Caitlyn D'Amico is a BFA alumnus from Pratt Institute and a current graduate student at the Maine College of Art and Design.
“My studio practice remains revolved around paint but focuses on using painting to influence and react to space through the extension of objects. I specifically use acrylic paint and other materials to present the world that exists around us through an abstract and effervescent lens.
‘Not What It Seems’ is a series of photographs I took of an installation of objects. Obscurity is an idea that resonates heavily with my work and plays a role in how I communicate an experience. In what ways can I obscure the eyes of the viewer and what does that do to their experience? I envision transformation and play to be active in the imagery, but the idea that everything appears one way however innately symbolizes something different and the desire but inability to be mindful and spend enough time with objects to understand their true existence is what I am most interested in discovering.”
Ulla Reiss x Rly Wilde collaboration
by Lea Dasque
by Jesse Dekel
Elegy for the Beloved Stranger
Not as many people moving.
No passersby, no cars, no busses.
This is a morning to grieve.
Coffins for the dead. Coffee for the living.
No coffins? Body bags for the virus-
laden. Not many people moving.
Morgues filled to overflowing,
bodies on ice pile up in box trucks.
This is a morning to grieve.
We navigate the television, roving
remotely. This virus a lit fuse,
still not many people moving.
The dead may yet outnumber the living.
If through inaction we fail, there will no excuse.
This is a morning to grieve
all of those who were not worth saving —
refugees, homeless, prisoners, …us?
Not as many people moving.
This is a morning to grieve.
Measures
I measure my weeks at home—
in missed salon appointments,
in visible gray at my roots;
in days between bothering to shave my legs.
I miss salon appointments.
No armor of gel, my nails tear.
It’s a bother to shave my legs.
Why should I? I’m not going anywhere.
No armor of gel, my nails wear,
beat up on breaking down boxes.
On lockdown, I can’t go anywhere,
& instead turn to internet shopping.
Beat up boxes line the foyer.
Split ends, frizz for hair, sans lipstick,
I turn to the Instacart shopper
on my porch, smile beneath my mask.
She splits her time, to make ends meet,
between Instacart and Uber, she tells me,
as we smilingly dance on my porch—
she dropping, I lifting, bags into the foyer.
Between Instacart, Amazon & eBay,
I manage to find what I need,
sort and wipe it clean on the foyer
floor, disinfectant a necessity.
All in all, I manage my needs.
My gray hair’s even growing on me.
When vigilance is no longer necessary,
maybe I’ll go back to the salon…?
My grown-out hair is growing on me,
even with visible gray at my roots.
Maybe one day I’ll go back to the salon;
meanwhile, my hair measures my weeks at home.
Love in the Time of Covid
Two would-be lovers approach, sit
at opposite ends of a park bench,
exchange sultry glances.
(The bench is not quite six feet long
but they are feeling adventuresome today.)
From behind their surgical masks,
they converse. They can each see
the outlines of the other’s lips moving
and soon they are both so turned on
that they don their surgical gloves
and scoot as close as they dare
to touch rubber to rubber.
She flips her hair. He pulls up
his socks. Then both, embarrassed,
reach for their Purell.
by Cati Porter
Cati Porter is the author of eight books and chapbooks, most recently The Body at a Loss (CavanKerry Press, 2019), the founder & editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry, and executive director of Inlandia Institute, a literary nonprofit.
Wherever I go, I draw.
Whether I'm at a bar, my place, or with friends, my hand is constantly busy creating. I have this unstoppable drive that keeps pushing me to draw.
Chinese ink was vital asset to my art learning process.
Its drying speed, beauty and power to create amazing contrast were all things I noticed from a early age. Back then, I would draw like a machine, and filled up many sketchbooks with it.
Now, I use it as my main.
My drawing style is raw with no prior sketching. I like to focus on what I see and how I feel directly. I aim to stop freeze a momentum on the paper.
I see my drawings as a shattering of me and my environment. A moment that I crystallise through my art.
What I wish to convey through my creations is both the beauty and power of simple moments: like putting an earing on, or when struck by a particular feeling. They are moments of our daily lives, which amaze me despite their simplicity.
I am direct, yet scared of messing up my drawing at all times, since I cannot go back. But this never stops the drawing motion inside of me. I like to think that this motion is conveyed through my work, so that the viewer can see what I felt during its creation, and what struck me most.
My art is that of the present.