“My art fuses my love for animals, concern about the welfare of the planet and twisted sense of humor. I call my work ‘environmental surrealism.’ Influences include kitschy portrayals of animals from mass-marketed popular culture, the nightmarish imagery of Hieronymus Bosch, Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak, the writings of Edward Abbey, and my work as a wildlife rehabilitator.”

To see more of the artist’s work, visit her website at http://www.michellewatersart.com/index.html

OR contact the artist by email at michelle@michellewatersart.com

Continue reading →

www.princeillustration.com

“I’m from a family of artists and have drawn since I was a child. I’ve made a living as an illustrator and a syndicated newspaper cartoonist while showing my art at galleries and cafes. I try to maintain an edge between the real and abstract in my work where I am able to maintain the creative mystery that leads to discovery.”

-Winthrop Prince

Berkeley, CA

winthropp54@yahoo.com

The Cathedral

We have created these vaulted spaces,

vibrating with the immaculate and

tacit, the phi reflected in man. Musk

and incense, conduits of memories

embedded in bark and marble, hover

like cleansing steam in a Turkish bathhouse,

suffocating and blurring to inspire

pristine aspirations to the golden

unknown. The aurelian chiming, sapphire

light, all is gold, all is perfect, all is

curling in the smoky quartz of beaded

chanting, and Dorian moans entreaty

prisms from glass tableaus to bless the flesh

charred by transgression. The petrified bones

of those more perfect, their immaculate

clavicles and lunar ulnae, we place

them in the hearts of our altars, to pump

our salted blood, to offer up our souls,

to graze the infinite with flinching clay

Laura Roberts is a poetess that is dedicated to unfettered creativity.  To contact her about her poetry, send an email to lauraellaroberts@gmail.com.

Continue reading →

www.jjpakola.com

“I remember being in Tokyo taking the last train home from work. Due to the train’s congestion, the nine closest passengers were all pressing against me. If there were a way to lift my feet, the throng of commuters would have surely supported my weight. While floating without any control within this vessel, I remembered a passage from Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s novel The Melancholy of Resistance depicting the physical decay of a body. Over a number of pages, Krasznahorkai obsessively describes decomposition. Layer after layer of the body deteriorates letting fluids and cells loose until they meet another resisting force. Being still and yet in no control of my body, I remained enclosed in a train moving along its trajectory without remorse.

Drawing from moments like this, I charge the scenery of my large-scale watercolor landscapes with what fills the gap between specific experiences and their concurrent thoughts. What interests me in these events is the dislocation that occurs from the sensation of occupying multiple locations simultaneously. The grammar of space is fractured, and the route through this terrain is disorienting and full of obstacles. Each position must fight, debate, and negotiate to form interconnecting paths. I have to adjust and move around the surface to paint new passageways around barriers linking the space and the event as a whole. This attempt to understand what joins cognition to an environment often proves to be futile. Rather than looking for truth with this exploration, I am painting to be surprised by the failure to understand my orientation to setting and place.”

-JJ Miyaoka Pakola

jjpakola@gmail.com

Shanna Leino lives and works in New Hampshire. Materials such as linen and handmade paper are often used, which results in the natural quality of the work.  Leino describes her work as incorporating “…historical techniques and materials while bringing in my own love of tinkering and finding different ways to expand on the book as an object.”

Be sure to check out www.shannaleino.com and www.strikemetals.com.

Contact: info@shannaleino.com

Night School

“I can’t stay
for class tonight;
my eleven year old son has
been arrested for murder,”
matter-of-factly she murmurs,
pleasant of voice, expression,
as my eyes widen, widen
headache and hot-air balloon size
at just-another-distant-horror-story
that this time
has intersected my life,
breaking and entering
those insulating layers
of facelessness, namelessness,
and distance
that shelter my sanity
from the macabre dance
of the daily news.

The story is absurdly quick
and random: Night concert–
a father waits for his family.
Kids hit his car.
He gets out; they stab once.
He dies; they run,
while inside his daughter
coaxes her trumpet
to a joyous concert crescendo–
oblivious to her father,
dead,
outside.

Bruce Roberts is a poet, retired teacher, and past Synchronized Chaos contributor. He may be reached at brobe60491@sbcglobal.net.

Continue reading →

Jack Androvich has been a photographer since the age of 13. Androvich is influenced by other photographers such as Minor White, Eugene Atget, Man Ray, Jerry Uelsmann, and Bill Owens. Over time, he developed an intense fascination with photo montage, mannequins, reflections, and the manner by which they often blur what we tend to perceive as reality.

Each of the images you see are entirely unaltered to best express the notion of simultaneous occurrences in the universe, alternative realities, shadow worlds and the like.

E-mail jack.androvich@sbcglobal.net for more information.