Sherry Wiggins

Sounds of the Ocean

Sounds of the Ocean

Lemon Tree for Suhair

I made Sounds of the Ocean in 2006 when I was traveling and working in the West Bank in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. I interviewed Palestinians for this project ─ many of whom have become good friends ─ with questions from people in the U.S. The most poignant questions I asked were “What is your dream and what is your idea of paradise?” When I asked these questions of Suhair, who lives in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank, she answered that she wanted to hear the sound of the ocean and have a lemon tree in her garden. Suhair lives in a refugee camp near Bethlehem that is 30 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. She is not allowed access to the ocean nor does she have space in her cramped home in the camp for a lemon tree. Her answer and the answers of other Palestinians struck me strongly. When I returned to the U.S., I performed a ritual on the coast in Oregon. I placed different objects in a golden frame on an artist’s easel by the ocean to reflect the dreams of the Palestinians with whom I had spoken. First I placed the open golden frame, then I placed a painting of a lemon tree for Suhair, then I placed a Palestinian flag for Joseph, who wanted “peace anywhere.” Finally I placed a portrait of Taghrid, who wanted to “be able to travel freely and to study.” These dreams are still unfulfilled for my friends in Palestine almost 10 years later.

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Sherry Wiggins combines the mediums of sculpture, installation, photography, film, drawing and painting. Her work is reflective, often participatory, and rooted within cultural difference, spiritual transformation, and women’s issues. Wiggins is currently working on a multi-faceted international project in which she researches and embodies the work of various remarkable women artists of the 20th century. Wiggins exhibits nationally and internationally from her home base of Boulder, Colorado.

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LouAnn Shepard Muhm

LouAnn Shepard Muhm is a poet and teacher from northern Minnesota. Her poems have appeared in Dust & Fire, The Talking Stick, North Coast Review, Alba, Red River Review, Eclectica, Poems Niederngasse, and CALYX, among other journals and anthologies. She was a finalist for the Creekwalker Poetry Prize, the Late Blooms Postcard Series and the Midwest Book Award for Poetry, for her full-length poetry collection Breaking the Glass (Loonfeather Press, 2008). She received the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Poetry in 2006 and 2012, and has been featured twice in “What Light” poetry sponsored by the McKnight Foundation and the Walker Art Museum. http://www.louannmuhm.com

Alan Montgomery

Deep Water Horizon

Alan Montgomery was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and is a tenured professor of Art at Dakota State University. His work was recently published in Henry Sayre’s seventh edition of A World of Art, published by Pearson Higher Education 2012. In a 1994 essay, “The Fragility of Connectedness,” Akira Lippit writes about Montgomery’s work as “exploring the connection between the physical reality of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, and the metaphysical content of Montgomery’s series, Irish History Lessons, which continues to manifest itself in drawings and paintings.”

Montgomery’s interests reside in topical issues ranging from environmental to socio-political and his formal application of materials reflects a contemporary approach to mixed media and traditional techniques. Place and time have been very important in the development of his work. “I would like viewers to see something they have not seen before,” he says. “I want to provide an experience that can be recognized as authentic and real, that is, a thought that inscribes itself onto the psyche.”

Helen Zughaib

Moonlight Fishing

A recollection of days gone by before Kuwait struck it rich with oil. Pearl diving is now just a highly respected folkloric celebration to remind the younger generation of the old days. Moonlight Fishing is a paean to a vanished tradition, a vanished resource.

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and lived mostly in the Middle East and Europe before coming to the United States to study art. She received her BFA from Syracuse University, College of Visual and Performing Arts. She paints using gouache and ink on board, transforming her subjects into a combination of colors and patterns, creating a nontraditional sense of space and perspective.

Zughaib has exhibited widely in New York and the Washington D.C. area. Her paintings are included in more than 80 private and public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, United States Consulate General, Vancouver, Canada, American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Michigan. Most recently, she served as United States Cultural Envoy to the West Bank, Palestine.

Zughaib feels that her background in the Middle East allows her to approach the experiences she has in the U.S. in a unique way, remaining an observer of both the Arab and American cultures. She believes that the arts are one of the most important tools we have to help shape and foster dialogue and positive ideas about the Middle East.

Hopefulness, healing, and spirituality, are all themes that are woven into her work.

Moonlight Fishing, 24 x 24, gouache on board, collection of Russ Conlan and Doug Hansen.

E.J. McAdams

E.J. McAdams lives in Ward’s Island Sewershed in NYC with his wife and three children. You can read an interview at http://theconversant.org/?p=3858 or read a poem at http://www.thevolta.org/heirapparent-issue19-ejmcadams.html.