SEB6

KPG6 Rosehip

RFK6

F WORD WARNING

Tim Fellows on RFK6

Merril D Smith Kevin Macalan

Bios And Links

Karen Pierce Gonzalez

is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous print and online publications, radio shows, and podcasts. Her chapbooks include Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs (Kelsay Books), True North and Sightings from a Star Wheel (Origami Poems Project), and forthcoming Down River with Li Po (Black Cat Poetry Press). Writing credits also include several short plays staged through Fringe Festival of Marin (USA).

With degrees in creative writing, anthropological linguistics, and folklore, she is also a former journalist and folklore columnist who now hosts a quarterly ‘Get Ekphrastic with Folk Art’ blogzine on FolkHeart Press. Other current projects include a series of videos based upon 1) original folktales/legends and 2) imagined prequels/sequels to fables and fairy tales.

Her visual artistry focuses primarily upon assemblage art based upon elements found in nature (tree bark, bird nests, etc.). To date, 50+ of her art pieces, including six cover images, have been or are scheduled to be published in a range of literary journals/magazines.

And she gets to do all that in the verdant rural landscape of San Francisco’s North Bay.

Links: linktr.ee/KPGFolkHeart

Sara Elizabeth Bell

Artist Statement:

Sara Bell has always drawn. As a child, her mother would say, “Go to your room and DRAW something!” when Sara needed a break. She later earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, moved to  Northern California, and had 2 children.

Now, she lives in Western North Carolina and embodies the John Muir quote, “And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.” She ventures off into the mountains and off the beaten path to find beautiful, peaceful places to sit and draw. This provides her with respite from her main task of caring for her autistic son. Then she can return to the hustle and bustle of her world with a clearer mind and peaceful soul. She also develops and completes the drawings using water to lift the inks and watercolor techniques to add color. Once complete, her images capture the beauty and peace of being in the woods

Most recently Sara has been working in a variety of water based mediums. Her primary modality is to go out into the woods, find a magical place that calls to be drawn and sketch it using water based ink pens. Then she returns to the studio and uses layers of water colors and other inks to fully develop the image capturing the peace and beauty of the natural world.

At other times, Sara returns to the discipline of  detailed watercolor painting, drawing and intaglio printmaking to develop her images further. Allowing her to explore deeper themes inspired by her exploration of Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart and the therapeutic journey she has been on with her ausome son and her neurotypical daughter.

Sara says: “ I hope you can look at my images and find yourself reminded of being in the wild places and through that, connect with the natural peace being in the presence of trees can provide.” 

Robert Frede Kenter

is a multiple-pushcart-nominated poet, writer, visual artist and the publisher/EIC of Ice Floe Press (www.icefloepress.net) whose work explores relationships between illness, disability, family & social histories, climate change, dystopia, myths, dreams, hallucinations and the sacred. Robert’s drawings & paintings are collected internationally, & Robert is currently working on a number of upcoming collaborations and VISPO projects exploring hybridity, colour fields, collage, and reader-response links between abstraction and modes of representation. Robert is a participant in the ongoing Wombwell Rainbow Forms-Challenge project and was a writer in the 2023 WR National Poetry Month project. Recently work in: Storms Journal, Otoliths, Fevers Of the Mind , Acropolis Journal, Street Cake Magazine, Watch Your Head, and many other venues, both in-print and online. In anthologies recently incl.: Recalibrating the Pain Scale (Olney Books, 2023), Seeing in Tongues (Steel Incisors, 2023), Glisk and Glimmer (Sidhe Press, 2023), Deep Time 1 (Black Bough, 2021).  Books: EDEN/vispo (2021);  Audacity of Form (Ice Floe Press, 2019). Robert lives with ME/CFS, is sometimes down but never out of the game. Twitter: @frede_kenter. IG: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, icefloe22.