October 2021 | visual art
v470 (Faux Spirits Series)
Joe Lugara
Joe Lugara took up photography and painting as a boy after his father discarded them as hobbies. His works depict odd forms and objects, inexplicable phenomena, and fantastic dreamscapes, taking as their basis horror and science fiction films produced from the 1930s through the late 1960s. He began creating digital photographs and digital paintings in the 2010s; they debuted in a 2018 solo exhibition at the Noyes Museum of Art in his home state of New Jersey. Mr. Lugara’s work has been featured in several publications and has appeared in more than 40 exhibitions in museums and galleries in the New York Metropolitan Area, including the New Jersey State Museum and 80 Washington Square East Galleries at New York University.
October 2021 | visual art
Life
Andromeda Mendoza
All her life, Andromeda has followed at the heels of her passions. Born in the Philippines, and growing up in modest means, she relied greatly on her imagination. Her creativity springs from a past spent climbing trees in the woods, riding in bamboo-made carts in the countryside, and roaming through bustling markets in the city. In 1989, her family emigrated to Houston, Texas where she cultivated her interest in writing and the arts. An ardent student of photography, illustration, and graphic design, she graduated from the Art Institute of Houston with a fine arts degree. Working as a graphic designer for corporate studios, she explored many creative avenues leading her to cement her love of photography where she embraces a great passion.
October 2021 | poetry
No bright fruit now seems to hang for us,
we who never really saw a garden
or tasted anything to draw us to
the spinning core inside all seeds
or dormant roots coiled in their depths.
No taut reins seem to move us now
with unbearable symmetry
vexed equilibrium, balancing
apples, oranges with flights of swifts,
all out of place, but looking artful at first.
And what of this still whispers
through our bones, multilingual, falsetto
off ancient tongues, naming things over again
under the shade of knives, belated
breath pulsed out from hearts of wind?
What use is there in speaking now
when nothing here is reconciled;
not trees or endless streams,
nor wild geese in circling flight,
with what’s beneath the frozen ground?
Roberta Senechal de la Roche
Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Professor Emerita at Washington and Lee University, is an historian, sociologist, and poet of Miꞌkmaq and French Canadian descent, born in western Maine. She now lives in the woods outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Colorado Review; Vallum; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Yemassee, and Cold Mountain Review, among others. She has two prize-winning chapbooks: Blind Flowers (Arcadia Press) and After Eden (Heartland Review Press, 2019). A third chapbook, Winter Light, and her first book, Going Fast (2019) are published by David Robert Books.
