Jillian LaManna, Untitled, 2020, ink and white gel pen on paper, 9 x 12 inches

“This piece for me represents how overwhelmed our planet is at the moment. The man represents the feeling of a looming darkness, yet the earth is illuminated as usual, unaware of the impending danger.”

- Jillian LaManna, 2020

Rebecca Clark, All Will Be One, 2011, graphite and colored pencil on paper, remixed with digital lens flare, 30 x 22 inches

”In the days following 9/11, leaves became maps for me, helping me navigate through the despair of losing a family member so violently. Sitting at my drawing table, still in shock, I mistook a leaf falling outside my window for a body in free fall against the bright blue September sky. I went outside and found it, an oak leaf. It was cracked and broken, like everything around me. Determined to honor its brief life, I drew the leaf, losing myself in the topography of its outstretched body, rendering every depression, crack, and tear with obsessive detail. Over the ensuing weeks and months, I drew hundreds of leaves, all unique individuals in various states of physical transition.

All Will Be One, created a decade later, is an homage and a resurrection of sorts. The gentle descent of a little oak leaf taught me an invaluable lesson about impermanence - about endless cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Leaves became my guide maps -

‘Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.’”

- Rebecca Clark, 2020
www.rebeccaclarkart.com

Elisabeth Condon, Hilltop, 2019, acrylic, calligraphy ink, and glitter on linen, 48 x 48 inches

”I chose Hilltop for this poem because it is "a world not of this world," an invented space akin to Chinese scrolls in the recreation of landscape through imagination. Hilltop combines various approaches, such as pours, wallpaper patterns, freehand gestures, and smears of glitter. It's square, which is an odd shape for landscape, but like a map lends itself to an artificial construct of what landscape can be, the kind of place entered staring into a pattern.”

- Elisabeth Condon, 2020
www.elisabethcondon.com

Nora King, The Judge, 2010, leather, muslin, cotton fabric, thread, oil paint, fur, copper wire, plastic elephant, height: 6 inches

Reading this, I started thinking about All that is hidden within myself and in the world -
I felt newly grateful for what is able to hide so that it can be taken in at a bearable pace.

I made "The Judge" years ago, after reading that elephants represent compassion in India.
Inside of him there is an old plastic elephant hiding, like an inverted Ganesh who removes obstacles - 
To help my inner judge to be kind to me and, now, to others as well.

- Nora King, 2020