'Smoke' is a single channel video piece of two characters attempting to seduce the viewer. The characters are up close and confrontational, often competing with one another for attention. It is clear that these characters are not who they appear to be and are clumsy in their own seduction as a result.

https://chloesimmons.art/

'The Only Way Is Through' is a multimedia installation consisting of three objects titled, My brother’s feet look remarkably like my mother’s did, Portrait of my mother as an empty bathtub, and I am getting my mother’s spider veins. It studies the intersection of grief and heredity as well as investigates presence and absence. The feet and leg segment castings are representations of my sibling and me exploring the traits we inherited from our mother. The bathtub stands in for her and symbolizes the womb that bore my brother and I as well as the place where she bathed us. The bathtub is empty and dry; my mother has passed but lingers on in the features she gave to us as well as these daily rituals. We all live in the shadows of loss and as we try to circumvent this inevitable grief, we realize the only way is through.

https://kelmur.com/home.html

Under the Sea

Zoe Cohen’s creative nonfiction essay “Under the Sea” was published by Adjunct Press in 2018 as a part of their Retail Labor Series. This poetic auto-ethnography documents Cohen’s time selling seashells and T-shirts at a tourist shop in Key West, FL. Copies are available at: https://adjunctpress.com/chapbooks/retail-labor-series/

I painted this watercolor thinking about my role as the mother of a young girl on the cusp of being pre-pubescent. In it she stands next to her younger sibling, both in their swimwear, but hers is distinctly feminine, and her sibling's is that typically thought of as masculine: shorts and swim shirt. The contrast between their bodies' presentations as subjects for the gaze of strangers is what interests me in this moment.

http://www.noeljoyash.com/

'Archive' is a series of pieces handwoven using a digital loom which recreate archival documents in fabric. The process of weaving renders the text unreadable, and gives a material dimension to the recognition of writing on a page.

https://www.amandathatch.com/

Works Cited

My final paper explored the genesis of postcritque as a movement aiming to adjust or refocus the practice of critique and proposed a model that embraced the imaginative potential of both the artist and the critic. This Works Cited represents a small sample of the nodes of thought in this conversation.

Dark Comedy

A young, bisexual love triangle is reaching domestic crisis in the grey cold of a Chicago Christmas Eve. After years of channeling his discontent into his writing, the cynical Xavier can no longer bear Hadley's repeated absences as she travels the world with her much older, richer husband; Hadley's fear of dividing herself between who she loves and who gives her financial freedom is becoming the constant target of Xavier's piercing wit; and lovable, pragmatic Jacob is growing tired of being the glue which holds their hectic troika together. As if this weren't enough, the throuple must juggle a lost pet, endless cups of whiskey, and a futile effort to finish watching Casablanca. In a shameless look at contradictions and comedy of millennial love, The Book of Us invites us to consider what pieces we give to each other and which we selfishly insist are our own.

'The Power of the Stars is Restored' is the beginning of an investigation into answering what is queer haunting? And how can queer individuals use haunting as healing? This work engages explicitly with the past, particularly legacies of trauma, through a personal lens filled with melancholy and hope. It reflects upon and depicts the often troubled spaces, physical and psychological, of queer identity. Glitter, the color pink, snapshots, toys, and tools all operate as stereotyped signifiers in order to access peculiar modes of memory, masculinity, and history.

https://www.conleyclark.com/

‘Impact in Color and Form’ is a project which transforms the typeface Impact from computer code to Adobe Illustrator. The computer code was written in a program language called Processing. The code uses random settings for color and orientation. I then created a complete alphabet which was imported into Illustrator for color and form to be adjusted. The Illustrator output was then used to create patterns and designs. Other results are shown at www.paulbulgin.com