Creative Thresholds

by David Giovannetti

My name is David Giovannetti and I live in a small town in Italy, called Corinaldo. I am not the son of an artist, nor did I attend art school, but still boast a curriculum that goes beyond any academic teaching: the tales of the adventures of my father, an Italian who emigrated to the United States to try his luck.

Thanks to his absurd stories, sometimes fantastic, my childhood flourished with wonder and curiosity about the world. Through fantasizing about his stories, I found the way to express myself through imagination which was sparked through art, specifically photography.

The path to turn this passion into a full-time job is long and arduous but I’m giving it my all to achieve this.

Website: https://davidgiovannettiphotography.wordpress.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidGiovannettiPhotography

Email: david.giovannetti@outlook.com

by Alessandro Ciapanna

These photographs were taken in a train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni, a small city in the south of Bolivia. This series is entitled “Asi Es La Vida,” from graffiti scrawled on one of the rusting locomotives.

Artist: Alessandro Ciapanna

I throw myself passionately at life. And life often smiles back. When that happens, I like to have my camera ready.

In what is a perennially ongoing process, I have developed a sense of what works, photographically. I can sometimes perceive when a situation has the quid I like to call the “wow factor”. I have honed my ear to the sound of a ball bouncing or a child laughing. Because these are telltale signs that something wonderful is taking place. It is a miracle, happening, unscripted. And sometimes – if you develop and trust your serendipity – it’s happening right around the corner. It’s something universal, and fleeting. Therefore all the more wonderful. All the more worth capturing. This is what I most like to photograph. Some call it life.

Website: ciapannaphoto

by Cecilia McDowell

Hampstead Heath: nearly 800 bucolic acres of parkland within London’s city limits, a city home to over 8 million people.

Though they are much cultivated and maintained now, these are lands that were mentioned in the Domesday Book (c. 1086AD), and upon which still stands a Bronze Age barrow (c. 2000-3000BC). Certainly, there have been major human-made changes – the now-famous bathing ponds were first dug as reservoirs in the 17th and 18th centuries – but this ancient park is tended with such an artist’s eye as to still feel pastoral. It is a public space in one of the world’s largest cities, a space that receives millions of visitors per year, and yet it is possible to sit under a tree in splendid silence for hours without seeing another living person. There is an undeniable magic in this place, regardless of your definition of the word, and even more so at dusk and dawn; at midsummer; at the edge of dappled shadows, ‘through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.’

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

–John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ 1819

Artist: Cecilia McDowell 

Introvert.  Artist.  Inveterate reader.
Curious.  Traveller.  Consulting palate.

Media links:

www.ceciliamcdowell.com

instagram.com/ceciliamcdowell

coming soon – accidentalalchemist.co.uk

by J. Christopher Matyjasik

I’ve been working on this series for well over a year and only three works have been prepared for print production at this point. I’ve been known to get halfway through a project, throw everything I’ve done out and start over. I don’t even have a definitive title (I don’t usually title a series until I’ve finished it). But I decided to just go ahead and share what I can of this in-progress project with you. What you see here is a peek inside my studio, at what i’m doing right now. It is not complete…

These days, I work on a whole series at once. I am still a drawer, painter, and assembler at heart. I see photographs two ways…an end…and a source material. Below are twelve examples, I’ve selected to share with you, of the source material for this project…and then the first three “completed” works, fresh off the griddle.

 J. Christopher Matyjasik

picture maker, data scientist, tinkerer, man’s man, general observer, amateur ponderer, entry-level life participant, believer in the laws of karma, fortunate soul

Check out more of his work at his website eye parcel or his Facebook page.

by Melissa D. Johnston

Boredom.

A point and shoot camera.

A sunny November day.

The air grille of a whirring heatpump.

Click.