Creative Thresholds

by Julie L. Sims

My series, Uncharted Territory: Anatomy of a Natural Disaster, is about how our internal landscape is often subject to the same kind of cracks, shifts, and fractures that make up the natural processes of the physical world.

The World Health Organization estimates that by 2020 mental health issues will be the second leading cause of lost life productivity, with one in four people affected in their lifetime. Society is heading toward a mental health crisis that no one wants to acknowledge, because those who suffer feel responsible for doing so, as though it is a personal failing instead of a medical condition. But are you at fault if the ground falls out from underneath your home? No one can exert force of will over force of nature. When disaster strikes we hang on as best we can, and rebuild when we can stand back up again. Everyone comes together to help those who need it. The parallel drawn by this series highlights my hope for a similar approach to our psychological space.

The idea for this work sprang out of my own struggles with anxiety and depression, and out of seeing so many of my friends have similar struggles. Everyone I have known who has gone through this felt as though they should’ve somehow been able to overcome it on their own, and as though they were somehow weak and defective for not being able to. I wanted to say this to them, and to myself, and to every other person who had experienced these feelings: it’s not your fault. You are not weak or defective, you are experiencing a natural disaster; don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help. I also hope it will help those who haven’t personally experienced these illnesses to understand the need for support and compassion when their friends and loved ones suffer.

The scenes are sculptures created in my studio out of wire mesh, plaster, paper, and other elements. I use lighting gels, fog machines, and various kinds of gobos both found and made to alter the light, as well as overhead projectors and printed transparency material to create different effects. I am constantly moving the camera, moving scene elements around in relation to one another, and changing the light. It has been said that photography is the relation between light, the subject, and the camera. I try to keep all three in flux at all times, because that is where the unpredictable magic happens. I perform only minimal digital post-processing on these—there is no Photoshop involved in creating the visual effects. When I first began the series I was shooting on medium format film and doing my own printing, but my darkroom access has changed since then, and I now shoot digitally and send files out for printing.

I began this series in 2009, and have been working on it off and on ever since. I’ve created three different “landscapes” for it that comprise the images now in the series, and I am in progress with additional scenes and ideas which I plan to add to it. It is my hope to complete work on these this year, and finally call this series complete.

Born in Savannah, GA, Julie Sims is an Atlanta-area artist and photographer. She graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in photography from Georgia State University in 2009. Julie’s work has been shown around the southeast, and has appeared in various publications including the SPE’s Due South, and Possible Futures’ Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape. She was recently selected by the New York Times Lens blog to attend the New York Portfolio Review, and is currently a WonderRoot 2013–14 Walthall Fellow. Visit her website to see more of her work. Watch her her work in progress on Tumblr or follow her on Twitter.

by Melissa D. Johnston

November 16, 1992. Clemson University. I am flying. My new blue and white running shoes pound orange clouds from the ground. The clouds multiply, leaving a trail as distinct as any fighter pilot’s. I rewind and play the intro to Tori Amos’s “Precious Things” for the fourth time, fine-tuning the details of the video I’m directing in my head: A lone girl sits on an underground train. Successive light and shadow flash through the windows, illuminating and darkening her face. The alternation syncs simultaneously and steadily with the music and implied speed of the train. Slowly the changing of light and dark lose their rhythmic cadence until there is no discernible pattern and the scene becomes a rapid chaotic flash of light and dark that ends abruptly. Complete blackness. First line: “So I ran faster…” Cut to—

He comes from nowhere.

“And it brought me here—”

A slam so hard my tailbone cracks. I see nothing but his lips. And something shiny. So shiny, catching the mid-day sun.

“If you scream I’ll kill you.” His eyes. Hard. Polished black marble occluding blue-sky iris. I open my mouth and the shiny object takes shape. “C’mon!” he jerks my arm and pushes me into the only wooded section of Clemson’s perimeter loop.

I remember the sun. Through barren trees. Black flat human shadow with liquidly muted colors.  Moving. Back. Forth. Backforthbackforthbackforth. Back. Sweat drips. Mine? His? The crunch of leaves. Reaching. His. My limbs are rock, legs endlessly falling.  He picks up the knife. Holds it, suspended, under my right eye.

“You’ll never forget me, sweetie.”

**

I wake up screaming. Again. My face chasms, splitting the bed. Far away voice. An arm reaches across the divide. “Annie?” I stone, protecting my side. Again.

In the morning light I can barely see it. A nearly four inch rough-edged, floss-sized scar below my right eye, running nose to ear. Eric always says he can’t see it. He wraps his arms around me and smiles into the mirror, meeting my eyes. I brush his arms aside. “I need to go,” I say, picking up the carryall.

“No human being should be reduced to a thing,” my philosophy professor had said my junior year. “Human beings are always ends in themselves, never simply means.” I raise my hand. “What happens if someone treats someone else as means alone?” He pauses for a moment. “I believe the act of treating someone else as a thing—no matter how small or brief—is an act of force. It cuts both ways. Both people lose their humanity in the interaction.” After class I cry in the third floor bathroom in a puke green stall.

“Are you okay?” a strange voice asks.

“I’m fine.” I wipe my tears, blow my nose, and walk calmly out the door.

**

“Annie?”

My mind somersaults the dusk-colored shapes of Willow Street in an elaborate water ballet.

“You’ve hardly touched your food.” His words float with street shapes, freely and indistinctly.

“Annie!” I startle and turn from the window, in shame. It’s our first anniversary.

“Why don’t we go?”

I grab my coat.

Outside, Eric takes my hand.  Stopping in front of a metal bench, he says, “Let’s sit here for a minute.”

We are silent, our faces mirror. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, nervously spinning his wedding ring. He pauses. “I need to say something to you.”

The bench begins to split.

“I do see it.” He raises his finger against the glare of streetlight and places it gently on my face, tracing the entire length of the scar. My body shakes. I need to leave. Now. I stand up.

“No, you’re not leaving this time.” He tugs my arm downward. My eyes narrow. I will not be forced.

He lets go. “Please.” I sit down. “Please talk to me. I’m so tired of this coming between us.” His eyes graze my scar. “Tell me the story. All of it.”

I turn away. “It’s not a pretty story.”

“Sometimes we don’t need pretty stories. We need true ones.” Time suspends for one brief moment. He holds me. We both cry together in the middle of the bench, for all the world to see.

by Jenny Wantuch

Jenny M.L. Wantuch is an artist creating figurative art using traditional media as well as digital media. Inspired by the complexity and beauty of life and nature, and her own imagination, she enjoys exploring her inner and outer world.  In her art, she seeks to find visual harmony and yet allow dynamic movement.  Jenny was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden.  From an early age, she loved to draw, paint and create stories. Her family has for generations worked as farmers, and since the 1600’s lived in the area around Uppsala. During her childhood in Sweden, Jenny spent most of her summers at the farm. She developed a deep interest and appreciation for the beauty of nature. Early influences were her grandfather, a storyteller and draftsman, her aunt, a portrait sculptor and painter, and both her grandmothers whose talents for various crafts seemed to be endless.

Jenny moved to Northern California in 2001. Jenny is a full time artist, working from her studio in Burlingame.  Jenny regularly exhibits her work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has private collectors in USA and in Europe.

For more information please visit: http://jennywantuch.com. You can also follow Jenny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JMLWantuchArt.

By Hilary Yarbrough

Artist: Hilary Yarbrough
I began drawing at a young age as a way to break down what I was taking in and to understand every moving part. As an adult, I am still breaking the world down into pieces, as a means to stop it for a moment and give an image to every story. I am self-taught, and my favorite mediums are those which are more volatile–the watercolors and inks and gouaches–because they do what they want, as opposed to the final outcome being entirely in my hands. I try to be playful–if dark–when I paint, to lessen the weight of reality, but also to remind myself that I am small and everything is fine.

Check out more of Hilary’s work at Anti Illustrator.

by John Selvidge

Rite of Spring, Reading 1:

Rite of Spring, Reading 2:

There are multiple readings. Make your own! Click here for a larger version [pdf] of Rite of Spring [4-20- (13)].

John Selvidge is a poet, writer, and salesman. A member of the Atlanta Poets Group, he currently lives in Oklahoma City

by Laura Eno

They found Bart Haskins this morning at the bottom of an old well. Called it an accidental death, but I know better. Third death this week too. They weren’t no accidents. It was the Martians that done it.

Those three men wouldn’t believe me when I said that the Martians don’t eat corn and they better plant something else. No sir, they just went right ahead and planted like they always did, but look at their crops now – withering away even as the stalks are sprouting out of the ground. ‘Course the sheriff said their crops were poisoned, but it was really the Martians and their death ray. I tell ya, you don’t want to get on those Martians’ bad side. They’re some mean, nasty critters, if you ask me.

It all started back in the fall, when I was plowing. I had me some nice straight rows in the dirt when one of their flying saucers landed right smack in the middle of my field. I was some perturbed, I’ll tell ya. A mite scared too, if truth be told. I musta blacked out, but when I woke up there were these crazy circles in my field.

My head felt none too good so I went back home to lie down. That’s when I had the dream. You see, those Martians had taken me to their flying saucer and instructed me to tell the townsfolk that Martians don’t eat corn and we should plant something else. The dream brought it all back to me.

Well, I tried to warn the others, but they told me I was crazy or drunk. Just because I have a still don’t mean I’m always drunk. I’m gonna miss the corn on account of that, but you can’t argue with a Martian.

So anyway, I figured it’s their loss if they don’t want to make the Martians happy. But now that spring’s here, people are dying and I’m right scared. The law don’t believe me, either. They locked me up this morning, said they was gonna try me for murder and destroying crops with kerosene.

They’ll see though, when all the crops are dead. Then they’ll have to listen. I know the Martians will get me out of here soon. You see, I planted me some green beans. The Martians told me they really like those.

Laura Eno lives in Florida with three skulking cats and two absurdly happy dogs. After spending years immersed in college but never figuring out what she wanted to be when she grew up, she now writes novels late at night with the help of muses from the underworld. And, no, she still hasn’t grown up but that’s okay.

She is the author of fifteen novels and novellas, ranging from fantasy to romance to horror, and has stories included in nineteen published anthologies.

Explore Laura’s work at her blog, visit her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter.