The artists and writers selected as ArtAscent Gold from ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal issues.

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2025 Resolutions call for artists.

Nastya Akimova

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2025 Resolutions call for artists.

Actions transform into photographs, intertwining gestures, images, and words. Nastya Akimova’s art is both raw and powerful. It represents a process of resolutions that resembles survival, extending beyond the “here and now” to become daily practice. 

Actions transform into photographs, intertwining gestures, images, and words. Nastya Akimova’s art is both raw and powerful. It represents a process of resolution that resembles survival, extending beyond the “here and now” to become a daily practice.

Polaroids, digital prints on office paper, and marker texts are the privileged medium through which Nastya tells of a moment of personal collapse. Stability trembles, and her works document this state of impermanence. Like a triptych, the three selected artworks outline the emotional pain embodied in the physical one. They show the verbose uncertainty of intertwining possibilities, creating a mental fog. They represent a scrawled statement drawn in one go on a plastic bag. Nastya’s works are urgent confessions rather than explicit requests for help. They are personal stories that are not confined to individualism. Her art practice is intimate but not individualistic. It speaks to the public by resonating with shared experiences, arousing empathy, and creating a bond. We’ve all felt bleeding, confused, and scared at least once, wishing to see ourselves reflected and held in another human being.

Fragility and distress can also be perceived at a tactile level. The techniques and choice of precarious materials echo the issue of impermanence: wrinkled paper, smudged ink, plastic packaging, handwritten text on paper, and collaged debris mirror the rebuilding process, blurring the line between tactile artifact and fragmented memory.

The artist’s mixed media works reject the resolution narrative as a final goal, the successful end of a struggle; instead, they counterpose the concept of healing as a process to be integrated into everyday life. Resolution is never something concluded in Nastya’s art. It is experienced in everyday life, in our choices with our bodies, emotional states, and actions. There is no completion: only a collage of debris and scattered words which compose a larger and more complex picture.

Nastya’s artistic production follows the path of other great diaristic and confessional female artists, who have made their biography and ability to investigate personal emotional states their stylistic signature. Like Nan Goldin, Nastya’s polaroids are immediate; they share unpolished situations with the public. The bloody faces of Gina Pane and Ana Mendieta also echo in some images. In common with these great names of the art scene, Nastya’s works are also brutal in their truthfulness and tactile immediacy.

Nastya Akimova’s exploration of trauma and its disruptive effect on the perception of identity makes her a promising artist and interpreter of our times. Emerging from the grassroots photographic community in Moscow, she founded the art collective Paduga and organized independent exhibitions in Russia and Serbia. Her unrefined sharing of personal moments reminds us of the unresolved nature of healing. Resolution is not tidied up but a question traced with a black permanent marker on a transparent, ephemeral surface.

Nastya Akimova is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Resolutions call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the 2025 ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Resolutions issue.

http://akimovanenastya.com

Gold Artist of the 2025 Figures call for artists.

Olivia Patricia O’Neal

Gold Artist of the 2025 Figures call for artists.

Olivia-Patricia O’Neal straightforwardly shares her observations on canvas, but just like the first black-and-white films, her paintings don’t seem still. They speak and start a simple conversation about life with you.

Olivia-Patricia’s images portray everyday situations or evoke powerful mythology. These paintings exist in other dimensions—half in reflection, in the memories of the old days, and the other half in the powerful family dynamics. In every moment and figure, a wise old soul can share its knowledge and revelation, letting its audience explore their fantasies and encouraging them to process life’s happenings.

These paintings are not mirrors but rather conversation pieces at a party, directing the chatter and small talk into dialogues about the true nature of human beings. They encourage connection, drawing you in with their raw authenticity, where the lines between observation and emotion blur. The work doesn’t shy away from life’s complexities; instead, it gently invites viewers to engage, ask questions, and consider what art reveals about themselves. Doing so creates a subtle but powerful impact on how we perceive and relate to the world around us.

Olivia-Patricia’s work is rooted in the human experience and never stops shifting and rediscovering new voices. Each piece she creates is like an open-ended conversation, where the viewer is invited to participate in making sense of the world through what they see.

There’s a vulnerability in her subjects, a quiet energy that feels close but distant enough to leave room for time and reflection. The viewer gets a personal tour of the mysteries of everyday life and routines.

Olivia-Patricia’s work shares the intelligence and emotional power expressed in the drawings of Kathe Kollwitz. One can see the earnestness and interpersonal connection both artists convey and produce with their unique way of observing human figures—figures inspired by the roughness of stone and the softness of a carefully placed brushstroke.

Olivia-Patricia O’Neal, originally from Tennessee and raised in Nashville, earned her Master’s degree from the New York Academy of Art. She travelled to Italy, where she deepened her expertise in sculpture at the Cooperativa in Pietrasanta. Over the course of her career, Olivia-Patricia has exhibited her work in 14 solo shows and 27 group exhibitions, with her pieces represented in international galleries. She has worked in studios in the United States, France, and Mexico. A selection of her work is housed at Château St. Philippe, where she maintains a studio for part of the year.

Olivia Patricia O’Neal is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Figures call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the 2025 ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Figures issue.

pterrelloneal.com

Photo retouching by Kelly O’Neal for accurate artwork representation.

Gold Writer of the 2025 Figures call for artists.

Iraida

Mythodesign

He moved to a different country.
I have a new passionate boyfriend.
The other one.
Not for the first time…

Iraida’s ways of writing capture the simplicity of life in the entangled means of living, encouraging readers to follow their own lead and inspiration to walk through life with a swing in each step.

Iraida’s text flows like a soft stream next to a powerful mountain, considerate of each turn yet free of any rules. The writing lets the reader be part of an intimate moment, shared in the vacuum of time, like a memory that unfolds and merges with the reader’s personal experiences. With its lucid and watery sensations, the poem provides an atmosphere ranging from a rainy day in front of the fireplace to a busy date in the city centre. This kind of writing changes with every read, depending on the time and space the reader can provide. The lucid imagery and careful attention to detail give the text a tactile quality, as though readers could touch and feel the figures of writing on the page.

Inspired by various art forms—songwriting, classic and modern paintings, as well as filmmaking—Iraida brings a distinct voice to their writing. Filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, with his lifelike and patience-testing moving images, appear unmistakable in this text. His work lingers, like Iraida’s, inviting reflection and holding a silence that stirs thought. Both create a space where a pause is welcomed, allowing the audience to halt, notice, and carry on.

Iraida’s work holds this kind of presence, where simplicity meets complexity and silence is the source of creativity. There are countless encounters and stories in Iraida’s writing—humans who cross paths and part ways, ancient figures travelling between the airy skies and the earthy depths of hell. The travellers in these stories create their own passing of time, their presence gently floating downstream like leaves in a wild river. These stories unfold without judgment or preference, leaving space for the reader to interpret and connect with their own life stories. Iraida’s ability to combine a range of inspirations and influences makes their writing resonate deeply. The atmosphere shifts fluidly and evokes sensations that are interpersonal.

Iraida writes poems and prose, humbly calling them “just texts.” Beyond their creative practice, Iraida works as a university lecturer in literary studies and semiotics. They also lead extracurricular creative writing groups, encouraging young voices to find their own forms of expression.

For Iraida, art and human connection are inseparable. Their belief in the unique ability of every individual to inspire—even in the smallest of ways—permeates their artful writing and teaching.

Iraida is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Figures call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the 2025 ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Figures issue.

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Abstract call for artists.

Dina Torrans

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Abstract call for artists.

Flower compositions are not just about beauty, colours and technical virtuosity. For artists like Dina Torrans, the subject of flowers becomes an investigation into the natural world and its priceless interconnections.

Dina’s floral sculptures look like precious jewellery. Refined to the minute details and characterized by the combination of varied materials, they appear like a precious gift donated by nature. However, the approach of the mixed-media artist is more than just about aesthetic charm. Thanks to their harmonious shapes and proportions, flowers are a source of inspiration, but they also trigger a reflection about their importance in the ecosystem.

For Dina, the observation phase is always a powerful and rewarding experience. She focuses on the design and proportions of flowers and searches for anthropomorphic features.

The sculptures in Dina’s flower series have beautiful and frail connotations but reveal a form of vague melancholy. They are flowers of beautiful gardens but also embody the idea of feeling fragile and trapped in the world of the imagination, distant from tangible reality.

From a technical point of view, Dina’s artistic practice can translate microscopic nature into sculptural form. The artist skillfully combines traditional and contemporary sculptural techniques, using waxes and then casting in bronze or silver through the lost wax process. The lost wax casting, already used in Greek and Roman Art and became famous at the height of the Renaissance, allows for a complete adherence to the natural object, creating a wax expendable model. Using this method, Dina captures fine details of the flower in metal. To this magic, the artist adds a purely human imprint: porcelain, bones, and found objects embellish the sculptural flower, playing with nature and its idea of it.

The references in Dina’s floral series are multiple and interdisciplinary, integrating art and botany, sculpture and natural sciences: from the organic moulds of sculptors such as Henry Moore, capable of synthesizing nature into abstract 20th-century forms, to the millimetre-perfect observation of all naturalists-illustrators, like Ernst Haeckel or the pioneering female entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian. With these names, Dina shares methodic observation and the ability to absorb nature’s infinite and diverse forms.

Dina Torrans has been working as a sculptor and multi-media artist in Toronto for over twenty-five years. Graduated with honours from the Art Centre of Central Technical School, she subsequently worked as an instructor in the Sculpture and Printmaking departments and as a Visiting Artist at numerous workshops and seminars in other academic institutions. Her award-winning artworks have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. They are included in many private and public collections, such as the Canadian Sculpture Centre in Toronto, the Fire Arts in Vermont and the Earth House Hold Studios in California. Dina’s artistic research into the natural and human world reveals an attentive, sensitive eye capable of revealing invisible interconnections to be explored with a magnifying glass.

Dina Torrans is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Floral call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Floral issue.

www.dinatorrans.art

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Abstract call for artists.

Dina Torrans

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Abstract call for artists.

Soft colour fields contrasting with a bright and flashy frame, found objects and elements masterfully placed on the canvas. Dina Torrans’ artworks appear more like constellations than random combinations, playing with textures and weights of different materials.

The artist Dina escapes the traditional two-dimensionality of the canvas; her three-dimensional works on paper are somewhere between painting and sculpture. They are hybrid works, which appear vital precisely because of their mixed nature.

Looking at her works is like looking through the lens of a microscope and discovering an imaginary realm, a miniature ecosystem governed by fantastic laws. Dina collects found objects: torn maps or pieces of sheets, raw elements and stones, feathers and copper, and then finds an artistic collocation for them. Her skilful craftsmanship work becomes a creative process of selection and match in search of a personal balance. Dina’s artistic series comes to life during her combinatory gesture. None of those objects would make sense taken individually. The artist is inspired by the ultimate interconnectedness that characterizes our planet: the total is much more than the sum of its parts.

Dina’s approach is abstract and organic. It feeds on a more intuitive and free-flowing dialogue with materials and then integrates with a detail-oriented approach. The spontaneity mixed with compositional logic makes her creative process so magical.

From a technical point of view, Dina is also a skilled combiner. She masterfully mixes painting, often done en plein air in places like India, Mexico, and Canada, with the sculptural aspect added once back in her studio. The mixed environment—inspiration from outside and reflection carried out in the studio—is fuel for creativity.

Dina Torrans’ artistic practice is set in a varied scenario of art references. Her skilful use of found, even insignificant, elements is reminiscent of the bottle-top installations of the famous Ghanaian artist El Anatsui or the famous found objects tables of Daniel Spoerri or Arman. Her colourful and sophisticated combination are dynamic and lightweight, like a hanging Calder.

Dina’s abstraction transcends mere painting and enters the domain of installation art. Working in Toronto for over twenty-five years as an artist and as an instructor in the Sculpture and Printmaking departments of the Art Centre of Central Technical School, her artistic career is widely renowned. Her works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. They are included in private and public collections, such as the Canadian Sculpture Centre in Toronto. They have also won recent international awards, like the Leonardo Prize in Milan and the Michelangelo Prize in Rome. She also represented Canada in the Sculpture Prize in Florence in 2022. Dina Torrans’ three-dimensional works on paper are internationally appreciated and recognized for their multimedia approach and ability to balance nature and artifice, abstraction and logic.

Dina Torrans is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Abstract call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Abstract issue.

www.DinaTorrans.art

Karla Linn Merrifield—ArtAscent Gold Writer of the 2024 Abstract call for writers.

Karla Linn Merrifield

DIPTYCH: Wizard, Not and Spot On

Some dude in the news,
some bad guy, gotta be, babe?
One vile predator.

On classic post-it:
yellow, 2 by 2-ish.
Sticky notes, right on!…

What evocative, visual, and symbolic connections are there between a famous American artist and Karla Linn Merrifield’s poems? The words of this diptych make this inspiration suggestive and glaring.

Like John Sloan’s paintings, particularly those of female nudes, Karla’s poetic duo DIPTYCH: Wizard, Not and Spot On strike the reader with layers. Sloan seduced the viewer with his gestural brushstroke, Karla with words and lines. They are not layers of colour but of text. The poet experiments with words as painters experiment with watercolour and brush: overlapping hues, mixing styles and vocabulary, and layering to achieve an increasingly impressionistic vision. On her Moleskine journals and with her felt-tip pen, Karla traces abstract poetic compositions. They follow the stimulating flow of her thoughts.

From a technical-stylistic point of view, the poems written by Karla are varied. The author ranges from different metrics, moving from modern sonnets to free verses and experimenting with types of poetic composition outside the Western tradition, such as haiku and tanka from Japanese literature. Even the vocabulary shifts from contemporary one, often linked to the domain of digital chat and common language, to high-sounding words. Her diptychs appear as an interesting mix of styles and intentions, creating hybrid atmospheres and miscellaneous mental images.

Among many other stimuli, the art of painting is a source of inspiration for Karla. This is particularly evident in the second composition of the diptych, where the nude artworks by Sloan, an exponent of the 20th-century Ashcan School, become material for poetry. There is nothing precise and explicit, just an idea of this female nude portrayed with a nonchalant use of blue colour and dishevelled curls. We are not given to know what Sloan’s work of art is precisely; we just catch its abstract impression. Through words, Karla transforms the concreteness of the painting medium into abstract poetry, a back-and-forth between visual and verbal languages.

The literary references in Karla’s poetics are many and span various creative fields. Like the American poet William Heyen, Karla emphasizes a few meaningful words to trace the overall feelings of her subjects. Music is also an indispensable source of inspiration, from poets and songwriters like Warren Zevon to iconic singers and authors like Patti Smith. It is poetry that proceeds by impressions, approximations, and particular focus.

Karla Linn Merrifield is now a renowned poet with a fruitful career. She has more than 1000 poems and 16 published books to her credit. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, was recently nominated for the 2022 National Book Award and brings together musical and art inspirations. A frequent contributor to literary journals such as The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Karla Linn Merrifield is eclectic, constantly experimenting with different styles, subjects, and interdisciplinary influences.

Karla Linn Merrifield is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Abstract call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Abstract issue.

www.karlalinnmerrifield.org/

Kerry Milligan—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Future call for artists.

Kerry Milligan

Kerry Milligan—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Future call for artists.

Collage is the technique of unpredictable, free associations, of speculation without the reins of rationality. Kerry Milligan freely uses it, as one should imagine the future: a space to be collectively designed.

At first glance, Kerry’s digital photo collages appear as surreal environments in which cityscapes, buildings, and people overlap in curious and surprising ways—a jumble of visual inputs that inspires a chaotic energy. However, as often happens when observing this wonderful associative technique, collages are much more than the sum of their tiny parts. Dwelling analytically on the details, one grasps the artist’s wit, juxtaposing seemingly random elements and exploiting forms with a prolific compositional logic. Space observatories, like caskets, hold tangible feminine objects; Las Vegas becomes a futuristic lysergic dream between nature and artificiality; store mannequins begin an uncanny, humanoid conversation.

Kerry’s technique, like her collages, also lies between the real and the imaginative, between the analog and the digital. Her collages are digital reworking of personal photographs or scans of old photo prints. The artist’s creative process involves several executive steps that lead, filter after filter, manipulation after manipulation, to a transformed, imaginative, futuristic rendering of reality—a kind of augmented surreality achieved with different layering levels. The artist’s painting practice, with which she is best known to the public, has the same approach. Spontaneity is at the basis of her natural and floral paintings, between reality and abstraction, as if they came from a dream world.

Kerry’s approach is intuitive and worthy of the Surrealist tradition. The twentieth-century Surrealists loved associating images from different sources with free associations and automatisms. Offspring of recent psychoanalysis, collage represented for them a way of using the most spontaneous, irrational, latent part of their selves, creating playful and free art. Similarly, Kerry’s collages are unpredictable and multiple. Objects from different fields, styles, and eras coexist in the same space, finding connections. Looking at her collages, one thinks about the great masters of Surrealism as Salvador Dali, who, behind every seemingly random juxtaposition, concealed symbolism, or the self-portraits dense with pregnant elements by Frida Kahlo. Kerry’s digital collages are a modern transposition of the Surrealist paintings of the past, sharing the same desire to capture the serendipity of reality, which is increasingly complex and fast-paced.

Whether she paints abstract landscapes dissolving into curvy lines and organic forms or experiments with surreal digital collages, Canadian visual artist Kerry Milligan consistently demonstrates vivid imagination and sensitivity. Her paintings are featured in national and international exhibitions and are also part of public collections. Through her experimental collages, Kerry Milligan fully embodies three magical skills for imagining the future: intuition, organization, and the ability to envision what is not yet there, like in a lucid dream.

Kerry Milligan is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Future call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Future issue.

www.kmstudioart.com

B. Fulton Jennes—ArtAscent Gold Writer of the 2024 Future call for writers.

B. Fulton Jennes

After Another January Without Snow, My Husband Imagines the Last Snowfall on Earth

It’ll fall at the top of a remote mountain—a place with no sherpas,
no base camps, no frayed prayer flags flapping in the wind,
because people won’t climb mountains anymore—why bother?–…

Imagine an ordinary morning: Breakfast cups are in the sink, and you are casually chatting about the weather. Suddenly, the conversation becomes deeper: It didn’t snow this January. Will we see snow again?

B. Fulton Jennes draws from this excerpt of everyday life, an ordinary conversation with her husband, to compose a poem of extraordinary evocative power. Strong and deliberately exasperated images follow one after another to tell of climate change and environmental crisis. The pretest of an intimate talk turns into a question for the community, an urgency that is anything but private. As often happens, the most inescapable and complex issues emerge in insignificant moments. In New England, where the writer lives, there was no snow. The feeling is nostalgic: the white snowflakes seem like a distant memory. It arouses melancholy and, at the same time, anger and fear. Will normality ever return? Or is this the new normality to which we are gradually becoming used?

After Another January Without Snow, My Husband Imagines the Last Snowfall on Earth is more than a freer-flowing narrative, more than a literary experiment. It emerges from a sincere concern for the future. This eco-anxiety includes environmental perils such as global warming and melting glaciers, as well as war, nuclear power, and land and ocean pollution—a feeling of danger for the future that sprawls tentacularly across various domains.

Likewise, the composition verses move swiftly between different and dramatic images. B. Fulton Jennes writes in a fluid, energetic, and cinematic manner. In her literary production, she ranges from poems with rigid structures, such as sonnets, pantoums, and ghazals, to poems with freer compositions. The willingness to mutate and experiment is part of her creative process. In the poem, the future is represented as something catastrophic, bordering on dystopian and grotesque, using a lashing vocabulary, but the ending verses remain evocative. The final repetitive refrain is a sort of inner self-reflection, a moment of self-awareness: “We used to love the Earth. Do you remember?”

B. Fulton Jennes mixes poetry and prose, drawing on examples of contemporary novelists and poetic masters. Like George Saunders’ novels, she creates poetic fiction and streams of consciousness from a personal perspective. Poems by Dorianne Laux or Marie Howe also show affinities with her style in their ability to capture metaphysical and spiritual dimensions of everyday life.

Poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield (Connecticut), B. Fulton Jennes has also worked as an educator, introducing students to poetry and organizing workshops and readings. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, winning numerous awards, including the recent New Millennium Award and the International Book Award. It is hard to remain indifferent to such a lucid take on collective faults, and it comes back to mind the plentiful snow we encountered as children. It differs from the plastic version children meet today in yet another dazzling amusement park.

B. Fulton Jennes is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Future call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Future issue.

Wang-Yiwei—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

Yiwei Leo Wang

Wang-Yiwei—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2024 Emotion call for artists.

How exciting and, at the same time, wistful can a party be? The disco ball is still spinning. However, the lights are on, and the party is over. Yiwei Leo Wang investigates these dizzy peaks of emotions through visual arts.

Imagine a long night of partying in a club. What mixed emotions flow as we dance? The loud music, the flashing strobe lights, the feeling of being in another dimension…but suddenly, the euphoria vanishes. Lights come on, and only the leftovers remain all around: bottle shards and remnants of a night that has ended. The dance hall is empty. The club is a refuge but also a cage. From a state of grace detached from the rest of the world, it plunges you violently back into reality. Leo (Yiwei) explores this nocturnal dichotomy. He embodies mixed emotions characterized by peaks of excitement and disconsolate melancholy through art installations. His works are visual metaphors for the intricate world of feelings, and they precisely dissect their psychobiological roots, telling us about dopamine and its effects, from euphoria to loneliness. Dopamine causes pleasure, distancing us from the anguish of everyday life, but, like a dark club in which to lose ourselves, it is only a momentary relief. Soon, reality returns to overwhelm us.

The connection to clubbing culture is apparent in Leo’s (Yiwei) works. Everything hints at a party aesthetic, from the disco ball-like quilts to the confetti of glazed stoneware to the silkscreen prints inviting caution on the dancefloor. Yet, something doesn’t feel right. The confetti has now fallen to the ground; the caution signs create a lively phosphorescent grid, but they seem a distant mirage. As in ancient Chinese fairy tales, euphoria and joy are ephemeral and go hand in hand with melancholy.

The complexity of emotions also comes through materials. Even in the medium, there is a substantial dichotomy: Leo (Yiwei) uses unconventional materials with traditional techniques. Textile elements and found materials mix with ceramic crafting. Tradition and pop culture create new visual narratives. This approach, capable of skillfully mixing high and low, ancient tradition and consumerism, recalls the style of great contemporary Asian artists. The ceramic confetti echoes Ai Weiwei’s handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds. At the same time, the use of repetitive patterns recalls the immense work of Japan’s Yayoi Kusama and her immersive installations of flashing polka dots.

Leo Yiwei Wang’s art is rich and blends different languages and disciplines. As a “world citizen of the digital age,” art is his primary form of expression. An artist, curator, performer and raver, he skillfully draws from his Chinese roots, mixing them with his education and career in Chicago, United States. His work has garnered several merit awards and has been showcased in five solo exhibitions and various publications. Capable of mixing clubbing and pop culture blend and the contradictory nature of emotions, his works are bold and impressive.

Yiwei Leo Wang is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Emotions call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.madebyleowang.com

ArtAscent Distinguished Writer of the 2024 Emotion call for writers.

Karla Linn Merrifield

Simply

Maybe he’s simply afraid
of becoming just one more
poem in some book’s collection.

Maybe he’s simply leery,
doesn’t want to be numbered
sixty-three in her in-progress opus…

Some poets can perfectly delineate suggestive images to tell an emotion. They put powerful narratives on paper that can evoke or deconstruct a mishmash of feelings. Karla Linn Merrifield achieves this. Simply.

Karla’s style is always recognizable when she writes poems in longer or shorter formats. In this brief poem, she makes emotions visible through her vivid narrative rhythm. Words follow the syncopated pace of heartbeats. How do 16 lines contain the entangled emotions of infatuation? Four concise stanzas reveal longing, desire, and the essence of an intimate connection. The poem is “chock-full of emotions”; it appears to be simply true, not a simulated emotion for literary purposes.

Karla openly declares her inspiration: this is the story of a poet who has found her muse. But relationships are never that simple, and they bring with them doubts and ruminations. The structure of the poem is lucid and plays on duality. It seems a silent dialogue between two lovers, fragments of an amorous speech. This stream of lovers’ thoughts is revealed on paper. The poet reflects on her beloved’s feelings in the relationship: will he trust her, or will he fear becoming just another literary subject? Will he believe her genuine feelings, or will he think he is just another source of inspiration for poems? On the other hand, is it infatuation or just food for thought?

Karla is a poet who questions the best form to express emotions from the beginning to the end. Each stanza is calibrated to close the poem with a decisive and forceful line. Poetic closure is one of her stylistic hallmarks. Her lyrical compositions are eclectic and characterized by immediacy. They play with sounds, metrics, and registers. They result from sharp images, crystal clear first in the brain and then in the writing. The author does not disdain the use of photographic media that allows her to fix emotion and inspiration first visually rather than verbally. Moleskine journals and photographs in the phone’s memory are just some of the visual notes that led Karla to write such accurate poems. The frequent use of imagery harks back to great masters of poetry like Walt Whitman and William Heyen without being an epigone of them. Karla’s references are also strongly contemporary, dialoguing with current poets such as Miriam Sagan.

Research, emotion, and lucidity are the keywords of Karla Linn Merrifield’s poetry. A high standard that has been achieved over a long career, with a thousand poems written, 16 books published to her credit, nominations for National Book Awards, and frequent literary contributions in journals and anthologies. Her immediate poems reveal a paradox: they simply show that emotions are never that simple.

Karla Linn Merrifield is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Emotions call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Emotions issue.

www.karlalinnmerrifield.org

Kalom_Noelle—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2023 Abstract call for artists.

Noelle Kalom

Kalom_Noelle—ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2023 Abstract call for artists.

Golden light, crimson red, turquoise and umber earth: the art of Noelle Kalom arises from colours. Embodying the bold and intense contrasts of her homeland, New Mexico, the artist creates an abstract topography that starts from a real landscape.

Noelle is a great observer. Thanks to its energy and dynamic nature, the American Southwestern landscape is her primary source of inspiration. The High Desert of Taos, where she was born and surrounded by a community of artists, is where she gets in touch with natural elements. In the middle of the desert, Noelle can create a visceral bond with them, trying to channel the same power onto the canvas. Her paintings are abstract at first glance, but they start from nature. Noelle captures the thin line that defines the horizon. She absorbs the vibrant hues of fire, circles, and shapes of natural landscapes, the mysterious atmosphere of collective rituals and ceremonies. Each of her works, characterized by evocative titles such as Inception, which refers to the origin of everything, or Secret Chamber, which brings to mind the magmatic chambers of volcanoes, the crevices where energy accumulates, seems wrapped in a mystical aura.

Noelle’s paintings are highly recognizable by her recursive colour palette, embellished by incorporating bright and shiny-looking mixed elements such as tiny glass beads. This blending is her stylistic signature. From a technical point of view, the artist combines acrylic with the precious finesse of other materials. The execution process consists of a gradual layering. After a layer of thick gel, Noelle spreads numerous layers of paint using the palette knife until she recreates an abstract landscape. Rivers, fields, and canyons lose their connotations to become dreamlike territory.

The painter’s practice is rooted in the style of Abstract Expressionism, particularly that of female artists, with whom she shares impulsiveness and experimental techniques. Like painters like Lee Krasner, Noelle also creates abstract paintings using knives, brushes, fingers, and hands. There are also affinities with contemporary abstract expressionist painters, such as Laurie Barmore, who uses multiple layers on a structure, or the painter Vivian Suter, who can capture the wilderness of the Guatemala landscape.

Noelle’s abstract topographies can combine the primitive force of colours with the elegant preciousness of glass beads, almost as if they were Klimt mosaics embedded in abstract paintings. These two voices coexist on that same canvas, revealing an independent language cultivated in her life full of inspiration. Raised in the New Mexico desert, Noelle Kalom lived and worked in New York City, the Pacific Northwest, and Portugal, exhibiting nationally and internationally. She is currently represented by Magpie Gallery in New Mexico and at Atelier Natalia Gromicho in Portugal. A visionary artist, each of Noelle Kalom’s paintings leads to an unknown territory, revealing a path that is perceivable only on an intuitive level and not through rationality

Noelle Kalom is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Abstract call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Abstract issue.

www.noellekalom.com

Gold Writer of the ArtAscent 2023 Abstract exhibition.

Susas Nickerson

The Dance

”How long do I have before my hair falls out?” I asked the team of nurses administering the heavy-duty chemo. I had already undergone six months of treatment to prepare for my bone marrow transplant, and this was the final, destructive blast. A week to ten days was the final consensus. Some people, they said, don’t lose it all…

It is tricky to mix emotional power and humour, light-hearted imagery and stomach-punching facts in literature. Susan Nickerson can do it, dealing with one of the most daunting human themes: illness and how to live with it day by day.

Susan’s pieces seem a sort of dance. The writer moves with a cadenced rhythm between pain and irony. She juggles both, like a professional dancer, leading them between the lines of the page. The metaphors overlap one upon the other, blending reality and imagination. The ultimate result is a curious literary mix that makes readers reflect on the pain and anxiousness of illness while impressing them with creative images.

According to Susan, writing is the most immediate medium for dealing with the discovery of a serious disease, the diagnosis of Myelodysplastic Syndrome. How can one narrate life with it without exaggerating in drama and, at the same time, without diminishing this overwhelming burden? Susan transfigures it through abstract images. She depicts the physiological consequences of her disease and bone marrow transplant through abstraction. In this piece, hair loss becomes a surreal, out-of-body scene: a dance of humanized hair follicles that come to life, tangoing on her head, instilling vitality. The urgency to write about the inescapable changes in her body makes her words so powerful.

The disease is invisible; Susan cannot see or touch it. However, she can give shape to her correlating emotions and the physical consequences she is experiencing, starting from the increasingly sensitive tip of her hair. Tingles and discomfort become a dance, constantly changing rhythm. This mad dance creates a physical state of chaos and confusion that is twin to her entangling thoughts and spreading concerns.

Susan’s literary style perfectly matches this kind of surrealist storytelling. It is a mixed salad of genres, tones, and vocabulary, following the topics she covers and changing as fast as the images she creates. It is a creative non-fiction piece that recalls contemporary American literature, like Wally Lamb’s novels. As in his case, Susan attempts to overcome the limitations of her struggling experience, asking herself how to cope and talk about it universally. Her hair loss thus becomes that of many others dealing with a body they no longer recognize, as it happened to her.

Born and raised in Massachusetts (US), Susan Nickerson lives in Florida with her husband and their dog, cultivating her literary practice. Susan’s writing resonates with the experience of all the people who are facing the same inevitable assault. Each word seems written for them.

Susan Nickerson is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Abstract call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Abstract issue.

Transmutations by Dina Torrans. Gold Artist of the ArtAscent 2023 Spring exhibition.

Dina Torrans

Transmutations by Dina Torrans. Gold Artist of the ArtAscent 2023 Spring exhibition.

Made of bronze, marble, wood, and minerals, artist Dina Torrans’ sculptures intertwine and mix. Assembling traditional materials and natural elements, her works are expanding creations, lush and flourishing like spring blossoms.

Dina’s art incorporates the most potent aspect of spring: the ability to move forward. She embodies this constant sense of rebirth in her sculptures, rich in diverse materials, colours, and languages. The artist has a strong connection with the natural world: the inspiration for her objects comes from the variety of forms and textures she encounters outside. Her sculptures are whimsical, as if a breath of life pervaded them. They are co-creations between the human hand and the invisible touch of nature, generating something new and unexpected.

The artist collects found objects and assembles them in nature-inspired forms with a playful and spiritual approach. If, at first glance, Dina’s assemblages may appear random, on closer inspection, one can notice recognizable motifs: arrows, hatches, red crosses or circled details. Her works resemble treasure maps, with directions to follow and destinations to reach. They become metaphors for the paths and choices we decide to take in our world. They are miniature continents through which we move to find our way.

Dina’s style is distinctive. The artist combines classic and traditional techniques, such as sculpture in cast bronze, first modelled in wax, or using marble, cement, and other metals with mixed media and other significative found objects. She incorporates shells, stamps, flowers, fibres, and moss, giving a surrealist flavour to her art. Dina’s artistic practice is a game of correspondence between living and non-living elements. The result is a hybrid system of references. Looking at Dina’s composite sculptures, we are confronted with a Babel of different but intertwined voices, a metaphor for ultimate interconnectedness.

Dina’s systems hark back to a long tradition of abstract assemblages. They recall the automatic scribbles of painters like Cy Twombly, the machines of avant-garde artists like Jean Tinguely, composed of metal and rubber scraps, or the installations of Ghanian artist El Anatsui, made from various recycled elements such as bottle caps, cans, and clay. Dina adds spiritual and literary inspirations to these visual references, such as the poet Rumi or Herman Hesse. Like her works, the reservoir of references she draws is composite: a constellation of bonds.

Dina Torrans has a strong art career. She graduated from the Art Centre of Central Technical School in Toronto, where she also worked as a sculpture and printmaking instructor for ten years. Her sculptures have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in national and international galleries, like the Canadian Sculpture Centre, The Art Gallery of Ontario and different art museums in Italy. Her artworks can be found in international collections. Looking at her body of work is like accessing an expanding archive, private but speaking of universal systems. Dina Torrans is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Spring call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Spring issue.

https://www.dinatorrans.art/

Gold Writer of the ArtAscent 2023 Spring exhibition.

Karla Linn Merrifield

Spring Disptych: Lessons in Evolution

1.
Twin butterflies twist
out of a single cocoon–
spring booms on their wings.

Mergansers in flight
over the lake this morning,
sun gathers its flocks…

Karla Linn Merrifield’s poems draw inspiration from the natural environment to subtly discuss human nature. During springtime, animals, plants, and humans respond to the powerful imperative to grow. In this majestic project that involves all, each role is put into perspective.

In this intense poetic diptych, Karla celebrates the evolutive capacity of nature. During springtime, flora and fauna propagate. It is a prolific expansion, a fractal growth that affects all living things. Spring Disptych: Lessons in Evolution captures the multiplication of different life forms.

The first composition is dedicated exclusively to animals and plants responding to spring’s call. Two identical butterflies emerge from the same cocoon; mergansers flutter across the lake’s mirror-like surface; hemlocks extend their branches like touching fingers; bees move industriously, producing honey. It is spring: time to awaken and fulfil the promise of life. Karla depicts these buzzing and dynamic ecosystems involving all the elements in air, water, and earth.

In the second poem, Karla alludes to human beings, treating them for what they are: animals. Even humans in spring feel the same primordial urgency for renewal. In this moment of interconnectedness, the poet physically empathizes with the rest of the environment: she merges with the damp moss; she imagines herself like starfish in the sand; she hides like a spider in the gutters. In this exercise of empathy, the human learns the most important lesson: to recognize oneself as a lesser being, a small retiring entity subject to the cycles of nature, like all others.

Spring Disptych: Lessons in Evolution is a poem conceived by Karla on a vivid Florida morning, sitting in her canvas camp chair under an oak tree, but it does not lack analysis. It is a diptych that undermines the anthropocentric conception of human beings, accepting their fragile, changing, relative existence.

Karla’s style is also eclectic. The author plays with words, like a pianist, experimenting with both humourous and soulful tones, ever-changing registers and metrics. Even in the vocabulary, the author demonstrates her ability to range over different domains, showing zoological and botanical accuracy and defining nature as precisely as possible.

Though expressing with a more modern tone, her poetic description of nature brings her close to great masters of the past, such as Pablo Neruda, who captured the vital summer explosion in a few lines, or Charles Baudelaire, who saw in nature a ‘forest of symbols.’

Spring Disptych: Lessons in Evolution is just one of many poems by Karla Linn Merrifield, who has more than 1000 poems and 16 published books to her credit. Her newest poetry collection was recently nominated for the 2022 National Book Award. A frequent contributor to literary journals, Karla Linn Merrifield’s style is constantly self-reflecting and evolving, but there is always something visceral in her words

Karla Linn Merrifield is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Spring call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Spring issue.

www.karlalinnmerrifield.org

Olivia-Patricia Terrell O'Neal, Gold Artist of the ArtAscent 2023 Journey exhibition

Olivia-Patricia Terrel O’Neal

Olivia-Patricia Terrell O'Neal, Gold Artist of the ArtAscent 2023 Journey exhibition

Each work of art by Olivia-Patricia Terrell O’Neal feels like a journey between metaphors. Her paintings are realistic and truthful, yet they resonate with archetypal power. The mother, the daughter, departure and uprooting are canvases filled with symbols.

In Olivia-Patricia’s artistic production, the subject of travel loses its elements of pleasure and takes on mysterious connotations. A metaphysical silence hovers over the canvases. The paintings capture the viewer emotionally: mother and daughter separate in an intimate and painful embrace. A family departs, projected into an unknown future, leaving shadows of a hazy past in the background. Diverse faces of immigrants tell of individual suffering, like different stories intersecting in the same compressed space. Olivia-Patricia delineates powerful scenes. It feels like watching the frame of a film projection. They are paintings that are open to stories. We do not know what happened before or after, but we can imagine it.

Olivia-Patricia’s figurative narratives open up questions about the destinies of her subjects. Where are the immigrants headed with their bulky bags and suitcases? And where is the family leaving from? Or where is the prodigal daughter going, a famous biblical reference morphed into the feminine? The destinations are journeys into the unknown. We perceive the emotional aspects: the weight of distance, separation, and future expectations.

The emotional element gains even more value through the skillful use of colours. The painter uses a limited colour palette of dark tones: ultramarine blue deep, burnt umber, white, and possibly yellow ochre, enlivened by symbolic touches of colour. The painter’s technique is also a creative process open to intuition.

Her motifs take shape in different steps, changing from brushstroke to brushstroke. Olivia-Patricia creates her paintings from various charcoal sketches, capturing the magic of inspiration thanks to this rapid technique. From this starting point, she continues to elaborate, letting the flow dictated by the painting guide her. Her creative process is itself a journey of imaginative discovery.

The intuitive aspect is primary in the painter’s practice, so much so that among her most relevant references is the experimental painting of the 1960s, capable of radiating a spiritual force. Foremost among them is painter Jay De Feo, whose vast and rough surfaces reveal celestial connections. Olivia-Patricia is a figurative painter, not an abstract artist like Jay De Feo. Still, her works are multi-layered with meaning and embodied energy from the mere canvas.

Raised in Tennessee, Olivia-Patricia Terrell O’Neal graduated with an MFA degree from the New York Academy. She works in the United States, Mexico and France, where her works are part of a permanent collection at Chateau St. Philippe. She has collaborations with solid international galleries to her credit and 14 solo exhibitions, and she doesn’t stop: the journey is a foundational component of her subjects and artistic process.

Olivia-Patricia Terrel O’Neal is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Journey call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Journey issue.

www.pterrelloneal.com

Gold Writer of the ArtAscent 2023 Journey exhibition.

Christopher O’Meara

Hush Hush

“Oslo, Rotterdam, Madrid,” the detective says, “you’ve had me on quite the road trip, I must say.”

I meet Detective Dawson’s gaze and can tell he’s exhausted. His lids are heavy, their flesh the colour of bruised fruit. He’s overweight by more than a few stone and could be easily outrun. But running would be suspicious. Running would get me caught…

Imagine an escape across Europe and a secret to hide. The story by Christopher O’Meara is a cat-and-mouse chase in which the protagonists follow, hide, and lose track of each other, only to find themselves, finally, in an anonymous café.

The journey traced by Christopher has the connotations of a detective story, revealing clues through hermetic dialogues. The plot unravels little by little, gradually dissolving the mystery. It comes to mind that the journey is not only undertaken by the characters in their chase across Europe but also by readers, who slowly connect the pieces of the tale. By joining the dots, they reach the solution, the final destination of their literary journey.

Hush Hush is a story to be read in one breath but paying attention to revealing details. The plot is simple: a detective pursues a suspect on an exhausting road trip from Norway to Spain. The journey connects distant corners of the continent, but the story focuses on the final part of this ride. The two protagonists meet for a showdown in an unidentified café: the fugitive is trapped. However, the conversation, setting, and characters are deliberately vague. Who is the narrator thief? Why is detective Lawson looking so desperately for him? Who has he abducted?

In Christopher’s story, the abducted go beyond a typical narrative framework and seem especially alive, embodied in a unique reality. The girl is wrapped in a quilt, and her haunting gaze is mesmerizing, shining like her pearlescent earring. The second kidnapped character almost makes a noise: his scream is more penetrating than most.

Christopher specializes in stories set in the past, approaching with Hush Hush contemporary storytelling and crime. He often recreates a working environment that stimulates him to bring his characters to life: music, candles, and the subdued atmosphere help him outline mysterious scenarios. Tight and ambiguous dialogues that create suspense characterize his style, which is very close to the best-selling thriller novels by journalist Paula Hawkins. Like Hawkins, Christopher adds a psychological component in delineating his protagonists, which subtly seduces the reader.

Christopher O’Meara is a freelance writer from New England with a nonfiction education and a degree in journalism from Suffolk University. His stories combine the faces of iconic works of art and the trajectories of the two protagonists in a physical and mental road trip. Artworks in Christopher O’Meara’s writing become activators of inspiration, a visual stimulus that leads to imagining ever-changing stories. And we readers follow him on this journey, discovering how art and literature may intertwine on a written page.

Christopher O’Meara is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Journey call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Journey issue.

www.christopheromeara.com

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2023 Portraits call for artists.

Brian McClear

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the 2023 Portraits call for artists.

Have you ever tried to think about skin as a canvas to paint on? The representational painter Brian McClear portrays people who are like works of art, focusing on the imaginative and symbolic realm of their tattoos.

Brian’s paintings range among different subjects: still-life, small objects, and portraits, but they demonstrate stylistic coherence for balance and solidity. His selected Ink&Oil series is an original interpretation of the contemporary portrait genre, halfway between realistic—almost photographic—representation and abstract intentions. Brian chooses to portray subjects who are very different from each other but share a unique trait: the presence of numerous tattoos on their bodies as powerful forms of self-expression. They are not decorative ornaments but identity statements that express their personal history and attitude. Their body artworks are immediate insights into their personalities, intriguing and inviting the viewer to interpret.

Looking at Brian’s figurative portraits, one could wonder: why do people dress their skin with pictures? This ancient form of body art, born for tribal and therapeutic purposes, has motivations that often transcend rationality. It may arise from the need to commemorate a significant life event. They may be talismans laden with power or a sign of belonging. They could be elements of self-narration or arise from a simple impulse—the reasons are diverse and extremely personal. The painter captures the symbolic load of this choice. Like the protagonists’ tattoos, Ink&Oil portraits communicate so much, but without the use of words.

Brian’s style is akin to his content: communicative, intuitive, and energetic. These oil-on-canvases linger on the form and textures of the elements depicted, highlighting surprising visual connections. The painting process is also pure vitality. Brian starts with an archive of material references, sketches, and photos and through quick and energetic gestures, he paints them on canvas. The ideas that flow out in the first hours of work are as meaningful as the final result.

The gesture, the energetic painting process, and the vivid use of colours are elements that distinguish Brian’s practice. Therefore, among his favourite references is Jackson Pollock, the master of abstract gestural expression. In addition, the realism of Brian’s portraits embodies a symbolic dimension; it brings to mind the great American school of the 19th century, the characters portrayed by George Wesley Bellows or Winslow Homer. Each person seems to tell a story outside the frame.

Currently living and working in the United States, Brian McClear earned a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design. He worked as an illustrator and in leading marketing agencies. Recently, he decided to devote himself to painting, preferring bold brushstrokes to the mouse. His works received national awards, and private collections and museums exhibited them. Brian’s portraits do not leave you indifferent: they are full of liveliness and always allow a sense of wisdom and strength to shine through.

Brian McCLear is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Portraits call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Portraits issue.

www.mcclearart.com

ArtAscent Gold Writer of the 2023 Portraits call for artists.

Karla Linn Merrifield

Self-Portrait Triptych

1. Gestalt

shamanwoman
poetturtle
greenvagabond
riverlakeoceanheart…

The triptych formula is frequent in art history: churches are full of altarpieces divided into three intimately related panels. However, Karla Linn Merrifield realizes triptychs with words. Her poems are masterful self-portraits divided into three acts.

Each of Karla’s poems unveils a section of her being, as a complex and dissectible artwork. Through the self-investigation tool of poetry, the author breaks down her personality into different facets. Her capacity for self-reflection is strikingly lucid. Karla borrows metaphors from technology, chemistry, and cognitive psychology, to accomplish this almost surgical operation. She is not afraid to juxtapose literature and sciences. This hybrid aspect makes her lexical choices so meaningful.

Her three poems, Gestalt, Like Totally Gizmo and In My Element, have different tones. They create mixed atmospheres. They go from Zen-like introspection to the robotic iciness of techno-speak to a lyricism achieved through chemical metaphors. Like a threepiece mirror, they reflect different angles of Karla’s experience. The same principle guides the Gestalt theory mentioned above, the construction of a technological device, and chemical formulas: they combine distinct elements to assemble a whole and functioning organism.

The writing style of this self-portrait reflects the search for varietas of the author. Neologisms obtained through compound words characterize Gestalt, a minimalist poem in which the sum of the parts gives significance. And thus, are born words like shamanwoman, poeturtle, and friendloversoul, that combine different terms to find the most accurate one to self-define. Abbreviations, acronyms, and precise technical specifications distinguish Gizmo, a poetic portrait of an enhanced woman, like a cyborg with new potentialities, a “fivestar gadget” trying to understand her programming codes. Through the metaphor of quicksilver, in the third poem, In My Element, Karla highlights her analytical but fluid spirit, a “heavy metallic liquid muse.” Even the words are arranged on the paper (or screen) following a sort of chemical structure. The technique immediately echoes the historical calligrams by Guillaume Apollinaire, in which form and content mirror each other.

Karla’s poetics is rich in references, drawing on literature and interdisciplinary fields. The American poet William Heyen is among her cornerstones, with whom she shares the attempt to grasp the self through poetic memory. Furthermore, the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, with his visionary sensibility and lexical accuracy, is one of Karla’s great influencers.

Karla Linn Merrifield has lost count of her thousands of poems and has 16 books to her credit. Her poems appeared in specialized journals and anthologies, and her newest collection, My Body the Guitar, was recently nominated for the 2022 National Book Award. She is a contributor to literary journals, assistant editor, and a member of the Florida State Poetry Society, the New Mexico Poetry Society, and The Author’s Guild. Currently, Karla Linn Merrifield is completing a poetry manuscript about the men of her life. In the spirit of research and divergence, she opted to portray a woman she knows intimately: herself.

Karla Linn Merrifield is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Portraits call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Portraits issue.

www.karlalinnmerrifield.org

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the October 2022 call for artists.

Kate Greenway

ArtAscent Gold Artist of the October 2022 call for artists.

The sunflower, the quintessential representation of summer, becomes a symbol of strength at the hands of artist Kate Greenway. Her artworks depict a fragile and ephemeral plant, dependent on sun and heat but capable of acts of resistance and self-determination.

Looking at Kate’s artworks, expertly crafted with mixed media techniques, the mind immediately flies to the iconic sunflowers painted by Vincent Van Gogh. But if this flower represented the search for light in times of darkness for the Dutch master, for the Canadian artist, it acquires contemporary meanings. In Kate’s works, sunflowers are charged with new metaphors: it is the flower that stands for summer vibrancy, but it also fades with the passage to Autumn. But there is more. It is the national symbol of Ukraine, currently ravaged by war, but which, like a sunflower, remains fiercely standing. What at first glance appears to be a classic still life thus becomes a symbol of pride and hope for a nation. Kate’s images are strong works that tell of a contemporary tragedy and fight for democracy.

Moreover, Kate concretely supports the Ukrainian cause with her art. The series is part of the Sunflower Project, an artist initiative that aims to raise funds for humanitarian relief, donating a percentage of proceeds to Ukraine. The attempt to break this loop of suffering and negativity is one of the most important goals of Kate’s creative practice. The artist showcases a variety of media and techniques that reflect the feeling that art could be a tool of true enlightening.

Kate works with watercolours—a medium in which colours are diluted—playing with reflections, transparencies, and layers of hues as delicate as a flower. Her skillful use of glass techniques is delightful. Some of Kate’s works are glass on glass mosaics, where she achieves saturated and crisp images through transparent and opaque pieces of glass.

Watercolours and glass works have one aspect in common: the suggestive use of light. Light passes through the glass and shines on the watercolours, infusing warmth and luminosity. Kate’s artistic technique thus becomes a metaphor for this quest for light. It is no accident that Kate’s work, particularly in its use of glass, is comparable to that of master Marc Chagall. Like Chagall, who, in addition to paintings, made spectacular religiously themed stained-glass windows, Kate also silhouetted synthetic and impressive images that use light and matter to create visions.

Kate Greenway is a Canadian artist who manages to reconcile technical skills and the symbolism of flora, fauna, and landscapes. She completed a Masters and Ph.D. in Arts Education, honing glass techniques, including fused, stained and mosaic. She exhibited across Ontario and recently in a solo exhibition in Toronto. Her mixed media pieces always carry metaphoric weight in their ability to be transparent or opaque, inviting viewers to go beyond the surface.

Kate Greenway is the Gold Artist of the ArtAscent Summer call for artists. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Summer issue.

Gold Writer of the 2022 ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Summer issue

Joyce Fox

The Summer Warning

I knew something was coming, and I waited. Throughout the Summer of 2019, I waited. I didn’t know what was coming – all I knew for certain was that it wasn’t anything good. That much I knew. When I tell you my roses gave me the message, you will imagine it a strange thing to say. But they did…

How often do human beings search for answers in nature? Sometimes, we see mysterious messages in vegetation, the sky, and animals. Clever writer Joyce Fox transports us into this forest of symbols through powerful poetic images.

The Summer Warning is a piece that reaches the reader on an implicit and subconscious level. Like the symbolism it deals with, it does not speak explicitly. Joyce selects every word to evoke sensations without telling too much. In the summer of 2019, according to the author, her roses were shivering even without a breath of air. Chills ran through them, even though the air was disturbingly still. Through this cinematic image, Joyce conveys the foreboding that something terrible is about to happen after the end of summer. She tells of her fear, her trembling, inspired by what was the 2020 pre-pandemic period: a time in which we were all still oblivious to the soon-to-unfold frightening, collective crisis.

Since ancient times, humans have been investigating nature by trying to predict the future. From the omens brought by snakes and birds, seen as messengers of rebirth or misfortune, to the formation of clouds or the study of trees, nature and its transformations have always revealed underlying messages in popular culture. Joyce instinctively taps into this tradition, using nature as a symbolic, poetic, and unsettling element.

Roses—that Joyce watered, fed, and kept healthy— became as delicate as the human bodies, revealing their fragilities. The text presents metaphors related to breathing and lack of air which bring the reader’s mind to the pandemic’s terrible respiratory effects.

From the stylistic and technical point of view, The Summer Warning astonishes with a great sense of rhythm. The rhythmicity makes the text somewhere between prose and poetic composition. Joyce developed a style in which repetition plays a relevant part. The formal repetition of words and constructs emphasizes the writing, contributing to creating attention and pathos. Joyce’s vocabulary is simple and immediate and fits into the pattern of literature that uses words to portray, not to show off.

The strength of her text lies in the images she creates: as powerful as photographs and metaphorical as lines of poetry. Joyce finds inspiration in authors such as Kent Haruf, the novelist who paints life in small towns of the United States through accurate descriptions. Likewise, her scenes become intimate, silent, and symbolic.

Joyce Fox is an 89-year-old writer who embodies elements of every day in her texts: the velvet petals and palest shades of pink of her roses. Her texts have been read on BBC radio, and she recently had an hourlong two-act musical broadcast on different local radio stations. The stories written by Joyce Fox transfigure reality. They give vent to fears, emotions, and human forebodings.

Joyce Fox is the Gold Writer of the ArtAscent Summer call for writers. To see the full body of work and profile, get a copy of the ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal Summer issue.