FALL 2023
FICTION
Melissa Darcey Hall, The Body Is a Hungry Beast
Allegra Solomon, True Blue
Sean Towey, Gloom of Night
POETRY
Sean Cho A., & Then #22
Derrick Austin, Drag Daughter’s Song & The Art Restorer
Amy Bagwell, any children?
Cory Carlson, Watch
Erin Carlyle, Black Peaches
Adriana Rambay Fernández, Entre Azul
Justin Groppuso-Cook, Waawiyaatanong: Sacrit City Where Curved Shores Meet
Mitchell Jacobs, My Own Private New Hampshire
Sue Fagalde Lick, Father and Mother Tongue
Jacob Sheetz-Willard, Curriculum Vitae
Jeff Whitney, “Give Him His Glasses, He Can’t See Without His Glasses”
ESSAYS
Jody Keisner, Surprise! You’re Adopted
Graham Marema, Songwood
Charlotte Stevenson, The Molt
REVIEWS
Anna Chotlos reviews Holy American Burnout! by Sean Enfield
James Davis reviews Echo and Critique: Poetry and the Clichés of Public Speech by Florian Gargaillo
Dan DeVaughn reviews Muscadine by A. H. Jerriod Avant
Colleen Mayo reviews The Sorrow of Others by Ada Zhang
Chris Lael Larson is a Portland-based artist working in the overlap of photography, assemblage, and painting to create new perceptual experiences. He culls riches from the everyday absurd, fore-fronting the strange, ridiculous, and confounding the ways we connect, the things we consume, and the environments we inhabit. Larson constructs temporary altar-like assemblages for the camera utilizing found objects, reclaimed materials, natural elements, cheaply printed photographs, and paint to accentuate their latent qualities and reframe their meaning. He contrasts low-value materials and unrefined mark-making with a hyperreal lighting technique to create a final image that confounds expectations.
Artist’s Statement: In the series Still Life With Discarded Painting, I transform discarded paintings into still-life photographs that build upon the original creative idea of painting—taking an abandoned impulse, and giving it new life, meaning, and value.
First, I reclaim and interpret a discarded painting and then gather and alter additional found objects that build on the formal and conceptual ideas in the painting. Next, I construct an assemblage from the painting and found objects that is, finally, photographed.
All images from the top and bottom galleries are 20″ x 30″ archival inkjet prints, made in 2023.
Top Gallery (Left to Right): Still Life with Discarded Painting 7799, Still Life with Discarded Painting 9392, Still Life with Discarded Painting 8845
Bottom Gallery (Left to Right): Still Life with Discarded Painting 1798, Still Life with Discarded Painting 8082, Still Life with Discarded Painting 8337, Still Life with Discarded Painting 9068, Still Life with Discarded Painting 1357, Still Life with Discarded Painting 8565, Still Life with Discarded Painting 6309