Adele Lokker

“Having lived in South Africa for all 23 years of this life, I’ve had the privilege to witness the raw side of existence, as well as the polished and posh. Afrikaans from my father and British Zimbabwean from my mother – Cultural colours permeate the very air living in KwaZulu-Natal. Diversity, much like the bird and plant life, is our every-day reality. Inspired by the boundless beauty this continent holds alongside the blatant suffering, every-day is a creative experience involving the human condition.”

Kathy Curto

Kathy Curto teaches at The Writing Institute and Montclair State University. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood, published by Bordighera Press. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, in the essay collection, Listen to Your Mother:  What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now, and in Barrelhouse, La Voce di New York, Drift, Talking Writing, The Inquisitive Eater, Voices in Italian Americana, Ovunque Siamo and Lumina. She has been the recipient of the Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship, the Montclair State University Engaged Teaching Fellowship and also serves on the faculty of the Joe Papaleo Writers’ Workshop in Cetara, Italy. Kathy and her family live in the Hudson Valley.

www.kathycurto.com Instagram: @kathy.curto Facebook: Kathy Curto, Writer

Caroline Knickmeier

Caroline Knickmeier is an artist and writer exploring the interconnection of all life on the planet, the ability to rise despite suffering, and to find hope and beauty amid the mundane. She is artist in residence long distance during the pandemic with Pierella Rainforest Reclamation, raising funds to convert pasture to secondary growth. She’s completing her MFA and M.ARCH in San Francisco while running Gallery Gallery. She exhibits and earns publication regularly, and is dedicated to a life of choosing love.

Instagram: @sobraliacaroline, carolineknickmeier.com, gallerygallery.org

Image Description: This piece is a photograph of a magnolia stellata bloom facing the sun with brilliant blue sky background. It is a lone bloom, emerging from the unsuspecting soft brown bud fiercely growing. The bloom located on the left side of the piece. As she faces out her magenta stripes are revealed,
hidden on the underside of her soft pink petals

Sara Cahill Marron

Sara Cahill Marron, a relocated New York poet living in Washington D.C., is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018), Nothing You Build Here, Belongs Here (Kelsay Books 2021), and Call Me Spes (MadHat Press 2022), and is the Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Gravel, Atlas + Alice, Meniscus, Cordella, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunch Ticket, and other anthologies, available at www.saracahillmarron.com.

DeAnna Tibbs

DeAnna Tibbs is a photographer and writer living in Oakland, California where she grows a child, animals, and a garden. During her free time, she covets paper maps and suffers from altitude sickness.

Website: www.deannatibbs.com Instagram: @deannadtibbs

Image description: A close-up photo of scarlet runner beans with bright red blossoms climbing up a weathered wooden trellis against an external wall with peeling white paint.

Pampi) D

A 20+year newcomer-settler of Turtle Island, Pampi is a nonbinary second-genx casteD-Bengali culture worker who plays at the intersection of healing and popular education: in community they develop community-centered art that releases creative potential and drives change-making. They lean on the expressive arts to help message the shifts in thinking we must embrace to center liberation.

Instagram: @thirdeyefell

Image description: For part of the program, Neighborhood Grow Plan: Growing Food Secure Futures, now a program of REEP/ACE Grow or Die and the United Neighbors of Lower Roxbury (UNLR) Community Garden, we take the growing experience to neighbors through container gardening kits. This zine - one in a series - translated into Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Vietnamese - was designed to accompany the container gardening kits dedicated to neighbors who cannot tend raised beds on-site. The blank page in the zine supports young people and neighbors to track the progress particular seedlings #weareforests.

Here is the googledoc to the zine laid out pdf form.

Reign Serene

LA based artist and writer, Reign, began writing poetry at fifteen. After an injury brought her many years of technical ballet training to a halt, she began experimenting with different art forms including filmmaking, painting, and poetry. Following miscellaneous magazine appearances and a feature in Parallax Literary Journal, “Siren Spell” was picked up by the Eber & Wein Publishing House and published in the “Upon Arrival” anthology. Soon after, “Hanalei Honey” was published with the Thirty West Publishing Company. Reign self published her debut poetry book, ULTRASOUND, in May of 2020. More visual art and poetry can be found on her instagram @s3rene.

Image description: This photo collage combines three images of lush trees and vines growing in a Hawaiian graveyard on the Hamakua Coast. Beneath the canopy of green, crosses and tombstones mark the dead, some of which were buried as early as 1920, serving as a glaring reminder that we too, are one with, and will return to the Earth.

Amanda Riggenbach

Amanda Riggenbach is a senior at Bradley University. She is studying English and Psychology. The natural world around her and a healthy appreciation for the Midwest inform her artistic expressions. She works to portray the beauty of the small and often simple aspects of life. Portfolio here.

CHRIS TABASSI

Makeup & Wardrobe | Co-Star “Sylvia” in POETS ARE THE DESTROYERS

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas and raised throughout the US & Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Chris Tabassi is a New York based Beauty/SFX Make-up Artist and Dancer. Chris received his B.A. in Dance Teaching at Marymount Manhattan College. Chris then enrolled at the Makeup Designory and obtained his Master Make-up Artistry certification. With a passion rooted in movement, conceptual artistry, activism, and cosmic intricacies, Chris pulls eclectic inspirations from his blended Iranian and Venezuelan upbringing through the perspective of a queer gender neutral first generation American in the modern age. His ultimate mission is to combine his love for makeup and kinesiology to crIate high-end performance art.

NANCY POP

Director | Executive Producer for POETS ARE THE DESTROYERS.

Nancy Pop is a Romanian-American actress, writer, and filmmaker from Reghin, now residing in Brooklyn, New York. Pop graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a B.A. in Theatre Performance and Playwriting, and has trained with The Second City (Chicago), Berg Studios (Los Angeles), and Pacific Performance Project East. Recent projects include: Almost Maimed (co-producer, actress), The Molok (producer), and I Die Raging (actress). She curated the monthly “In Cold Read” series at Spoonbill Books for nearly two years, cultivating a space for writers and actors to practice their craft in a collaborative setting. POETS ARE THE DESTROYERS is her feature film directorial debut!

VIRGIL WILFRED

“I am a student from The Nilgiris, India. The nature has always intricate me towards photography and I am passionate about it. I hope that one day my picture reminds people of the beauty in nature.”

Instagram: _vivid_snapper

Lori Graham

Lori is an American living in Woodbridge, England with her partner, Natascha, 2 bonus kids, 2 cats and 3 chickens. Lori received her B.A. in English from the University of North Florida so that she could have an excuse to read literature and write about it, while earning a degree. Lori has worn many hats in her life, including writing for the local newspaper, teaching sign language to high school students, raising 3 kids and is currently working from home as a Student Success Associate for an online college.

Lori has had the following work published: “Last Month” in Poems on Global Lockdown and CoronaVirus (Poet’s Choice July 2020), “Out” and “Who Was She?” in Other Worldly Women Press, “Change is Coming” in XR-GLobal Creative XRcreative.org and “Salty Memories” in The Adriatic (Upcoming)

You can find Lori Graham on Instagram @lorikan and Twitter @WanderingPoetUK

Natascha Graham

Lori and Natascha run a literary journal called Tipping the Scales.

Bernice Mannie

Bernice Mannie artist, poet, philosopher and visual communicator from Johannesburg but currently residing in Nelspruit, South Africa. She describes herself as a hyper-romantic social ape that is passionate about the creation, discovery and dominance of the human condition.

She is part of the Design Indaba Emerging Creative Class of 2020 programmer. The young artist sees herself as living in the abstract wildlife of her existence and resists anything that dehumanises her melanin identity. The narrative of her work is inspired by the relationships she has with people and the intercultural dialogues which exists within these relationships. Mannie describes her work as incredibly mystical and purely focuses on the similarities of human nature.

Mannie is currently completing her Diploma in ICT and App Development at the University of Mpumalanga. Some of her projects include the digital series "YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR ART BACK", "IMPHEPHO" which are inspired by African masks, ancestral blood and black royalty. Her most celebrated project is 'Talk Like A Painting, a poetry book written by the young artist and self-published in April 2019.

Design Indaba Profile, Instagram: @xoa-mannie, & Artsthread.

Amazon Book
https://www.amazon.com/Talk-like-Painting-social-trilogy/dp/1093118938

Cynthia Yatchman

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist. As a former ceramicist and art teacher, she went back to school in 1991 to receive a B.F.A. in painting from the University of Washington. Since 1995 she has painted nearly full-time from her studio in Seattle. Her works are housed in numerous public and private collections and have been shown nationally in California, Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Oregon and Wyoming. She has exhibited extensively in the northwest, including shows at Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma Convention Center, and the Seattle Pacific Science Center. Cynthia Yatchman

Artist Statement - I work primarily with acrylic paint, papers, charcoal and canvas, a conventional vocabulary, for their familiar historical references. My work is often segmented into pieces: diptychs and triptychs, that are almost puzzlelike. They can often be arranged in different ways or each segment can stand alone as its own painting. My images contain many diverse layers of meaning from the universal to the specific and personal. I am frequently interested in creating a rich sensual surface and making layer upon layer of marks. My work is a reference to my experience of nature and at times it is informed by family life and.

Gary Green

Gary Green is a retired engineer, camera collector, and amateur photographer who currently resides in Lancaster, Ohio. Gary enjoys working in both film and digital media and his primary photographic interest is finding beauty in the forms of typically mundane subjects.

Lori Green

Lori Green studied creative writing across genre at the New School’s Riggio Program for Writing and Democracy. Her work has appeared in PANK, Silver Needle Press, 12th Street Journal, and Whitevines Review. This is the first time her visual art has been published. She lives, writes, and paints with her husband in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

You can find her on Instagram at @pribislavspencil and @sickjoans__pages60.

Image description: Pentaptych is a series of five images in one horizontal row, of the same woman alone in a room, in the style and mood of the stained glass windows from my childhood. From left to right, in the first painting, she is sitting on a chaise with her back to us; a tree is growing in the room. In the second, she's sitting facing us, legs crossed and arms folded; the tree is now behind several flat shapes that also hide her face. In the third, she has stood up and more trees have grown up all around her. She reaches up through them. In the fourth, she is lying down on the chaise; the tree has rooted in her back. In the fifth, she is cross legged on the chaise, holding the tree in her lap. The woman is always naked, her face always hidden. The chaise stays put and the trees are always growing, but the rest of the room transforms from painting to painting, with the doors, walls, and abstract shapes changing and rearranging, disappearing and reappearing. My name is Lori Green and I am the artist.

Tyler French

Tyler French (he/him/his) is a writer and organizer living in Washington, D.C. His first full-length book of poetry, He Told Me was published by Capturing Fire Press May 2019. He has writing in Assaracus, Beech Street Review, Bending Genres Journal, Impossible Archetype and The Quarry, Split This Rock’s Social Justice Poetry Database.

Instagram: @thfrench Website: tylerhfrench.com

Thomas Osatchoff

Thomas Osatchoff, together with family, is building a self-sustaining home near a waterfall. Recent poems have appeared in Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Barzakh Magazine, Cold Mountain Review, CutBank Literary Journal, Garfield Lake Review, Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, and elsewhere.

Ryan Schaufler

Ryan Schaufler lives in Milwaukee and received a BFA from California Institute of the Arts in Acting. He is a professional actor, special education teacher, theatre teacher, playwright, director, photographer, artist, and a father. His plays and poetry have been published in such journals as Southern Indiana Review, Rise Up Review, The New Verse News, and Clockhouse. His photography can be seen in Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Elizabeth Horan’s 2019 Chapbook Fem Box, Moonchild Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Riggwelter, The Perch, and Cream City Review among others.

Website: www.schauflerized.com, Twitter handle: @schauflerized

Image description: Butterfly Resting on Flower from Mackinac Island, Michigan.

Jessica Scirocco

Jessica Scirocco (American, b. May 9, 1997) was born in Ridgewood, NJ and
grew up in Hawthorne, NJ. She graduated with honors from William Paterson
University in Spring 2020, earning a BA in Art Studio with a minor in
Creative Writing. Jessica Scirocco is a writer, painter, and designer whose work is playful, lush and intricate. She can find a story in simple acts like cleaning
dishes, going for a walk in the forest and picking flowers. She believes
finding beauty in peculiar things is where everyday magic can occur. She
has been published in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Plants & Poetry Journal,
Ariel Publishing LLC and Eclectica Magazine.

Instagram: @jessica_scirocco

Samantha Terrell

Samantha Terrell is an internationally-published American poet. Educated in Sociology, much of her poetry emphasizes social justice and emotional integrity. Her work has been included in an array of publications, such as:  Algebra of Owls, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dissident Voice, Dove Tales by Writing for Peace, the Ebola chapbook (West Chester University, PA), Knot Magazine, Literary Orphans, Lucky Jefferson, Peeking Cat Poetry, Poetry Quarterly and many others. Samantha and her family reside in Upstate New York, where they enjoy kayaking on still waters.

Balakrishnan V S

“I am Balakrishnan writing from Tamil Nadu, India. I am 29 years old. I have earned my BA in English Literature, and I am currently working in a bank as a clerk. I am fond of writing poems right from my school days and I write in both English and my mother tongue Tamil in which I am currently working on a book, my very first. My works have appeared in Pif Magazine, Better than Starbucks Magazine, and Dissident Voice. My poem 'Behind the Mask of Civilization' has been shortlisted for publication in Castello Duino Poesia (Young Writers' Poetry Collection). Besides writing, I am also interested in gardening and painting as well.”

C.B. Crenshaw

C.B. Crenshaw is an artist and writer in Tallahassee, Florida.

He can be found at: http://www.cbcrenshaw.com, on Instagram @cbcrens, or on Twitter @cbcrenshaw.

Image description: A composite image depicting a pink rose in three stages of life, arrayed vertically against a blurred, dark background. The flower is in full bloom at the top of the image, drooping in the middle, and decaying at the bottom.

Darcy McConnell

Darcy McConnell is a grad student, writer, and activist. She grew up in Maryland, D.C., and upstate New York. Besides her beautiful family, friends, dog, etc., she loves wild spaces, small farms and gardens, good reads, running (slowly), cooking and making people pretend to like it, bad action movies, old comic books, picking fruit, animals with expressive faces, Instagrammers who use the word “nourish” with total sincerity, other people’s selfies, cheese with every meal. She holds especial energy/space in her life/work/heart/bookshelf for the food justice movement; the reproductive justice movement; protection of the commons; and the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

Feel free to email her at dmcmwrites@gmail.com.

Katie Hamblen

Katie Hamblen is a writing instructor and M.F.A. candidate studying poetry at Western Kentucky University. These days she works from home in Nashville, where she lives with her husband, four-year-old twins, two dogs, and indoor herb garden.

Instagram: @katiekatec 

Kelly Hegi

Kelly Hegi is a new writer currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband, three kids and two dogs. She is a licensed minister, an active Spiritual Director and writes to explore everyday life from a more creative lens. She has just begun to get published and is still stunned every time it happens. F

Facebook link: facebook.com/kellyhegidirectorpoet

Kira Preneta

Kira Preneta currently resides in the suburban/rural wilds of the North American Rust Belt, just south of Lake Erie. Born just west of gichi-gami (Lake Superior), Kira feels most at home near big water. As an artist her practices include reading voraciously the poetry of BIPOC Writers, interpreting the tarot for herself and others through poetry and collage, planting and tending to gardens as a way to re- connect to the land, and radical rest. Her writing is often referred to as a gift, a gift she is happy to give and receive. Find her building artist lead community with her 3 of Cups Patreon page. There she shares her own poetry, collage and knowledge of the tarot. As a mother to 4 children, claiming time for her voice to meet the page is a lesson in inhabiting liminal space and time.

Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson lives with her family by a waterfall in northwest Connecticut. Her garden is wild and wonderful but also a source of eternal inspiration. She often needs to abandon pruning shears for the sake of pen and notebook. . . leaving her little time for weeding.

Frederick Livingston

Frederick Livingston plants seeds. Grounded in regenerative agriculture and experiential education, he hopes to grow community, peace, avocados and mangoes. "Frederick Q Livingston" on Facebook

JEN WERBITSKY

JEN WERBITSKY is a New York City-based writer who was born in Manhattan and raised in a rural area south of Buffalo, NY. She is currently working to bridge the gaps between rural and urban communities through agricultural regeneration in the U.S. During her time at Cornell University, she studied creative writing and French and spent time as a translator in Paris.

Image description: Headline Compost shows new bean sprouts poking through a layer of compost made of dead leaves and a yellowed newspaper with the headline "THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC" just visible below a fringe of bright green grass.

M. Wilder

M. Wilder is a youth librarian whose words may be found in Glass Poetry, Rogue Agent, Surj, School Library Journal, and more. Kept Promise Grace Eater, M’s microchap, is available through Ghost City Press. An editor of Stay Journal, M has also served on editorial staffs for New Letters and Elementia. You can find M on Instagram and Neutral Spaces.

Stay: http://www.stayjournal.org/
Instagram: @hereistheend
Neutral Spaces: https://neutralspaces.co/mwilder/

Alexandra Weiss

Alexandra Weiss is a grad student researching how literature discusses science, illness and mortality. She loves Halloween and strong coffee. Her work has previously appeared in Cadaverine, Haggard and Halloo, Wildfire, Working Document, Another Chicago Magazine and Black Heart Magazine.

Instagram: @nephronomicon

Amber Pierson

“Writing isn’t only a creative release for me, but also a challenge to see what new ways I can twist words and rewrite emotions.”

Social media: Tumblr.com/foreverfoldedinfantasy

Ruth McArthur

Ruth is a recent transplant to Boston. Until two weeks ago, she lived with her husband and two dogs on acreage in the Texas Hill Country. The property is under a wildlife management designation, so they spent time birding, managing invasive and exotic plants and animals and watching the creek. She is eager to see what roots she puts down in New England. In addition to Persistence, a book of poems about women in her family, Ruth’s work has appeared in Ocotillo Review, Voices de la Luna, Underwood Press, Blue Heron Review, deceleration.news and Through Layered Limestone: A Texas Hill Country Anthology of Place. She writes about family and observations of the natural world.

See more at www.ruthmcarthur.com.

Margaret Wiss

Margaret Wiss is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar. Her work seeks to be shaped by each environment and the individuals who contribute to its development. She values the vitality of collaboration. She has an MFA in Dance from New York University's Tisch School for the Arts.

She believes dance is a reflection of the fluid collaboration of interpersonal and site-specific dynamics; these interfaces can be shaped, transformed, and taught in many different ways. Technology’s role in dance education and choreographic documentation excites her; it has allowed for expansion and transdisciplinary integration of the field.

www.margaretwiss.com
Instagram: @wiss.co

Gabrielle Pascal

Gabrielle Pascal was born in Brooklyn, NY. She is a nineteen-year-old writer studying at Hofstra University. Her family is from Haiti and she lives with her brother and parents.
Alongside her writing, she also pursues photography and loves film. In her recent writing, she has been exploring themes of morality, faith, identity and death. She has also been published previously in Youth Communications and Study Breaks Magazine.

Instagram: @gabs__ 

Cara Morgan

Cara Morgan is a University of Maine graduate with a degree in Critical Writing, and a UMaine Poetry Slam champion. Her research appears in the spring 2019 issue of the Queen City Writers online journal. Her creative works appear in volumes VI and VII of The Open Field literary magazine and the upcoming collection “Dark Forest” by Flying Ketchup Press. Her poems confront chronic illness and trauma, and the journey to forgiving them.

Cecilia Erin Walsh

Cecilia Erin Walsh is one of many grandchildren descended from gold rush pioneers in Nome, Alaska. She grew up viewing the out-of-doors as an extension of home, and still spends as much time as possible in the elements. One of ten children she found it easier to express herself on paper than in speech as no one could interrupt or talk over her. Cecilia’s writing is an on-going effort to listen and give voice to what surprises and intrigues, to sensation,  observation and impulse, to joy, concern, and imagination. Having retired  after over 40 years of service in Early Childhood Development and Social Work, she hopes her words may also be of service to others. She lives with her husband of 38 years in Seattle, Washington, where they raised their daughter. Cecilia loves their house which is surrounded by  vegetation and animal activity on all sides. Her poetry and short essays have  appeared in local periodicals, and she has self-published a collection of poems, Rivers and Gems (2017, by Court Street Press).

She can be reached at cewalsh@drizzle.com.

Justin Byrne

Justin Byrne is an elementary student teacher who has a strong passion for writing poetry. He currently resides in Middle Tennessee and is an aspiring poet who writes as often as he can. When he isn’t writing or teaching, Justin is spending time with family or reading books.

Justin can be found on Twitter @JustinRByrne and reached through email at justinbyrnemusic@gmail.com. Paypal: www.paypal.me/JustinRByrne

Reed Novotny

ARTIST

I am a conceptual artist and use the visual medium to help explain the world to myself and others. I specialize in undogmatic reality which is a term I came up with to inspire a non-bias observer. I have a very eclectic style which is inspired by my very eclectic life. I work in a variety of mediums including oil, acrylic, watercolor, charcoal and ink.

The vision for each piece determines which style, medium and surface will best convey the subject matter. My body of work is interdisciplinary, with inspiration being diversely derived from music, history, personal experience, and the general state of the world. I believe art can't be limited to any one style as it needs to breathe and grow like a living organism. I enjoy starting with a blank slate and manipulating the medium to release moments frozen in time like a single frame snapshot of a story. Whether a still life, landscape, or abstract my renderings invite the viewer to join in on that story. My goal is not to make photographic type paintings of subject matter, but, rather, to release a poem from the ether onto the canvas, conveying the absolute beauty and brutality of reality, sometimes within the same work. I invite you into my world in hopes that it will stir your emotions and enrich your life.

https://twitter.com/ArtbyReed
Instagram: artisticconjurations
https://reed-novotny.pixels.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ArtisticConjurations

Cindy Phan

Cindy Phan is an ice skater, inline skater, and outdoor adventurer. She prides herself in being that one friend you’ll never get bored around, as she's full of ideas, and always tries to get people out of their comfort zone. Photography, horror, heavy metal, wine, and animals are a few of Cindy's interests, which are ever-expanding because she literally aspires to do everything. Cindy's only fears in life are losing the people she loves, and leaving this world without satisfying all her curiosities.

Cindy Phan Artist Statement:

Iris flowers captured on Nikon D5500 digital SLR with 18-55 lens. Flowers were captured at Bellevue Botanical Garden in Washington state during springtime. Natural lighting was used and very minimal editing was done.

Carla Schick

Carla Schick, a Queer transformative justice activist, primarily works with poetry and prose poetry. They enjoy writing from artwork and photos, and therefore, decided to start working with photos. This is the first photo they have had published. Written work has been published in Milvia St., Sinister Wisdom, Earth's Daughters, SF City College's Forum Literary Journal, and The Write Launch.

Image description: The photo is of a garden from the side of the house onto a patio. In the background are very green trees and bushes. In the foreground, there is a yellow rose bush. Directly in front of the camera is a purple flowering plant in a white planter. To the left (and front) of the camera's view is a small palm tree growing in a planter. A chair can be seen on the patio.

Jennifer Weigel

Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, video and writing. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique. Weigel’s art has been exhibited nationally in all 50 states and has won numerous awards.

Photography Artist’s Statement: I have always photographed things that catch my eye, especially the more mundane or overlooked those things might be. I am particularly drawn to views of nature, sky & ground and abstracted details of objects found in urban settings.

Image description: This image depicts a hardy sedum-like plant growing out of a hole in a stone wall, as photographed in Rockport, MA.

Jasmine Shek

Jasmine is a senior at an international school in Hong Kong. Photography has been a hobby since she was 9 years old, and she enjoys capturing and sharing stories through her lens. Jasmine is an aspiring architect, wildlife conservationist and environmental engineer. Her works have been published in multiple literary magazines, journals and local newspapers.

Image description: This photograph is about being in touch with nature, and was captured on a balcony garden in the city, featuring a girl’s hands feeling the textures and patterns on the leaves. Especially with everything going on right now, we tend to forget to just stop for a second to admire and appreciate our surroundings. Often, we just need a reminder of how spectacular the world we live in truly is, and how lucky we are to be able to call it home.

Gaby Bedetti

Gaby Bedetti’s essays, photos, poems, and translations have appeared in New Literary History, Still, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Front Porch Review, and Asymptote. Other works are forthcoming in Brooklyn Rail, Ezra, and Rhino. https://gabriellabedetti.wordpress.com/.

Image description: “Pets Wanting to Break Out of the House,” Frost on grass in mid-April, Lexington, KY.

Emilia Leon Luis

Interior designer, Professor and occasional writer.

It´s true. I studied interior design thinking that that was it for me. As true as you can consider anything at all to be truthful enough to be taken for sure. I thought design would always be the only way for me to fulfill any expectation that I had in regards of my professional path. But “little did I know”, a phrase expressed one too many times by other that somehow fits very well to describe the ´limbo´ I was getting into those years after college. Graduated and with a title that only read “Interior design”, I got a job at an International Company dedicated to promote educational programs abroad. This lasted one and a half year. Lost and found, I felt just like that when my own Design School offered me a position as the History Design Professor for their interior design students. An opportunity that I didn´t dare to miss, as they always come once in a lifetime and this one was giving me the chance to reconnect with my career. Yes, I admit it, I have always felt this passionate about design and all things artistically beautiful, ready to express it all in the finest of ways. And that´s when ´LA LÍNEA SEGMENTADA´ presented to me as a whole concept. A phrase that was wrongly written by one of my students on an AutoCAD exercise. I was unable to let it pass until it transformed itself into this firm that offers Online Design Courses, Advisor ship for Design Projects and Creative Content. The writing came later, at the same time I realized it was always there, setting the right words for an email, encouraging one of my many students, noticing and sometimes over analyzing every bit of reality we live, day by day. I realized how much I enjoy a good story. And how this ´occasional writing´ was allowing me to express how I feel about all things, about the things that I love about art, design and everyday life. Email: LaLineaSegmentada@hotmail.com Instagram: @LaLineaSegmentada

Philippe Cailloux

Making the ordinary extraordinary. I´m a fine art photographer and designer. It´s in my nature to play with images as well as words. Quirky twists, unexpected outcomes and seductive treacheries are all part of my art. My favorite subjects are some of the most generic and banal elements of our everyday surroundings and lives, especially those we get the most accustomed to, the ones we don´t see or register on anymore because we take them so for granted. Like a teacup, gas flap, the building next-door, an omelet or scraps from the trash. They´re just there and that´s that. The truth is that there is much more to them. They are, without exception, living visual canvases. I know this because I observe them, all the time, everywhere and patiently, waiting for them to reveal themselves with furtive glamour and visual form, colorful palettes, expressive shapes and engaging textures. Lying in wait, I capture those special moments when hit by a rich ray of light, blow gently in the wind or respond to certain climatological conditions. That´s when I grab my camera, that´s when I have the best chance to catch unique designs, dramatic shadows or never-see before curves. They pause for brief instants, thereby allowing me to witness and celebrate the ironies of peekaboo moments.

***

Philippe Cailloux is a French-American designer. After graduating from ENSCI, a world-leading design Institute based in Paris, Philippe moved to California where he lives with his family since 1996. During his career both as Adobe System´s first Principal Designer and head of design for several digital media companies, Philippe has always had his hands in some form of digital media technology. But it´s only in 2005 that Philippe started his personal artistic journey. After joining the Palo Alto Camera Club, Philippe embarked in a visual exploration of our everyday world which he likes to reframe. He enjoys creating colorful abstracts, minimalist compositions and other intriguing montages. Email: Philippe@cailloux.org Instagram: @PhilippeCaillouxArt www.philippecailloux.com Email: LaLineaSegmentada@hotmail.com Instagram: @LaLineaSegmentada