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.

Tom Quinn Kumpf

That One Small Cloud

Another day. Another clear sky except for that one small cloud hanging over Cerro Pedernal so many miles to the west. The land is parched, nearly fifteen months without any meaningful rain and yet, almost always, that one small hope hanging over Cerro Pedernal so many miles to the west.

According to normal patterns, as that one small cloud moves east it will expand and divide and fill the sky with fluffy white pillows sometime around noon. An hour or so later, updrafts will draw them together to form massive anvils, each spitting lightning and thunder and virga, heavy sheets of rain that fall toward a landscape so hot they evaporate before touching earth. As this spectacle continues, it often splits, the majority of it moving south-east towards Santa Fe while a smaller share circles around to fill our little valley with the hope of possibility.

This day, a huge swirling mass breaks off and swings much further east than normal, picking up moisture and strength as it circles, climbs, then falls upon us from the north-east, a very bad sign according to the old timers, and suddenly our little part of the universe is lost behind a whirling curtain made surreal by a thousand sun-stars and tiny rainbows dancing on the other side. The sun shines full just across the creek and the valley, the people below having little idea what’s happening up here.

I step through the door into the storm. The view across the alluvial flats towards the sand hills is like a hallucination – so off from what seems possible that it is at once confusing, frightening, yet totally incredible. The Juniper, Piñon, and Cholla stand tall, straight, fixed, while everything around them, the sand, dead brush and leaves, every visible patch of land is moving down the slope in ripples, one slippery line atop another until they form a single sheet of unimaginable measure and wonder. Standing there, under the crash of thunder and rain comes a roar from the arroyo behind me. This ancient course has not run in over eight years, not a single drop, and now it is running fast and sure, bank to bank – eight to ten feet deep, each wave cresting another, a surge so powerful, so sand laden and abrasive it strips the bark off of trees and the flesh from any creature unfortunate enough to be caught in its rush.

I watch islands of vegetation, old and new, hopelessly struggle to stay on the surface. An entire cottonwood races by, its roots pointed upstream, and then a rock, perhaps eight or more feet in diameter – but it’s the water, so thick and brown it’s like chocolate milk gone sour. Suddenly, the rain stops. The main force of the storm is now pounding the other side of the sand hills, and shortly the torrent in the arroyo subsides as well. The whole event, from start to finish, takes less than forty-five minutes, and as the last trace of water disappears, the arroyo is left as smooth and groomed as one might expect from the purity and power of water.

This day brought much needed moisture to a parched land. That one small cloud hanging over Cerro Pedernal so many miles to the west became a giant even if only for a day. A new image emerges – a vision of a landscape that expands then settles as if releasing a huge sigh of relief. In the days that follow, what has been a dry, prickly trough will be transformed by the color and scent of wild flowers and other greenery. The earth has been flushed and cleansed, a watery feast having fed the famine, and everything that has been waiting patiently for years will be given another turn at life.

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Tom Quinn Kumpf is an internationally recognized photographer, writer, and poet, and author of the award-winning books Children of Belfast, Ireland: Standing Stones to Stormont, and Two Sides: Haiku and Other Words. His work has also appeared in galleries, museums, magazines, and newspapers throughout the world. He currently lives and maintains a studio in a small village in Northern New Mexico. All photos ©Tom Quinn Kumpf

Elizabeth Bisbing

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Elizabeth Bisbing was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned her BFA in painting from Moore College of Art & Design and her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art. She has been a member of the Soho20 Gallery New York City since 2002 and has had five solo shows and participated in several group shows at the gallery. She is also affiliated with the Projects Gallery of Philadelphia where she has been in group shows and one solo exhibition. Projects Gallery brings her work to the Red Dot and Bridge Art Fairs in Miami, New York, and Chicago. She participated in The Veil: Visible & Invisible Spaces, an exhibition, which traveled across the country from 2008 through 2013. Her work has been reviewed in Art-Vetting.com, New York Sun, Distinction Magazine, and New York Magazine as well as the Lincoln County News of Damariscotta, Maine and The Garland News of Dallas, Texas. In April of 2014, her animation “The Metamorphosis” was shown in Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art Cultural Exchange and Exhibition in Shenyang, China. Her work is in many private collections as well as Rowan University’s Art Gallery permanent collection. She lives and works in New York City.

Marlow Brooks

Blue Dragon

Marlow Brooks is a calligrapher, painter, and Five Element acupuncturist and healer. After establishing herself as a painter, she began her studies of Asian calligraphy in 1981, training with Kobun Otogawa Roshi, and others. She teaches the Psychology of the Five Elements, Calligraphy, and Contemplative Arts at Naropa University and conducts private classes in calligraphy and healing. Her calligraphy has traveled since 2003 to exhibitions in China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, around the United States, and Canada. She received an outstanding award for calligraphy in Shanghai. She is a featured artist in the documentary Chinese Calligraphy in 5000 Years, which aired on CCTV throughout China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Marlow has recently published her own book, The Way Through.

To view more about her book or artwork, please visit http://www.marlowbrooks.com.

Sally Elliott

Upstream Mussels

Sally Elliott received her MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder, then taught as a college professor for many years. She has exhibited both locally and nationally and was a recipient of a fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Arts. Her paintings in gouache contain metaphors, memories and dreams and have been described as mystical and influenced by Mexican art, Tibetan Thangka paintings and Asia art. She is a member of Spark Gallery in Denver. http://www.Sallyelliottart.com

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.