Artists
Issue 3
Liz Asch
Liz is the author of Your Salt on My Lips: (Mostly) Queer Literary Erotica (Cleis Press 2021), a celebration of eros across the spectrum of sexuality, with an emphasis on radical communication of desire and consent, and the healing powers of self permission.
A 2018 Pushcart nominee, Liz is the recipient of the 2017 Willamette Writer's Kay Snow Award for First Place in Nonfiction (judged by Elizabeth Lyons), the winner of the 2017 Phoebe Creative Nonfiction Contest (judged by Elena Passarello), and she received honorable mention from the 2018 Pigeon Pages Essay Contest, judged by Garrard Conley, the 2016 Montana Book Festival’s Regional Emerging Writers Contest and the 2016 Calyx’s Margarita Donnelly Prize. Liz is the grateful recipient of a 2022 RACC grant and is a part of the 2022-2023 Art/Lab cohort of Jewish Portland artists.
Robin Young
Based in Borrego Springs California, artist Robin Young currently works in mixed media focusing mostly on collage and contemporary art making. Her focus on collage art using magazine clippings, masking tape, wallpaper, jewelry, feathers, foil etc. allows her to develop deep into the whimsical and intuitive.
From large, life-sized pieces, 3D sculptures, to small postcard-sized arrangements, Robin's keen eye and gripping esthetic guide her viewers into her own semi-readymade world. Repurposing nostalgic images for lighthearted and sometimes disquieting messages; Robin’s artistic universe is strange, funky, sometimes perverse and always alluring.
Michael Ernest Sweet
Michael Ernest Sweet is a Canadian photographer, writer, and art critic. His work has appeared in publications such as The Evergreen Review, Reed Magazine, The Village Voice, and Popular Photography among others. Michael is a recipient of both a Canadian Prime Minister's Award and a Queen Elizabeth II Medal for significant contributions to the fields of education and the arts in Canada. He lives and teaches in New York City.
Jack Bordnick
My sculptures and photography incorporate surrealistic, mythological and magical imagery often with whimsical overtones — aimed at provoking our experiences and self reflections. Aiming to unbalance our rational minds, the predominant imagery deals mostly with facial expressions of both living and “non-living” beings, and things that speak to us in their own languages. They are mixed media assemblages that have been assembled,
disassembled and reassembled, becoming abstractions unto themselves. I am an Industrial design graduate of Pratt Institute in New York. I have been a designer and design director for the past twenty years including for numerous company, corporate and government projects. They included a children's museum, for the city of New York and the Board of Education, involved in all aspects of marketing and design. Also, Designs and Exhibits, for IBM, The J.C. Penney Company, and many numerous other institutions.
