Together, places light before dark,
Dark before absence, the song she sings
Pierces the fresh scent of silence,
A presence at the edge of my yearning.

The place I started was
not the outside,
not the pathway,
not the door

It was the perch, 
the living,
the refuge,
the heights. 

It was the place
to observe the boats,
the sea,
the creases of the waves,
changing each instant

Art holds importance to humanity as it bridges divides uniting the unlikeliest of minds. There are no rules to art. So few people push their creativity and even less call themselves an artist. Like anything in life, all forms of art require practice. That practice teaches and enhances life for the artist. Art is balance. The more creative I am, the better everything is.

Art is how I navigate the in-between spaces—between worlds, identities, and environments. My paintings are rooted in nature, marked by winged creatures that move through utopian landscapes. These wings represent resilience and adaptation: the ability to thrive in air, land, or water. They speak to anyone who has called different places home.
Culture offers the context, the shared memory that shapes how we move and evolve. The creative process is where I listen—where instinct and emotion meet image and form. It’s how I make sense of the quiet truths that can’t be spoken.

His hypnotized legs
glide aerodynamically, 
while light shines
on its shadowy angles.

Its beauty is 
a captive carburetor, 
healthy smoke 
from blood in vitro. 

With the husband making coffee at the kitchen sink,
his t-shirt still warm with sleep. The cat blinking
from her window perch and the coreopsis
still in bloom behind her. With the neighbor’s bamboo 
swaying in autumn light and the single white mushroom 
in the front lawn that appears and disappears in a day.
Anything that says I am not inert
matter. I can be jolted awake
by the everydayness of the world. 

The scissors are all shiny, sharp and colorful standing up in the cup. Sick of being stuck and never used, they jump onto the table, down to the floor, and cut their way into the next room.

My 7th-grade instructor had us all read Flatland—said we’d figure out dimensions. (Cultivating depths in us, the scoundrel, when asked to teach arithmetic!) He told us Think one step above your level, look beyond your rulers, over all your overlords: see how the lights available to you cast shadows down upon your own flat desk. From three dimension, you can understand the two. Read up and down, and back and forth, then past the lights, until you've got your three dimensions all in one mind's eye. 

There is no primal memory per se.
But if there’s anything
I remember more than words,
it’s words set to music.

Freethinking is the greatest, single most important thing we have in our existence. The autonomous power in being a truly independent thinker requires that we…as individuals…keep challenging ourselves to always think…Always Question Above All. The day we stop doing that…or the day that ‘muscle upholding autonomy’ has atrophied, is the day we’ve been long buried…by ourselves. This “War of the (human) Mind” has been unfolding for as long as breathing itself. Same game, different players. Ironic to consider that the Father of Freethinking – Socrates – was himself ultimately ‘rewarded’ for his teachings of Freethinking and encouraging “Change”, with execution by poison.

Highlands brother hears a black
panther the Appalachian ghost

forest starlit shadow and frost
scream out there poet listening

Cookie, you walked through fire in silver boots,
laughed through neon nights thick with smoke,
your voice a matchstick strike --
sharp, quick, ready to burn

The connection between nature and music became a profound force for me while I lived at this institution. Part of my daily routine was to find some inner comfort by walking alone along a creek at the back of the premises. Walking in nature became a way to deal with the uncertainties of my early childhood.

each hour a passage of light
ripening, diminishing, outlining

our proximities, as if together
we are equinox, solstice.

The Galactic Night Swim does not take place at a specific location. It’s a concept; a surreal experience, more than a place. In this swim, we will contemplate the nature of reality, our place in the universe, the eternal questions about consciousness and the spiritual, and our relationship to all living things. Who knew that a swim could do all that for you?

Él
todo el tiempo
me arrebata los fuegos
las ganas
y quiero creerte
pero de nuevo guardo silencio
de nuevo
todo el tiempo
las nubes

1955, Little Orchard, Alabama
Lonnie DeWitt didn’t know what the Change was or why Grandma DeWitt seemed to think it was so important to talk about it, the lines on her big brown face creased like freshly tilled soil. Lonnie only knew for certain two truths: that today was his eighteenth birthday and that, like every other poor soul in Little Orchard, Alabama, he wanted out of this town of dead sticks and cotton. 

The dead keep piling up and all I have are poems
to wrap them in. Pockmarks across synagogue walls
are a new font in a familiar language I refuse to utter.
Men have begun again to speak in tongues syntaxed
by phonemes of caliber and clip capacity: diction I
will not assemble into sentences; sounds I cannot make
into words. What color, the stripes being woven like old
narratives into new camp pajamas? How many stars
asterisk prayers into the bluest night? There is no
metaphor for what I cannot abide; no pentameter
for the sound of earth falling from the hands of love
into a freshly-filled grave. My iambs are a pair
of backwards-turned boots in the stirrups of a riderless
horse. We measure the inarticulate grammar of fear
in the steady metronome of newsfeed updates,
punctuate the lulls between carnage with promises
enjambed in the wind. Cover my eyes with verses
if you must. Bribe the ferryman with curses and dust.
A poet’s contract is blood-inked, bone-stamped,
ratified eternal at the frontier where hope kisses rust.

I can't imagine a world without the arts and humanities. I have been a poet and a teaching artist for more than 50 years, and I am thrilled to be part of this project.

1511 S 1500 E Salt Lake City · UT

My family moved around ALOT when I was growing up so the local library and books were my constant friends. Being able to have that still, as an adult, is a very special calling. After a quarter century of bookselling, I feel like the luckiest person in the world. We've been in business since 1977 and are working with our fourth generation of families; it's humbling and fantastic at the same time.

29 Stowe St, Waterbury · VT

I love that books that open people’s minds to new perspectives and information, and that I get to have a small part in that. Matching a reader with a new book is fulfilling. The last few books I’ve really enjoyed include The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden; A Mother Always Knows by Sarah Strohmeyer; Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend by MJ Wassmer, We Will Be Jaguars by Nemonte Nenquimo, Women Without Kids by Ruby Warrington, and Sir Patrick Stewart’s memoir, Making It So. Right now my TBR pile includes The Apple by Sally Coulthard, Florenzer by Phil Melanson, Rope by Tim Queeney, and Erased by Anna Malaika Tubbs…So many great books coming out this year!

414 N College Avenue · Indianapolis · IN

I love getting to see people get excited about books. Whether it is our booksellers or patrons of our store, seeing the emotions and the human connections that books evoke brings me a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment.

183 Chiswick High Road · London

Jane Austen has been a constant in my life, but the novels of Graham Greene, Jeanette Winteton, Anthony Burgess, George Simenon, & Eric Ambler. Fiona Macarthy biographies, H E Bates short stories, and always always Winnie the Pooh. Cookery books (Simon Hopkinson, Nigel Slater, Elizabeth David), the poetry of W B Yeats, Grayson Perry.

5400 Cahuenga Blvd. · North Hollywood · CA

Readers are a diverse, smart, funny, curious group. As a writer, I love working in a used bookstore because of the constant flow of research materials coming through, many of which are scarce and hard to find. And since the Iliad has two shop cats (Zeus and Apollo), I get to be around delightful non-humans as well!

110 S. Main St. Salisbury · NC

I love hearing kids walk in, screaming with excitement. I love how impressive our store appears the first time you walk in. Kids will ask if we are a library, follow my dog around the store, and hopefully leave a little more passionate about chasing the feelings they got visiting the books we have. Raising a community of readers is a total thrill for me.

124 Chautauqua Ave · Lakewood · NY

My reading tastes have evolved over time. Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut will always hold a special place in my heart for their absurd social commentary. Ray Robertson and Andre Dubus III are writers that I really got into during the pandemic. Their writing is raw and honest and surprisingly beautiful. Over the last couple of years, I have fallen into the world of "Women's Fiction". Authors like Catherine Newman, Alison Espach, Emily Austin, and Hannah Pittard have become must-read authors for me.

What is ugliness? What is beauty? How has our conception of beauty changed over the years? How do traditional notions of beauty inform our ideas about ugliness?
Just some of the questions raised by the exhibition On Ugliness at Skarstedt Gallery in London featuring George Condo, Nicole Eisenman, Jameson Green, Martin Kippenberger, Barbara Kruger, Jacob de Litemont, Pablo Picasso, Stefan Rinck, Pensionante del Saraceni, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Schütte and several unknown artists living in the Middle Ages.

The creative process is important because it allows us time to look, take in, distill; and ingest the visual world. As an artist and art educator, above all, I want to inspire my students to understand what it means to notice and wonder. Whether I am sharing images of the magic of the sunset, or asking my students to notice the subtle bend of a flower’s stem, or the gentle spirals in a seashell, I am constantly taking the time to encourage my students to pause and take notice. Exploration is essential to art making and allows us to express ourselves and our individuality. I also believe that these skills are easily transferable to other aspects of life. By encouraging risk taking and exploration, we gain confidence and learn how to solve problems. Through the creative process we learn how to work through obstacles and find alternative solutions, and we can begin to understand that there is not one way to make art, just as there is not one way to approach a challenge

I was going to upload images of my sculpture but I’m not certain if you deal with 3D works of art. I was curious to see your invite on Instagram because I have spoken on a handful or podcasts on the topic of creativity, so I was interested. Cheers.

Once, long ago, I asked a taxi driver to tell me the worst thing about his job. I expected him to complain about the long hours or mechanical problems. Waiting to stop at a red light before answering, he said, ’The worst thing about my job is that I never hear the end of the story. People enter my taxi halfway through their conversation and leave without finishing it.’ I often think about that taxi driver and how the fragments of a story inspired me the most. I want my work to feel open-ended, like a snapshot of a much bigger tale, a springboard for one’s imagination to go on an unexpected ride.

What stands out most about this project is the appreciation that is being expressed towards artists of all backgrounds and generations. The non discriminatory nature of this project truly allows us to resonate with each other in a non judgmental manner, thus further examining what it truly means to make art and put it out into the world.

Below the window is a city, but there’s only enough space for two
in the hotel room. There aren’t any dreams, it’s too hot to sleep
anyway. I’m putting down word after word. Letters. Quotes. A
traveller’s diary. The forgotten roads travelled to be closer to my
loves. Trust always comes later, as well as the discovery that I’d
missed it. Not only the street, but the entire continent.

The desire for beauty has accompanied man at all times. It found its expression in paintings, frescoes, sculptures, literature, and other works of art. Each generation made its contribution and gave rise to a new direction in creativity. For any person, art is an integral part of his life. We sometimes do not notice this, involuntarily admiring all the beauty that surrounds us. Works of art inspire, shape thinking, and also answer questions that many would be afraid to ask themselves. Art opens up new perspectives for society and also allows us to understand the physical and metaphysical world around us. It allows society to grow and develop.

My inspiration behind Tulip Tapestry is how complex and beautiful fallen petals can be, the juxtaposition of the delicate, still vibrant tulip petals in their curled and withered state, with the mould dust adding a layer of complexity, is representative of nature’s cyclical rhythm, offering a deep appreciation for the beauty in decay. How hidden beauty can be found in unexpected places.

Expanding and contracting like a nova
To a nebula of red alarm,
A blinding point of unstable giants—oxygen and gas—
The anointing molecules,
A cross of ash
And chrism of lips
I can press to my forehead, now, imagining it.
And—Isn’t that a kind of joy,
When you hold it
To your mind like that?
That sad, beautiful star
Falling through the universe, flashing
Before it dies—bright stroke
That once spit you, human,
From its convoluted core
And lit a torch to the future
Like lovers rapturing do, licking
The lap of death, flaming
Oblivion with burst light,
A final streak, a slash
Of seed against the black
Before they disappear completely?

Living in a diving bell
how much can any creature know?
I watched minnows drift past.2
In their aluminum armor
saw my fangs, my four sets of eyes.
It was like being visited
by a stranger, my reflection a ghost
who appeared occasionally,
a bit lost, expectant.

Art in any of its manifestations is the form of the human being in which he shows his soul. It shows its legacy, the interior and it is the art and the observation of art that makes you prepetuen ideas, concepts, illusions. The creativity of being is the ultimate expression of what we are capable of doing.

The War Diary Series was conceived as an artistic project during the War Crisis in Ukraine.
The brief writing, which is detailed here, belongs to the events that occurred at that time, in real time.

Artist identify things that are being experienced consciously or unconsciously by their audience, like putting a melody or face to it.
For the painting (Desert Spring 72 x 58 x 1.5" o/c) I've submitted, my inspiration comes from my experience in West Texas, at a place I visit frequently. A place where I used to consider the edge of the desert I now consider a desert.

Someone spilled a drop of me

and now I'm everywhere,
immersing pebbles on the shore,
scaring nesting plovers,

boring their endangered chicks
with unasked-for confessions
that I was young once too,

that I can't fly either,
that I startle myself
when I glimpse my face in the mirror.

The arts are important because we express the beauty of being human within it. That capability of creating out of ideas and materials is precious. And I believe that this is what constitutes us, or better, what defines us. Maybe some people do this job in somehow more expressive and outstanding manner. Still, the creative process begins its motion every time that we look at the sky, we pay attention to a human expression, or we care about Nature. It is precisely there when the magic begins.

When I was twelve, I walked along the sea
As if a mermaid, not a lonely child
The motion of the waves commanded me
The changing of the tides could drive me wild

The space above the earth
is not separate
from the space beneath its surface
It was not separate
before the earth was born
it is not separate now
though I will no doubt take One breath
and attempt to divide it into two
Nor will it be separate
once this land is no more
and God will perhaps Sighhhh
and release me in Her breath 

I love hiking in the woods, listening to bird songs and seeing different shades of greens, yellows and reds in the vegetation. It’s a time to be with other species and appreciate the multitude forms of life that allows our planet thrive. There was also a rare moment in the city of Shanghai when a squirrel suddenly landed on my hand as I was walking on the street. It was a split second of touch, yet a true moment of intimacy (the paws pressed on my skin) felt from our kin. Life is a planetary phenomenon, and its biodiversity is something I don’t wish and we can’t afford to lose. We need to rebuild our kinship with life on earth that’s deeply rooted in evolutionary time and understand our place as a node in the mesh of the more-than-human world.

The God Eros is the god of passion, love, and eroticism in Greek mythology. It represents the “life drive,” and probably everyone has heard of it. Perhaps the god Thanatos - god of death - won't be as well-known; and he was, and continues to be, my great interest, so I dedicated most of my study to him. Not to be confused with Hades, the god of the dead. Thanatos inspired Sigmund Freud, who determined that all instincts fall into one of two main classes: the life instincts or the death instincts. The Life Instincts (Eros) are those that deal with basic survival, pleasure, and reproduction. Regarding the Death Instinct (Thanatos), Freud proposed that “the goal of all life is death.” He concluded that people have an unconscious desire to die, but that this desire is largely tempered by life instincts. In Freud's view, self-destructive behavior is an expression of the energy created by death instincts. When this energy is directed outward, and toward others, it is expressed as aggression and violence.

“Once you leave the traditional constraints of anatomy behind, the way you deform can become a portrait of character or the inner psyche on a deeper level. This play with the human form marked the beginning of something new.” Renowned Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie is currently presenting two exhibitions at the Albertina and the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett. Working with a variety of materials and subjects, Ghenie explores the personal, the political, and the art historical, fusing these discourses into expressive abstract and figurative works of art across multiple mediums.

Green Still Life, was made in İstanbul, a reflection of green gardens and forests. I used a monotone, light and dark green. The arts and humanities are essential to the human experience, as they provide a way for us to express ourselves, connect with others, and understand the world around us. They also play a vital role in economic development and social cohesion.

An environmental disaster was unfolding as I was working on this painting. It was the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, in March 2024. I had been listening to news reports about the crisis, and it began to subconsciously influence the way I was completing this painting.

Lacuna was the second piece of art I started after ending a decades long ‘separation agreement’ with art, and the first I completed. The word lacuna can mean a hiatus, a gap, a hole, an absence, a chasm, etc., and titling the piece Lacuna, in part, refers to the long span of time where I wasn't sure I would ever return to art - yet a vital period that has marked and deepened my life and my understanding of what my art, and what art as a whole, is about.

For me, making art is the way I understand the world we’re living in and my place in it. The value of art to all of us, in the making or the appreciation of it, is incalculable. The Creative Process celebrates this. I’m particularly interested in the meeting point of art and science, fiction and truth; when art sits at these intersections I believe it can reveal new truths to us, take us to places we could not have otherwise gone. For this reason The interdisciplinary approach taken by The Creative Process is so important.

I chose to draw friends hugging or simply being with each other where it is intimate - not romantic...but intimate still. The image with two women was based on the grief I was (and still am) going through when my closest friend of 46 died suddenly. Her loss left a huge hole in my life. The loss of friendship is not talked about enough. For me...I believe that continuing to focus on the human figure in all its beautiful forms is a vital way to celebrate the arts. Because without the human interaction in the arts and the contributions we make in the arts then our world would be flat and colorless.

This work represents movement and grace. I used oil to capture the delicacy and strength of nature, fusing realism and minimalism with a touch of oriental art. When looking at it, you will feel a deep tranquility and awe at the subtle beauty. It is a piece that will bring a serene and contemplative energy to any space, inviting the viewer to immerse themselves in a moment of peace.

My work is all about capturing the raw essence of social injustices and struggles, shedding light on significant occurrences that shape our world. Through my art, I strive to be a voice for change, advocating for love, tolerance, and understanding across all boundaries of race, culture, and beliefs. This drive to create impactful art stems from a deep-rooted passion to inspire positive transformations in society, sparking conversations and actions that lead to a more empathetic and harmonious world.

With the help of this project, artists can easily find their way to art lovers. The offered opportunity helps me better introduce my work to the world.Folk tradition is very important to me, so I can pass on the long-forgotten values ​​through my paintings, which bring people closer to each other, forming a large community.

My inspiration comes from my everyday life. How can I use normal things to transform them into something else, something more. Drawing allows me to explore this domestic world wherever I live; I need to carry some pencils and paper. I like drawing simplicity and immediacy. Sometimes, one of your drawings attempts to cross a line, and this normality becomes something different, something that can grab people's attention. Then, this familiar world becomes something magical.

“Even the Poles Move” is an ongoing body of work that explores the emotional and spiritual reactions to change through the physics of magnetism. The title references how something as seemingly stable as Earth’s magnetic North and South poles have radically changed positions over time.

My inspiration for my art is my body and how she experiences living in between cultures.

Give me a fury,
with rusted metal whiskers
and nostrils heaving flame,
something nether-worldly and gnarled.
A beast, that dare I give up on the world,
stares from the darkened corner
and considers eating me
if I do.

My work is always linked to nature, poetry, childhood and surrealist travel. Work must always be connected to nature. A renaissance where man and nature must coexist and live together. An inspiring nature must be the driving force.

I wanted to explore the tension between form and abstraction. The profile of the figure emerged naturally as I layered textures and colors, almost like it was waiting to be uncovered. The swirling blues are meant to feel alive, like waves or currents, capturing a sense of movement and transformation.

I make art to see what the world might look like in art. I am a New York-based artist. I received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bard College and an M.F.A. from Yale University. I have exhibited in numerous exhibitions and have worked in various public and private collections, including the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I live with my family in Brooklyn, New York.

I am interested in creating a rich layering of sources: a poetic language where systems of generation and communication are fused to form new languages, continuing to use the tools of the mixed media formats of painting, photography and installation. I am looking to reveal the fractal mirroring of roots, veins, minerals and bone, incorporating multiple layers to reveal the interplay between various life forms representing the cycles of life, death, and rebirth in both our physical and metaphysical worlds.

My work refers to the history of the luminous surface and investigates what it means today, especially since the backlit screen dominates our vision. My attention is on the transformation of common materials by using light and color. I imagine many of the other creatives on this platform have considered the importance of transformation.

After a few years, a seed and then a seedling and finally a sapling rose from Alice’s ashes. I waited each year for the bud to come and then bloom. And it was not a flame tree, with its fiery leaves, but a cherry tree, small with red twigs and in the summer cherries the red of toy soldiers and flowers of white. I ate a cherry each year and each year it was sour and pulpy, its skin hard and thin. Each year I planted one in our backyard which was wild with blueberry bushes and pale blue forget-me-nots overgrown and tangled. We had stopped tending the garden. To tend was to care and mother preferred the lawn unruly, the flowers blown.

We are all creations, human be--ings who are connected to one another and in tune with the Universe. Uni--Verse. One Voice. We mirror one another and our reflections enable us to see who we are to ourselves as well as one another. Our creative expressions, also mirrors;, enable us to empathize to better understand ourselves and the world around us.

In the beginning was the word and it was borne on the breath of Spirit. Just how that spark of spirit is born within us, how it is nurtured by our impressions, sculpted into phrases, how it is shaped-- its rhythm and language-- remains unknown. At what moment does it slip from our lips, does it flow as a river from our hearts, ink from our minds. How exactly does it unfold on that brilliant horizon, that full moon of revelation. 

The blue woman~alive

knows the meaning of things

and the hue of His visions.

Thinks to survive.

Absently slipping her sight at the edge

of the reality~

ruins, cracked mountains, and

rolling rocky rains

when the divine penetrates her within.

The rise of more forest fires everywhere in the world. This work was created after I spent a summer in Southern Europe. In France and Spain, in the wonderful mountainous areas, with beautiful sunsets and lovely landscapes that are so dear to me, there were lots of fires in 2023. Smoke was somewhre behind the mountaintops constantly, At noght fire fighter helicopters flew over. And it is happening everywhere in the world. The world is heating up, making our landscapes hot, and maybe unlivable in the future for ourselves.

The Vital Force - JOY work is from my collection: ”Beautiful Coexistence" which is an ode to the force of nature and the energy that creates life and that consumes life. To the sentiments, emotions and fears that make life an exciting adventure! Visualizing the dynamics and conflicting realities through the use of many fragmentary hand-drawn and digital layers, my paintings are a kind of pentimenti...Unique images of the coexistence that shift between the recognizable and the abstract to build unexpected and memorable pictures.
Unique depictions of the coexistence that move between the recognizable and the abstract, creating memorable images of humanity as an integral part of nature and which invisible forces shape our world.

She sat on the curb and stretched her legs out
and waited for some car to come;
in far nights when her husband coughed, the walls
of their shack got everyone up when they shook,
she wanted to be the one to stand against
the TB he had contracted underground
while looking for stones for the nice lady,
during the days of shackles, blue coal and glass
from the earth, gold for the queen’s chandelier
and diamonds for pink fingers. This is what
the police knew of her. She gripped the edge
of the ledge behind her as a car approached,
and pushed herself in again, her heart certain
that it must know, now, what this felt like.

surface mixes the weather,
cowed, potent clouds then kisses
of fire stolen together
with vapors purse-proud, hisses 

Watching my daughter climb this majestic live oak, unfettered and unafraid, the visual metaphor was abundantly clear. Who could resist the lure of that tangle of branches that travel so high to a magical perch with the owls? Of course, I want her to feel this pull and feel her strength to climb to the top. But from the ground, I see the treacherousness of all of it, all that I can't control or protect her from, and all of the letting go that lies ahead. As a painter, I wanted to capture how the gesture of her body was in unison with the tree--I could see the specific and the infinite at the same time--and the rhythm of the shapes, negative and positive, that seemed to tell the story for me.

Through my work, I strive to bring together the multifaceted aspects of life experience as ingredients for a fresh and exploratory worldview. It is an attempt to present these phenomena in a visual language that is focused enough to address the issue at hand, yet broad enough to transfer coherent concepts without being colloquially or culturally exclusive. In essence, I see them as contemporary visual sutras, to be pondered, absorbed, and considered. The various facets of an image are in essence seeds which are planted upon viewing, then integrate with the viewer's sense of self, stimulating and provoking a broader mindset.

Hollow-eyed shades
of human beings, 

human beings
cogitating on jazz music, 

jazz penetrates the deep silence
of the bleeding angels, 

angels in a fight for
the awakening of this blind reality, 

The arts and humanities open up our imagination. They encourage critical thinking and broad viewing of our present on the one hand, and allow for day-dreaming on the other. And the ability to imagine other futures, other realities or existences - is what allows for change.

I wrote this for my mother,
for her mother,
for my grandmother’s mother,
and for her mother before her. 

Art helps me love people. Everyone looks beautiful when they are dancing. The process of creating art invites one to explore themselves, their values, instincts, and aesthetics and develop sensitivity as to how we interact with the world around us. Viewing art invites audiences to be curious about other perspectives. Through art, we can better understand how and why people do what they do. It develops our sensitivity to subtext and context. Art enhances empathy for ourselves and each other.

The Creative Process resonates with me because it aligns with the values of preserving and celebrating the richness of human creativity and culture. By exploring the arts and humanities, we can foster deeper connections between people and communities, encouraging shared experiences and dialogue across cultures and generations.

We slip behind projections of prophecies
I tell her could mean nothing. We have

tendered a raging maw with hysterical
sleep. Tonight will be of modest dreams.

S.A. Aguillón-Mata is a Mexican-American author and artist inspired by tradition, circumstance, and whim. He has published the fiction and prose volumes Quién escribe (Paisajista) (IZC, 2004), Tratado (De una zona privada) (Pictographia, 2014), and Envés (UANL, 2016). His work also features in numerous anthologies, compilations, and literary magazines, both printed and web-based, in Mexico and the USA. He has both curated and participated in contemporary art shows in Cincinnati, OH, where he resides.

The arts are fundamental to humanity’s existence and survival on the planet because, in addition to showcasing creations and teaching techniques on how to create, they broaden human perception and thought. Through techniques and methods of thought, one can better perceive the directions of the world and gain an idea of ​​how to act or anticipate situations with previous experiences from other ancient but similar eras. One can also increasingly explore the techniques of effects and technology, which are increasingly present in the arts and in humanity’s daily life.

O
supplication,
o
fresh woven
voice
of
forced
supplication,

In my reality, Nature is the purest expression of God (not in a religious way). As we are an integral part of Nature, it acts as a mirror to our inner world, revealing at every moment its profound intelligence, beauty, and infinite mystery. Nature teaches us how to dance with life, embrace uncertainty, and move gracefully within the chaos of change.

Sleep falters,
thoughts gather in the dark
like a thick fog,

Arts, culture, and the creative process help us connect with each other and share how we experience the world. It’s a way to challenge ideas and welcome differences.

The arts and The Creative Process are important because they allow us to connect. Art is a byproduct of the artist connecting with something bigger than themselves. In my case, I connect with nature, and the outcome is a painting. If the connection is complete, then the resulting picture contains a record of that, and a discerning viewer will perceive that and make yet another connection, completing the cycle. Art is a shared energy, and the artist is a conduit.

In light of our world's exponential growth through AI and technology in general, the arts and humanities have never been more critical to our continued growth as a species. Without the arts and humanities to bring us into stillness and contemplation, we would be left with purely materialistic, physicalist views and miss out on the truth of our oneness.

Rosemary Burn is a British figurative painter based in the UK. Her works have been exhibited widely in Italy, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom and are held in several notable collections.

On a physical level, we have the ability to influence only as long as we are alive.
We are alive as long as we are in an environment that can support our life.
By destroying the environment, which is a necessary condition for our existence, we deprive ourselves of the ability to influence.

My work is driven by spontaneity and intuition and I have to restrain myself sometimes from throwing everything at the painting. However, I also like to paint purely for the act of painting, and the tension I feel between the two is where I need to find the right balance, hence the name of this painting.

My heart is a river And like a river
I cannot enter myself in the same way twice
I carry your river in mine–one heartbeat at a time

The arts possess the unique ability to simultaneously present multiple perspectives that can spark challenges, create community or prompt profound questions. As someone recently observed and shared with me, 'Your work makes visible what we are all feeling.' This encapsulates the power of art and the creative process: to bring to the surface the often-unseen or unresolved dichotomies of the human experience – joy and sorrow, strength and vulnerability, humor and anger, beauty and darkness. I believe as a society, especially in this age of extreme opinions, algorithms and the loss of civil discourse, art can speak to the complexities of our shared experiences.

Creativity is our fundamental, inherent need - it defines us as humans and serves as a unique way of self-expression. We must cherish and nurture this trait as it is essential to our survival as a species. Art is a universal language that eliminates artificial borders between people, offering a powerful tool to address the crucial issues for our civilization in a profoundly unique way. For me, as an artist, it is invaluable to have access to the insights of the leading voices in the creative field, to feel the relevance, and to have the opportunity to share my thoughts. I believe that adding perspectives of young creatives into this platform will not only enhance its reach and add a fresh perspective but also build a bridge to the future. Every child is an artist, free from constraints or prejudices. As a mother of two, I draw immense inspiration and positivity from my children.

Setting and historical note: The following story takes place in 1st century Rome, during the reign of Gaius Julius Caesar, colloquially known as Caligula. The year is approximately 38 CE.
SCENE I.
NARRATOR: With a swift, anxious tread, comely Drusilla proceeded through the lavish halls and chambers of the new mansion on Palatine Hill. Under other circumstances, she might have been waylaid by any one of the two-score retainers that her brother the emperor routinely kept on hand. Most everyone knew that Gaius Caesar’s second sister was by far the gentlest member of the imperial family. Her sweet and indulgent smile drew petitioners like moths to a flame. But that morning she strode more quickly and frowned more deeply than usual. Even Agrippinilla, with all her quiet authority, struggled a moment to secure the girl’s undivided attention.

I am drawn to The Creative Process because it resonates with my belief that art is both personal expression and an evolving conversation. I believe that images are not merely representations, but catalysts for introspection, provoking reflection and challenging perception. This project feels like a natural extension of that pursuit: an opportunity to share my vision with others who, like me, value the subtleties of individual perception over the noise of passing trends. It might also be interesting to consider how different perspectives shape the narrative of the human experience.

The light in the window must give you a courage,
lights are not faded away yet, children shine in streets,
the Western wind will color them gold, every mother
feels her child as the rays feel the way out of darkness,
mother’s voice echoes in the dark: Where are you, Lord?
Where is my son? Where is my daughter? Where is their kingdom?! 

Film Director

Art is never enough. The problem is now and it’s still not solved, but we don’t need to be scary or mean. You can engage people gently. Art, of course, is a way to get people engaged and to touch people.

JONATHAN YEO

What are you trying to do with a portrait? On a basic level, you're trying to communicate something about the essence of who someone is. You're trying to figure out who they are, not necessarily who they present themselves as. The two things can quite often be different. You're trying to find ways of showing that through their face, their posture, or any other context. My instinct is always to try to reduce down to the essential elements. We read faces. It's obviously very, very deep in our DNA, really our survival instinct. We are programmed to read faces in a very fine-tuned way.