Stonecrop 08

Art Gallery

Shanmukh Gollu is an artist and writer, residing in India. He earned a bachelor's degree from the M.S. University of Baroda in Fine Arts in 2022. He writes and draws, reacting to his social experiences. His works reflect on the negotiations made between different identities that we assume and shed every day, tuning and adjusting in response to each other’s politics. His visuals draw from literature, films, history, social media and from his own writings.

How much of a criminal is the bystander? How much if he is invested? Or entertained? The visuals were created to both understand and question the omnipresent nature of violence in our society. The subtler forms of violence that we perpetuate, forgive and sometimes ignore altogether. Like the imposition of a colonial or a national language on native speakers. Or the saffron-tainted, hatred filled gazes towards Muslims in India. Or the erasure of Indigenous history. We ourselves draw the lines for morality and then enjoy watching others cross it.

— Shanmukh Gollu

matthew fertel

sacramento, california

mfertel.wixsite.com/matthewfertelphoto

I photograph whatever catches my eye on my daily walks. Returning to the same locations over days, months and years, I capture my subjects under different lighting and weather conditions, documenting the changes in these objects as the environment interacts with them over time. Small details get framed in ways that draw attention away from the actual object and focus on the shapes, textures, and colors. My goal is to use these out-of-context images to create compositions that encourage an implied narrative that is easily influenced by the viewer and is open to multiple interpretations.

—Matthew Fertel

augustina droze

america

augustinadroze.com

American artist Augustina Droze (1981) uses animals as symbols to describe her personal lived experiences. Her current body of work explores her life as a foreigner, her gaze of the world as exotic, beautiful and bewildering. As an expat living in Beijing for the past 10 years, Droze’s work incorporates elements of East and West. Her paintings are colorful and confrontational, brimming with Rococo inspired abundance.

a.j. belmont

new hampshire

abelmont.com

The image is of a memory of living in Chicago and pushing through the wind and snow on my way to the train. What stuck out to me in reading about your publication is the phrase “flourish and endure”—something that feels like a match to memories of making it through my time in that city, especially this time of year.

—A.J. Belmont

robin young

boreggo springs, california

Retirement took me to the California desert with my creative husband John and lazy dog Comet. I discovered a collection of the small collage postcards I had done years before remembering how much fun I had and was inspired and so I continue... It is difficult to explain my style, it is forever changing leaning more and more to the odd, weird, eclectic. I added 3D sculptures and large scale murals to the things I do. I also enjoy using recycled materials in my art, sculptures made from embroidery hoops and guitar strings.

—Robin Young

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