The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Mystical DioramasBy Sarah Smith QuailBellMagazine.com My work deals with a story which I have created through piecing together ideas from my subconscious. I bring these ideas into my studies and arrange them to create a narrative. I study my narrative through making dioramas and figures which interact. Each final piece is a series of prints which are photographs of the set that I have used to further my narrative. The inspiration for my work comes from a deep-rooted interest in mysticism created by my subconscious. I include almost all media in my studies, but sculpture is the most important aspect. Over the course of getting to know my concentration, I've had to learn several ways of sculpt, light, and photograph my work. While constructing the set and figures dictates the meaning of each series, color and lighting also play a vital role in properly communicating the mood of the work. I carefully light each set as if I were lighting for a movie scene. The color in each piece is dependent more on lighting to look right than its actual surface. The scale of my work is small but I use this aspect of my work to push and pull on the viewer’s suspended belief. To push their belief that the photograph was taken from a real setting is to question how close the events happening in the narrative connect to our lives. To pull away their belief in the setting is to show the level of intimacy in which I handcrafted each figure and set. I also include heavy theme in my work. I explore the effects of death, gender identity, and overall mysticism surrounding my thoughts on metaphysics and the supernatural. I believe these subjects are important to explore because our culture often considers them taboo, but the subconscious readily addresses them in times of stress and insecurity. Read our previous interview with Smith here.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Reverie in La PietàBy Eleanor Fisher QuailBellMagazine.com
Beneath the white April sky, shadows banded across la Fontana of Four Rivers, and along the many bodies turning through Piazza Navona. Gypsy ladies begged nearby, three blistered faces each traced by a headscarf colored in August in Egypt and in dusk. They each kept scooping their dark hands upward into the hot air beneath all the turned chins passing below the sun. Their eyes rolled so that the white corners bulged over and became white half circles. Sybil waited for Art to turn and look at her. She watched the gypsies stare after all the heads going away, all the heads gesturing no. His body sat so close beside hers, and dark hands were falling down.
Sybil pressed down into the panino that she held between her fingertips, so that olive oil and arugula pieces slid out from its crust. A string of Hare Krishna worshipers, each draped in pale orange fabrics, turned together in circles within the far perimeter of the piazza. Green olive oil dripped down Sybil’s fingers. All along that far perimeter the circles chanted together Ha-are Krishna-a Ha-are-e Krishna Hare Hare. Rapping on their tambourines with white knuckles. Two green drops landed on her black skirt and she let them seep into the fabric. Not far from Sybil and Art and the marble bench underneath them, there posed an older lady in a tall yellow suit with a wide-brimmed yellow hat. Like a worn out vision taken off a 1960s Vogue Italia cover. Not like some chimera, or one of those visions one gets from a new face. Whereby remembering a time or person from before, in sudden pieces. Sybil would not have thought to say that the lady even seemed Italian. She only seemed part of the scene by being the yellow of it. Under the sun, her skin appeared tanner than that Crayola crayon named burnt sienna. Sybil had to think how the lady standing there wasn’t a yellow lady. She just wore yellow. Sybil watched the lady kneading into the joints of her left hand with the thumb of her right one. Ten copper-lacquered fingernails of which looked as if they melted from the tips of her fingers. She wanted the lady in yellow to turn, for their gazes to meet. Wanted to see when those eyes might notice Art sitting there beside her. Because he sat so close to Sybil. Maybe to assume that he was in love with her because of their proximity. Like a Rome-in-love. Eating sandwiches and sitting together in una piazza. Art sat there on the edge of the bench and his torso was curved forward, with one leg wrapped over his other knee. His own quiet arrangement like in statuary. Ossi di seppia, a book of poetry by Eugenio Montale, faced down across his thigh. Cuttlefish Bones. His left hand clutching an olive and goat cheese panino wrapped inside parchment paper as he thumbed through the P-section of his pocket dictionary with the other. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The EscapeBy The Sparrow Goddess QuailBellMagazine.com You cannot pack the world small enough to fit inside your car
but you can take your stories from every street, every bar and pack them nice and tight inside your head and flee from your cozy home, your warm bed and become a nomad until you find utopia until you see the whole planet as dystopia The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Swans and Ripples in PondsBy Kay Feathers QuailBellMagazine.com how blessed am i to spy not a solitary swan but a society
civilizing the city pond with confabulation of old families their strains of goodness and their fashionable histories eggs gone bad, yolks and shells smeared across the lawn not privy to their gossip, i can feel the sun on my eyelids thinking of peace and sleep and warmth as they gabble The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Ghost of Christmas Past See more of Christa's work here.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Concerning NatureBy Kelly McLeod QuailBellMagazine.com Iris, Ballpoint Pen, 2013 Kelly McLeod is an illustrator and graphic designer who graduated from VCUarts as a Communication Arts major in December 2012. She is fascinated by beauty found in biology and aims to capture the magic of curiosity and discovery in her naturalistic and surrealistic subjects. Kelly currently resides in Virginia and spends most of her free time daydreaming, blogging, and of course, drawing. Lovebirds, Ballpoint Pen, 2013 Violets are Blue, Ballpoint Pen, 2013
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Not a Poem Sponsored by TOMSBy Belle Byrd QuailBellMagazine.com “Boring.” “No arch or ankle support.” “Lacking definition.”
I had demonized UGGs and now I was demonizing TOMS. Grace Kelly would not slip on anything too comfortable. I had grown up idolizing the kinds of shoes ladies wear: Heeled, sleek, sure to make inexperienced calves wobble. Even in my Goth phase, I insisted on shoes with structure. So when I spotted a rack of TOMS knock-offs for 35 pesos a pair in San Juan de Dios, I sneered while they squealed. I can’t wear those with a ball gown or walk a mile in them, I said as I kicked the Mexican dust with my lace-up boots. Really, my annoyance should’ve centered on the counterfeits, how they were not supporting the One for One Movement. But a year and a half later, I bought knock-offs in Short Pump. |