“Have you heard back from the artist on this one yet?”

My voice was pitched to sound detached, but I knew I couldn’t entirely hide the hope for a negative answer.

One look from me to the portrait was all it took. “Nope, and it’s been long enough I think you’re okay to take it.”

Her shrug clinched it for me. After all, she was the advisor of our group, so that was all the permission I needed.

Though that was more than three years ago, the picture still hangs on my wall. I never bothered framing it, because for some reason it didn’t seem like something you’d encase in wood and show off. It was more of a personal picture than that. You wouldn’t hang this up in your living room and tell people, “Oh yes, we were at such-and-such place and we saw it and just had to have it.”

I’m not one of those people. I’ve never had a room of mine decorated because when you move more often than you’d ever thought possible, why put down roots and claim a space as your own when you know that it’ll be soon enough that those same walls will be bare again, and your stuff will be packed up in boxes?

As I lay there the other night, waiting for my boyfriend to finish his before-bedtime ritual, I stared at the picture, thinking. It was one of those moments where you seem to turn your focus inward and upon all those thoughts tugging at the back of your eye sockets, and the outside world goes somewhere else until you’re jerked back to reality.

I was thinking the many thoughts I always seem to think when I’m trying to relax, when I realized that the picture had three girls in it, not two, as I had first and until that point observed.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the orientation of the girls. Each face was pointed in a different direction. The main focus of the portrait is one girl in particular, who is staring out of the truck window towards the viewer, with a thoughtful expression on her face. On her left is another girl who is looking out her window, in the exact opposite direction of her fellow bench seat mate. Lo and behold, in between them both is a little girl who is looking forward. She is the one I missed all these years.

And now, thinking about it, it’s rather ironic. You see, my focus has always been upon the past and the future, because I dwell too much on both in equal fashion. I’ve told you about my inability to

Now I realize that there is a small girl looking forward—in the present—and perhaps a bit of destiny, too. A divine intervention saying, “Hey!”

I think I’m beginning to learn.

Looking back at the portrait now, I wish I would have read the artist’s statement. Were they trying to evoke the essence of time, as I interpreted it? At the same time, I think that’s the point of art—to inspire another just as the artist himself or herself was inspired.

For now, I’m still keeping the picture and it still hangs on my wall. I foresee we might be moving in the next year or so, but that’s still uncertain at this point. What I do know is that the picture will most likely come with us. In the event I don’t need it anymore, we’ll find a new home for it.

Strange, isn’t it? How one image can make a difference in our lives, no matter what the subject. What images inspire you? Which ones do you hold dear or hold messages that drive you forward?

Rebecca Henderson holds a Master’s in German and a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing. Best expressing herself through the written word, she enjoys the smell of burning rubber and can recite the ABC’s of the automotive world upon command. Rebecca hopes to shift your world perspective through her words, because looking out the same window every day hardly makes for an interesting life.

The post One Portrait Over Time appeared first on Newfound.

I truly believe it is an art form that is dying for the wrong reasons.

Soaps started on radio as serial dramas then moved to television, intentionally being slow moving and repetitive for those who stayed at home doing housework. The storylines were easily followed sp housework could be completed, and since the major sponsors were manufacturers like Lever, Colgate, Palmolvie and Procter & Gamble, the nickname “soap opera” was born.

They have a bad reputation, though. In today’s fast-paced society, slow moving television is turning into a thing of the past. Daytime dramas turned into faster moving evening dramas. Satires depict soap operas as unoriginal, predictable, and cheesy. If you really think about it, soaps helped shape the art in evening drama.

And that art in daytime drama is certainly still there. I feel the art is under-appreciated.

I watch “General Hospital.” There’s history in the characters that have taken 20 years to develop. I grew up with the children on the show, watched them fall in love and have their hearts broken, and even lived with them as their parents divorced and remarry three times. I am not sure what I would do if I couldn’t keep watching these characters grow!

As an art, there are so many things that go into soap operas. The outfits, make-up, and hair are always spot on. Characters yell, cry, and slap each other, but their hair never is a mess. The set design allows for beautiful scenery, comfortable houses, a dream come true.

As a writer, I am obsessed with the writing. I’ve been known to yell EMMY EMMY EMMY!, after hearing fantastic monologues. I know that the words are brought to life by the actors and actresses. I didn’t just yell Emmy! because of the masterful, talented, and clever writing. I yelled it for the masterful, talented, and clever actors and actresses portraying the words and bringing them to life.

Aside from the art, I also realized how the dramas bring people, real people, together. I often have conversations with family members, coworkers, and friends about the show. I love getting random messages like “Are you caught up on ‘General Hospital?’ I need to talk about what happened!” I also love meeting people who haven’t seen it in a while and they ask questions about story lines and are happy in saying, “I’m glad some things never change.”

Soap operas hold a place in a lot of our hearts. They bring people together. And they certainly still hold talented artists, from set design to writers to actors and actresses. It’s an art form I will always show support for!

Megan Andreuzzi is an animal lover and a traveler from the New Jersey Shore. She earned a degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA in Liberal Studies with a dual concentration in writing and a minor in theater.

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Writers of all ranks came together and decided that they must work harder than ever to ridicule, satirize and attack the new political world. They had not voted for things like Brexit and Trump, and these ideas were not only the annoying chirps of uninformed, they were the enemy of liberal, innovative art.

The call has been renewed with strength as rumors and reports about the Trump administration’s cuts to domestic cultural programs have caused worry for a number of arts funding organizations. Arts civilize the nation and The arts helps us see our faults and understand people who aren’t us, are just two of the comments I found on news stories about these cuts.

Both are true enough. Yet both seem irrelevant too. To the questions, Will we lose art? Will these ideals die? Does Trump even care? the answers, of course, must be no. Trump cannot kill art with cuts, and probably has no inclination to. Anyone who cries out in lamentation at the civility we might lose as a result is as delusional as he is.

Money has been lost, not art. That’s what happens when you elect a president who doesn’t read. Even Bush paints, for goodness’ sake.

So let’s not get hysterical. Is it as bad as we are making out? Perhaps yes, for small city arts projects and those that require funding to study their craft. But they will not be beaten, I’m sure.

The larger problem is when, in a state of delirium and fear, the art world claims that the most powerful weapon against an unstable government is a creative one. This suggests that journalism has run its course and is not relevant in the fight for truth. It’s part of a reactionary impulse to declare a new renaissance, in which art alone has the moral power to gas the cockroaches and reveal the president’s irrational actions. It is not necessarily a helpful impulse.

This is desperate thinking and assumes too much on the power of fiction writing.

I’m not suggesting that fiction writers should turn the other cheek to a regime that looks to harm them. I’m not denying that the cuts are ignorant or that fiction is a brutally powerful thing. I am suggesting that we need to know when to bow down to more effective powers.

Let me concede to a better spokesman for a moment: Ian McEwan puts it much better than I could.

I went to a reading of his only days after the election, expecting it to be a Trump-free zone. Any hope of that was dashed when a questioner asked McEwan what the literary world was supposed to do to counteract such indifference to the truth.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “Fiction takes time, to read and to write. What we need now is journalism. Good, well-researched journalism is the only thing that will work.”

It’s difficult to argue with this. Where fiction writing is driven by the general desire for innate truth, journalism has a desire to reveal the pressing, contemporary truth. This is the truth that can bring down dictators.

It may feel like effective nonfictional truth-telling is a dying art nowadays, or an art that is being murderously strangled. (See: Trump being impervious to any sickening revelations that come to light) Still, good journalism is the only thing that will work.

Even with Trump’s belief that he can make things true just by saying them, even with trust in the media fluctuating like a faulty heart monitor, even though the glee that comes with writing a dystopia in a first-person Trump voice is addictive and thrilling, we must remind ourselves that good journalism is the only thing that will work if we want political lies to be challenged.

Fiction, with all of its strength, will never be anything more than a supplement in the fight against a political machine built on lies, because it can always be accused of being inherently one-sided. It is, ultimately, the opinions of one person, no matter how well it is presented.

Good journalism, however, is not so easy to dismiss. It takes an effort on the part of these liars to do so, and it will tire them. There is a limit to how much the denial of facts can empower a leader, because facts will continue to be, whether denied or not, and empirical research and well-evidenced investigations are what set that limit.

There are problems, of course, and they are largely the same problems that come with politically engaged fiction. If someone is not inclined to believe what an article says to begin with, then they are unlikely to believe even the coldest statistics that a long form news piece is filled with. This is exactly what we have seen happening over the past year.

But there is a positive side to this. This biased mindset filters out those few who will never change their minds. I believe that over time, their indifference to genuine intellectual investigation will become less and less acceptable as the truth becomes more obvious. Eventually, with enough persistence, this rinse and repeat tactic will bring the trust in real journalism back and those with no interest in the truth will disappear altogether.

So now is not the time for art to be revered and journalists to be booed and hissed. It is time for those with the inclination to write the truth to do it, and those who want to write fiction to support, fund and fight for the empowerment of objective and rational journalism. The only thing that will work.

Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and now lives in the UK. He divides his time between writing fiction, non-fiction and drawing comics.Josh King received his MFA from Adelphi University in New York, and currently lives in the UK. He divides his time between writing fiction, non-fiction and drawing comics.

The post Why We Must Prioritize Journalism Over Fiction, No Matter How Much It Hurts appeared first on Newfound.

Unfortunately, I live in a part of the world that gets a very real winter. Short days, snow, clouds covering the sun. Chafed ankles from snow boots. Chilled red ears from a biting wind.

This is the time of year when we make resolutions to do better, be better. I’m going to try to think better. I will try to enjoy being indoors more, and take more opportunities to create. Sitting at a table. Knitting by a fire.

Here are ways to praise indoor spaces:

 
Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since.

The post In Praise of Indoor Spaces: A Photo Essay appeared first on Newfound.

In heavier times, the smallest gesture of courtesy or compassion can feel like a breath of fresh air. It may be what gets someone through the day, or the week, or the month. Or even the year.

Likewise, when we function optimally in a happy zone, it behooves us to observe with empathy the people around us. You can never be sure what unspoken sufferings and frustrations trouble the lives of our significant others, friends, family, coworkers, friendquaintances, or perfect strangers.

In our busy U.S. culture (especially in the Northeast, from whence I hail), we’d do better to offer one another more daily acts of simple kindness. Offer your subway seat to a pregnant woman. Help someone carry their grocery bags to their destination. Ask your depressed coworker, “How are you?” Smile at a stranger. Hold the elevator for someone. Hold the door for someone. Let a fellow driver into your lane; yes, even during rush hour. These very simple acts cultivate a culture of kindness that all can benefit from both as giver and receiver, no matter how happy or unhappy we are.

Additionally, practicing kindness opens us to the broader human experience, which better informs our creation of art. Science agrees this is good for our own selves, too. Artists, specifically writers, tend toward inwardness, and like all people, we have issues which can be somewhat alleviated by our own benevolence. Researchers at the University of British Columbia found socially anxious people felt their unquiet significantly alleviated, and an increase in  positive mood by regularly doing things for others. Altruism is for your self-preservation, conscious or not.

To get specific, psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California Riverside found that doing a kind deed once a week leads to a greater sense of overall happiness. Once a week!? And this deed can, over time, increase lifespan and life satisfaction. Sign me up. And remind me of this post mid-Winter, when I’m dragging myself around in a seasonal affective disorder slump.

Lauren Kronisch is a nutrition nerd by day, writer by night. With degrees in history and nutritional science, when she’s not counseling clients to eat a balanced diet, you’ll find her traveling the world’s mountaintops or chomping on dark chocolate while writing poetry, creative non-fiction, and nutrition articles.

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Kuma Kitsune is a mixed-media artist and photographer living in Portland, OR. Her work incorporates a diversity of materials, such as fabric, projection film, tiny shreds of paper — and, in her most recent installment, other people’s poetry. More of her work can be seen here.

E. D. Watson: Your current work, A Walk Through the Looking Glass, is an assemblage of twenty-four individual pieces, titled with fragments of poetry produced by Hafiz, Ray Bradbury, Mary Oliver, Rimbaud and Lewis Carroll, which form a corresponding poem. Viewers are then invited to re-position the works and create their own poem from the new arrangement of the titles. Can you talk a little bit about how literature influences your work, and how you came to select these particular, seemingly disparate, writers?

Kuma Kitsune: I think what most influences my work is the Surrealistic concept of unleashing the unconscious. A huge component of what came out of that movement was literature. I mean technically, the poet Paul Breton fathered the notion of Surrealism — and in a mental ward at that, mind you. Breton had this idea that poetry in essence could be a vehicle of knowledge in of itself. And like many poets past and present, Breton was greatly influenced by Rimbaud.

So, there is the Rimbaud link. I felt it a travesty not to include him. Rimbaud shaping Breton, Breton shaping Surrealism, Surrealism shaping my work, my work attempting to shape how we perceive each other.  Since the piece itself is a play on the socio-psychological construct, the Looking Glass Self, I selected authors who have in part shaped the “self” to which I most relate in order to excavate self-knowledge in hopes that this part of myself may transcend the expression itself and the participant’s interaction to create a new reality of self-awareness.

EDW: How much is your work influenced by what you’re currently reading?

KK: A ton. Absolutely a ton. I read constantly and often many books simultaneously. I tend to gravitate towards non-fiction, mainly neuroscience and psychology more than anything else. There is so much inspiration embedded in something so seemingly technical. I too feel that plumbing the depths of the brain is a necessary exercise to cultivate true artistic expression or rather a way to exhume and free the spiritual self.

EDW: Do you also write?

KK: Somewhat. I dabble. I love poetry because in some ways it is akin to songwriting (my preferred method of writing).  Also, songs and poems can hold my attention much better than writing a short story or a novel. I have mad respect for those individuals who can preform this feat, such as Bradbury or Carroll. In my opinion, good poetry (and lyrics for that matter) can offer a unique temporal map to the spirit of the author. In these forms of expression, that raw power is harnessed by using form, which oddly frees it and keeps it uninhibited, which is what we see in Hafiz or Oliver.

EDW: I recently read an article by a poet and practitioner of Buddhism that suggested writing poetry as a way of being in the moment. The idea was that what we think of as mundane or sacred is only a matter of perception and engagement. Is this similar to your experience when taking a photograph?

KK: Can I get the name of this poet? But to answer your question, absolutely, yes, this is similar. Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It’s putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.”

I couldn’t agree with this statement more. I definitely feel that taking photos heightens my awareness of the present because it constantly keeps me open to the possibility of these fractional moments of beauty and meaning. Sometimes it can be downright compulsive, in that I’ll see something striking out of the corner of my eye and might make a decision to pass it by but a split-second later there is the internal nudge to turn around and capture it. I’m sure I have puzzled many passersby when I do this.  It’s not uncommon for me to make a U-ey and pull over to the side of the road to be present to moment — safely, of course.

EDW: The article was in an old issue of Shambhala Sun; I’ll see if I can find the writer’s name for you. One last question: You tend not to photograph people, but natural spaces or places recently vacated by people. Can you talk about the significance of place and space in your photography?

KK: I find environment a fascinating subject and medium. One of the founding
theories in the field of psychological epigenetics posits that our biological
composition does not hold us hostage or define us; it is malleable and shaped by
our interactions with our environment (physical, cultural, spiritual). In this way I
am very motivated to express various aspects of environment; I feel place and
space are fundamental to this pursuit.

As a visual artist, my hope hinges on the
possibility of change or shift in how the world around us is perceived. The importance lies in the subtext of these images; what is interpreted as negative
space is as equally important as what is interpreted as visible. I find this extremely similar to the way that what is often left unsaid in a poem or story is often more important than what is said. Our brains do so much to fill in the gaps and it’s in these gaps I personally see so much promise.

Kuma Kitsune’s work, A Walk Through the Looking Glass, can currently be seen at Portland’s Three Rivers Gallery.

E. D. Watson is Newfound’s Blog Editor. A writer by day and a library clerk by night, her stories have appeared in Bodega, [PANK], Narrative, and THIS., among other publications. She eats cheddar-and-mayonnaise sandwiches when no one is looking.

The post Unleashing the Unconscious: Poetry, Place and Neuroscience in the Art of Kuma Kitsune appeared first on Newfound.

I didn’t—because I teach at a private preschool.

That morning I spent time trying to find the right picture of Martin Luther King Jr. for the kids to color. I was looking for something that portrayed him well, and that might occupy a four-year-old for ten to fifteen minutes. The fact that I’m trained in art also complicated the process, I’m sure.

After finding that glorious page, I drove relatively traffic-free streets. I didn’t have to slow in the normal places for school zones. The weather was nice, with no trouble on the horizon.

After the kids colored the picture, I taught them about Martin Luther King, a man I consider to be one of the great American heroes. I wanted the children to understand why he has a day in his honor. I wanted them to understand King’s message and why that message is so important, but I realized they are only four.

My dilemma was how to bring it down to their level. I did my best by reducing his message to three basic points.

First, be nice to people who look different than you.

Second, be nice to people who are different than you.

Third, be nice to people who have different opinions than you.

This last one took some explaining, as children at this age don’t really know what an opinion is. I had to wing an exercise to explain opinions, and how they related to Dr. King’s message.

I asked how many of them liked broccoli. (Some of them actually did.)

I asked those who did if it was okay for them to say how delicious broccoli is. (Of course it is.)

I asked those who didn’t if it was okay for them to say how yucky broccoli is. (This is okay too.)

I asked them if we could still be nice to one another, and be friends, even if we had different opinions about broccoli.

The interesting thing about this exercise is that four-year-olds know the right answer to these questions. I didn’t have to prompt them with answers. I don’t feel the questions are steering them any sort of way. They simply knew what was right.

Dr. King said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” If you haven’t learned to be nice to everyone, that you need to accept people as they are, if you still need a lesson in common decency, I ask that you listen to these children. Sometimes the greatest answers come out of the mouths of babes.

One of the kids asked me if Martin King was still alive. I told the class that he was killed. The children had various responses, but the one that stood out to me was: “They killed him because they didn’t listen when he told them to be nice.” He’s right.

One of the things we didn’t discuss in this class was what “nice” means, mostly because the children in my classes have a basic and pure understanding of being nice. For those of us who have outgrown the childish definition of nice, let me clarify: being nice doesn’t mean putting on a smile and tolerating someone. It is not merely being civil. Nice, the way the children understand it, is being good to each other, truly treating people the way they deserve to be treated.

So I’m putting it out there, please be nice to each other. The world needs more nice.

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He recently published poetry in the Clockwork Kiru Anthology. He resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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Religion and art are saying the same things–stop, pay attention, be aware of the depth of time, see people, see others, be human.” – Frederick Buccaneer

Often when I get sad I read “Dear Sugar” over at The Rumpus or I pull out my well-worn copy of Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. “Dear Sugar” is an advice column in which the beleaguered write in to “Sugar” (writer Cheryl Strayed). The wisdom of her responses seems to come from a place of love and true empathy. It reminds me that kindness is still a force in our world, even when that kindness may not be what the advice seeker wants to hear.

A lot has been made of Strayed since her memoir Wild was published in 2013 and a film based on the book was released at the end of last year. I don’t need to belabor the praise she’s received. I also don’t mind saying I’m a Strayed devotee, for the reasons I mention above — but there is something even more fundamental to my reverence for writers and artists like Strayed.

It has something to do with rescue: a dangerous, risky business. In rescue, you run straight into havoc, moving from a state of perfect safety into a situation that could see you buried, charred, crushed, disintegrated, drowned, dead. More and more I’ve come to see art, like the kind that Strayed creates, as a kind of rescue mission. Artists like Strayed run straight into the fray of their own failures and triumphs and explore them with abandon, no matter what they discover. So much of what we want to believe in—religion, capitalism, the American Dream, money, power, self above all else (keeping us from really seeing each other)—buttresses our arrogance. Art can explode all that. It can dig us out from beneath the rubble. It sends out a search party using spotlights and bullhorns. It reminds those of us who are lost within our own experience that we’re not alone. Someone else has lived through this. It’s a kind of communion.

And after we’ve clasped a hand and climbed, coughing, into the light, I believe that art has the power to heal.  While part of the reason I keep returning to “Dear Sugar” is the opportunity to read about how a person might find redemption and be restored, I also read her because she reminds me what beautiful writing is capable of. Often when I’m stuck in my own work, reading her words acts, for me, like traction freeing me from a snow bank in which I often find myself stranded, spinning out. I tell my writing students to find a Strayed, a writer whose work frees them from their own mud holes, someone who helps them restore their words, and their hearts.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher living in Indiana. She has published book reviews with “Brevity” and the “River Teeth Blog” as well as essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review and Connotation Press. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

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The part of the show that most piques my interest happens when police investigators haul the suspect into the interrogation room. The scenes are high anxiety as investigators try to buddy up with the suspect and get definitive proof while the suspect tries to evade the truth and not give herself away. Secret camera video footage often captures a person out-of-sorts, divided between herself and what she’s done. I can relate.

Often when I tell people I write creative nonfiction, specifically memoir, a kind of anxious interrogation begins: What is creative nonfiction? How can you be old enough to write a memoir (I’m 39)—and why would anyone care about your story? What are you writing about? I often feel like the suspect being secretly videoed in the interrogation room, trying not to give myself away as some kind of narcissist who thinks her life is so important that others want to read about it. There is an implicit assumption that I’ve got some kind of axe to grind against those closest to me, as if I feel the need to interrogate the people of my past. It always gives me pause, forcing me to think through, again, why I write what I write. Even more, I begin asking, why write at all? Why create any kind of art?

Like a suspect who never straightens out her story, I come up with a different answer every time, depending on the circumstances in which I find myself. This time it’s because I’ve been teaching undergraduates.

Memoir and essay seem less about interrogating the other and more about interrogating the self (maybe that’s why it’s often mischaracterized as “navel gazing,” a form of self obsession). When I teach memoir to undergraduates I remind them of this—memoir as interrogation of self—because they often make the beginner’s mistake of interrogating everyone but themselves, interrogating every idea except their own. It’s a mistake I often make in first drafts, and the writing normally turns out poor.

Maybe any kind of art-making is an interrogation of sorts. If art is a means by which we create meaning, and I think it is, the artist seems like the ultimate interrogator shining the spotlight first on herself and her own assumptions and then taking a wider and wider stance in wider and wider concentric circles, blowing it all up to find a singular truth. Like the Dateline murder mystery suspect who seems beside herself until the truth comes out, there seems to be a kind of karmic relief when the artist unveils her work. The spotlight is turned off and the dead can rest.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher living in Indiana. She has published book reviews with the “Brevity” and the “River Teeth Blog” as well as essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review and Connotation Press. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

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For me, this was one of the highlights of our trip. Not only was it a chance for me to show my children a piece of American art history, I also got a chance to watch others enjoying the artwork. Like the biggest ball of twine, or Austin’s Cathedral of Junk, it has a certain mystique, an allure. Unlike cordoned sculptures in climate-controlled museums, installations such as these invite us to experience them fully by walking through and around them, climbing on them, contributing to them.

As we approached this automotive Stonehenge, it felt as though my family was completing a pilgrimage. My childhood was filled with fascination for roadside attractions, and here I was, in a muddy field, staring at the actual cars. My daughters looked at me, asking, “Is this it?” What they really meant was, “Did we come all this way just to see cars with their butts in the air?” But we had. I touched the cars, reverent, waiting my turn to add to the inches-thick paint jobs. My contribution: the red smiley at the top of the page. Nearby, a mother photographed her daughter in ankle-deep muddy water, holding her cowgirl boots. Another family laughed as they slowly turned one side of a car Smurf blue.

The interaction is one of the most important features of public art. It is also what sometimes leads to it being misunderstood or undervalued. Too often, we limit our understanding of “art” to those forbidding and forbidden pieces in galleries and museums. But public art is arguably just as important.

Public art, simply put, is art displayed in public, for the public. This includes statues and monuments, large-scale sculptures in parks and city squares, as well as roadside attractions. No matter the form, there are a couple of factors common to most public art.

Due to the large scale, many public art installations are relatively permanent, so the location often provides context clues to the content of the artwork. The people who live and work nearby also provide context. Public art can be a way for the artist to speak to or about the people in the area.

To me, the most impressive thing about public art is its ability to bring people together. One example of this is the Cloud Gate in Chicago. Known by locals as “the Bean,” this mirrored sculpture sits in the middle of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park. People come to this artwork to see distorted images of themselves as they walk under or around the massive metallic legume. But they also come for photos, to eat lunch, or just to take a break from their busy lives. This artwork has become a gathering place.

If we let it, public art can draw us in. It can inspire play. And it can bring us closer to each other.

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He currently resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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