Doug Dabbs is a comic book artist, illustrator, and university professor who has taught visual storytelling and illustration in higher education for over a decade. His comic book artwork has been published by Image Comics, Oni Press, 12 Gauge Comics, and Desperado Publishing, and his work has been displayed in over 30 national and international exhibitions; most recently the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum (South Korea), Shockboxx Gallery (California) and the National Gallery of North Macedonia. His work has been featured in numerous juried art publications including ArtAscent Art and Literature Journal, Coffin Bell Journal, Brightness Magazine, High Shelf, Pittville Press, and Sand Hills Literary Magazine. Additionally, his work has been recognized by international illustration competitions including American Illustration, 3×3, Cheltenham Illustration Awards, Brightness Illustration Awards, Creative Quarterly, and Communication Arts. Dabbs’ artwork and research focus on methods of visual storytelling through the exploration of the human figure and environments. His art isn’t about perfecting each mark individually, but instead, using collective mark-making to communicate themes, emotions, and narratives. He investigates the effects positive and negative space have on compositions, mood, and storytelling, and how these components invite active viewer participation and analysis. He is interested in challenging traditional illustrative rendering methods that typically rely on color. Utilizing arguably one of the more vulnerable art approaches—black and white line art—marks cannot be hidden by additional media and color applications. The result is an intimate view of his hand and vision that is not obscured by further rendering.
Paul Rabinowitz is an author, photographer, and founder of ARTS By The People, a non-profit arts organization based in New Jersey. Through all mediums of art Paul aims to capture real people, flaws and all. He focuses on details that reveal the true essence of a subject, whether they be an artist he’s photographing or a fictional character he’s bringing to life on the page. Paul’s photography, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in many magazines and journals including New World Writing, Pif Magazine, Courtship of Winds, Burningword, Evening Street Press, The Montreal Review, The Metaworker, Adirondack Review, Bangalore Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Oddville Press and others. Paul was a featured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020, nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 for his Limited Light photo series, and also nominated for the Maria Mazziotti Gillan Literary Service Award. Paul is the author of Limited Light, a book of prose and portrait photography, and a novella, The Clay Urn. Paul is working on his novel Confluence, and has completed a poetry collection called truth, love, and the lines in between. His short stories, Little Gem Magnolia, Villa Dei Misteri, Indigo and Half Moon and Poems in Morning Light With Cat are the inspiration for 4 short films. Villa Dei Misteri won Best Experimental Film at the RevolutionMe International Film Festival in 2021. Paul has produced mixed media performances and poetry films that have appeared on stages and in theaters in New York City, New Jersey, Tel Aviv, and Paris. Paul is a written word performer and founder of The Platform, a monthly literary series in New Jersey, and Platform Review, a journal of voices and visual art from around the world. Paul’s videos, photography, and poems appeared in his first solo show called Retrospective With Reading Glasses at CCM Gallery in New Jersey. He is currently at work co-writing a television series with author Erin Jones called Bungalow.
Sonograms use sound waves to show an image of the body’s internal worlds, but the possibilities don’t end there. The envelope, the trashcan, the glass jar – these too are bodies, if a body refers to a container of worlds. What then can serve as their sonogram, their mechanism for translating, displaying, opening up those worlds to us (or to themselves, assuming they had the desire)? Sound is neither stagnant nor singular by nature. It happens as a chain of events, from a source, which emits a vibration, to its propagation through solid, liquid or gas, to its reception by our ears and then our brains. For sound to happen, many things must happen; ears alone are not enough. For us to see beyond what is there, many things must happen; eyes alone are not enough. Yet we, and everything around us, produce the invisible, inaudible layered understandings we seek. Birth is legible: It is what it is. Sonograms, meanwhile, elude us: It is what it could be. Tiffany Mi is an emerging image-maker whose work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine and Chitro Magazine. She tweets @mi_tiff.
Marina Klutse is a New York-born artist with Ghanaian and Haitian roots. Her work questions the ideas of freedom, constraints, expectations, and taking up space through the lens of race, nationality, and identity. As a Black person, who are you allowed to be, and what opportunities are you afforded. Do you get space to exist with the freeness to be introspective, explore the world, have rest, joy, or simply exist. When and where do those luxuries exist, especially for Black individuals? Sometimes you just have to take it. Her art is about taking up space physically, mentally, and emotionally. She focuses on individuals from marginalized groups who demand the freeness to be introspective, travel the world, and insist on taking moments for peace, rest, joy, or play despite the limitations and expectations.
Lisa Rigge is an artist living in Pleasanton, CA. These photographs are part of her black and white series titled “Sacred Pause”. Her articles, poetry and journal writing have been published in Passager Books Pandemic Diaries, Dream Time Magazine, and The Rose in the World. She is also a photographer whose photographs have been published in The Sun Magazine, Lens Work, and Passager Books Pandemic Diaries. Along with writing and photography, she enjoys hiking with her husband and new dog, Sheeba.
Jeremiah Gilbert is an award-winning photographer and travel writer based out of Southern California. He likes to travel light and shoot handheld. His travels have taken him to nearly a hundred countries and territories around the globe. His photography has been published internationally, in both digital and print publications, and has been exhibited worldwide, including in Leica’s LFI Gallery. His hope is to inspire those who see his work to look more carefully at the world around them in order to discover beauty in unusual and unexpected places. He is the author of the collection Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel and the forthcoming From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start. He can be found on Instagram @jg_travels
Featuring:
Issue 107, published July 2023, features works of poetry, flash fiction, short nonfiction, and photography by JC Alfier, Linda K Allison, David Blumenfeld, Rose Mary Boehm, A. Cabrera, Tetman Callis, Megan Cartwright, George Choundas, Michael Crowley, James William Gardner, Kaisha A. Girard, Jaime Greenberg, Tae Won Kim, Rebecca Klassen, Amy S. Lerman, Anne McCrady, Anna B. Moore, Donna Obeid, Terry a. O'Neal, Geon Park, Dian Parker, Sara Pirkle, Christy Prahl, Niles Reddick, Nicolas Ridley, Claire Scott, Patricia L. Scruggs, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Erika Seshadri, george l stein, Eric Fisher Stone, The Nature and Psyche Project, Scott Urquhart, Viviane Vives, Emma Wells, and Stephen Curtis Wilson.
