SkyOceanBirds is in the tradition of surrealism which appreciates idiosyncrasy, juxtaposition and contradiction. Surrealism challenges the boundaries between the normal and the fantastical, promotes the unexpected combining of found objects, and embraces dreamscapes and imagery emerging from the subconscious. Linda Briskin is a fine art photographer who lives in Toronto and Palm Springs (CA). She has ever-shifting photographic enthusiasms, what she calls photoglossia: the juxtaposition of objects and reflections; the ambiguities in what we choose to see; and the permeability between the remembered and the imagined. Photocollage constructs unique and painterly images layered with nuance and narrative which both embrace and displace the original images. Her focus is often on inventing images rather than capturing them, an approach that is fictive rather than representational. In 2018, Briskin was selected for The New Feminist Gaze at Simeon Den Gallery in California. Her photograph Motorcycle Women was published in Best of Photography 2018 by Photographers Forum. Three photographs from her series aqua botanica are forthcoming in Tiny Seed Literary Journal (2019). Recently in Toronto, she had a solo show at Helen & Hildegard Apothecary as part of the Junction Contact Festival and a window installation at Rapp Optical. She has also participated in several group shows including Spectra at Gallery 1313 during the 2019 Contact Photography Festival. Upcoming is Luminous, a group show of ten women photographers at the Heliconian Club in Toronto.
Kathy McConnell is a writer and photographer who lives in the woods of Washington state. Much of her photography for almost thirty years was documenting the play of children, but since moving to a cabin some miles from town, her primary subjects are found along back roads and in nature. Following the death of her husband in 2011, she traveled for seven months, honing the skills of a good eye and writing a blog. Her work on a manuscript, whose topic was mapping grief, earned her a writer’s residency in the San Juan Islands. The manuscript was shortlisted in the 2017 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Contest. Kathy lives with her border terrier Lizzie, writes a guest newspaper column inspired by her photos, and in winters like this one, shovels snow.
Greg Headley is an artist, photographer, and writer in Austin, Texas. His artwork and photography explore where intention and randomness intersect and the ways that chance can influence and even change the course of the work.
Catherine Roberts Leach was born in New York City and lived and worked in Los Angeles before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her fine art photography has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in galleries across the United States from New York, D.C. and New Jersey, to Georgia, Virginia, and Texas, to California, Oregon, and New Mexico. Her work has been juried into competitions by such art notables as Chris Burden and Ruth Weisberg. Images by Ms. Leach have also been published in numerous print and online publications, including, at the request of Yoko Ono, on the cover page of her website, imaginepeace.com. A self-taught artist, Ms. Leach focuses on seeing improbable combinations that others may miss. She captures unusual surfaces, light and shadow, wet and textured surfaces, and the juxtapositions of nature and the built environments. Her photographs are digitally captured, but the content is never manipulated. She appreciates most the times when her images look created, but are, in fact, the complete truth.
After 30+ years of teaching in colleges, universities, military bases, and prisons from Alaska to Louisiana, Dave Sims retired to the mountains of central Pennsylvania where he now dwells and creates. His most recent comix appear in The Nashville Review, Talking Writing, and Freeze Ray, and panels from his digital painting sequence “Somewhere Around the Edges,” appear on the cover and in the Winter 2019 issue of The Raw Art Review. He can be contacted on Instagram at tincansims.
Will’s other work appears in Look-Look Magazine, Faultline Journal of the Arts and Literature, The Santa Clara Review, The Bicycle Review, Forge Journal, and the Avatar Review. He was a top ten finalist for the 2009 Wordstock competition. He’s adjunct faculty at Norfolk State University, teaching intro composition. He also does stagehand work at the NorVa in Norfolk, VA and enjoyed summers at writers residencies in Lisbon, Iceland, Quebec, Turkey, Costa Rica, and Morocco.
Featuring: Double-Issue 91, published July 2019, features works of poetry, flash fiction, short nonfiction, and photography by Mary Ade, Sookoon Ang, Mark Belair, Julie Benesh, Darrell Urban Black, Charlie Brice, Linda Briskin, Krikor Der Hohannesian, Melissa Fast, Alice B Fogel, James Garrison, Diane Gottlieb, Gillian Haines, Penny Jackson, Steven John, Janet Joyner, Hooman Khoshnood, Kim Kolarich, James Ph. Kotsybar, Jes C. Kuhn, William Lanford, Susanna Lang, Anthony Lawrence, Susan L. Leary, Paul Lieber, Sam Love, Marianne Lyon, Sheree La Puma, David Magill, DS Maolalai, Martha Nance, Harold Olejarz, Alifah Omar, Charlotte M. Porter, Andy Posner, Michele Reese, Niku Rice, Brenda Serpick, Marian Kaplun Shapiro, Jupp Soetebier, Glen Sorestad, Nick Sweeney, Ann Christine Tabaka, Cedric van Eenoo, Kristin Van Tassel, and Sally Zakariya.
