filter literary journal

Filter III cover, designed by Kate Fernandez

Filter Vol. III has arrived. This 3rd issue of the entirely handmade journal is a box of wonder:

The cover has a paint-by-numbers theme, and the box structure is letterpress printed by Kate Fernandez of Fernandez and Sons (I absolutely adore this image). The book will be filled with brilliant work in individually bound chapbooks of prose and poetry, with art postcards and posters that you can remove and display.

the contents of Filter III, as seen from above

About Filter Literary Journal:

“Filter is a literary journal made entirely by hand. Each issue contains erasures and other literary art alongside unaltered poetry, fiction and visual art. Filter seeks to represent the work it holds on a visceral level, so that the book is as carefully crafted as the poetry, fiction and art that it contains.”

There are many things I love about Filter, including:  the slow deliberate process of the handmade, which results in an object of sheer beauty and strong physicality; that it is its own record of the intense labor that went into creating it; the cross discipline inclusion of literary and visual art; and, possibly above all, that it “seeks to represent the work it holds on a visceral level.”  Filter is a rare treasure.

I am honored to contribute artwork to Filter for the second time. This time around my presence in Filter is in the form of recent painting, Dusk, which is included as a poster which can be removed and displayed!  This is especially cool since the original painting has very quickly gone off to a good home, so I’m super happy that the piece will get this ‘bonus round’ as a poster.

Dusk, acrylic, ink, graphite, paper, 30 x 30″ completed in 2011

FILTER RELEASE PARTY!

Friday, June 17th, 8p.m.at the Fremont Abbey, 4272 Fremont Ave North, Seattle, WA 98103

An evening of readings from Zachary Schomburg, John Osebold, Stacey Levine, Maged Zaher, Karen Finneyfrock, Ed Skoog, Elizabeth Colen, Elissa Washuta, Susan Rich and Sarah Bartlett.  Freshly letterpressed copies of the book will be available for purchase.  Bring cash or checks to buy copies.

Tickets for the Filter release party are on sale now through Brown Paper Tickets:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/178844

Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door, and $5 for students and seniors.

Can’t make it to the party but still want a book?  You can find them on tickerfinch.etsy.com

The Filter folks will be posting videos and photos of the Filter making process on their blog:  http://filterlit.blogspot.com/

The contributors in Filter III are:

Yusef Komunyakaa, Zachary Schomburg, Stacey Levine, Amanda Manitach, Maged Zaher, Sharon Arnold, Martha Silano, John Osebold, Rebecca Brown, Counsel Langely, Ed Skoog, Karen Finneyfrock, Sean Ennis, Sarah Mangold, Gala Bent, Rachel Contreni Flynn, David Lasky, Elizabeth Colen, Sandra & Ben Doller, Brandon Shimoda, Ben Beres, Brandon Downing, Sarah Kate Moore, Dan Rosenberg, Susan Rich, Susan Denning, Sid Miller, Sarah Bartlett, Shawn Vestal, Marie-Caroline Moir, Lucy Corin, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Jill McDonough, Jessica Goodfellow, Jessica Bonin, Friedrich Kerksieck , Erika Wilder, Elissa Washuta, David Bartone, Chris Dusterhoff, Britt Ashley, Becca Yenser, Anne Gorrick

nights on planet earth

I am putting the final moments into part II of my response to the amazing poem Nights on Planet Earth by Campbell McGrath.  If you read the poem you’ll likely understand why I felt driven to make more than one work.  In fact I should make three.  We’ll see.

For the time being we have two which are both 30 x 30″ acrylic paintings with glitter, graphite, ink and paper on board.  Here’s a detail of part I, it’s title is 2AM:

This work will be part of an upcoming show, A Good Line:  Artists on Poems, at Richard Hugo House in Seattle.  Jennifer Borges Foster, curator of A Good Line, invited visual artists to select a poem we love and respond to it.  I narrowed the pool down to about ten that I felt were great.  I got myself hardcopies of these and read them.  Then read them again.

The fact that they were all stellar didn’t matter.  I all the time knew that Nights on Planet Earth was the one.  I resisted this just a bit; the others would have been easier to respond to.  Nights on Planet Earth was the toughest to tackle, the most sweeping, epic, sheer gorgeous.  It was also the one I related to the most directly and so picking it left me without a buffer; it took from me any of the safety that can come from a slight disconnect.

Nights on Planet Earth knocks me over every time I read it.  Or think about it.  I am very fortunate to have spent these weeks with it; it has been a real pleasure.  If you haven’t read it yet I’d like to encourage you too . . . you’ll find ashes and yakuza, Christmas lights, Madrid, Manhattan, Chicago, Dublin, always a city, satellites and cosmic dust, icebergs and an octopus and an army of golden carpenter ants.  Go.

(Oh and the other candidates were pretty excellent, so I want to share, they included: Herr Stimmung on Transparency by Keith Waldrop, Merry-go-round by Miroslav Holub, Sublimation Point by Jason Schneiderman.)

Artists participating in A Good Line: Artists on Poems are Gala Bent, Sharon Arnold, Troy Gua, Counsel Langley, Kim Drake, Ryan Molenkamp, Amanda Manitach, Erin Shafkind, Nola Avienne, David Lasky, Liz Tran, Shaun Kardinal, Jed Dunkerley and Ben Beres.

I can’t wait to discover what poem each and every one of these awesome artists chose and how they responded to it!

Show opens on April 1st
with a reception on April 12th from 6 to 9pm

Richard Hugo House
1634 11th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
206-322-7030