Tami Bahat’s photographic portraiture is at once unique and familiar: unique in its distinct approach to lighting and Victorian-era style, yet familiar in its visual cues, referencing the work of old masters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt.

Melbourne-based photographer Bri Hammond captures the refreshing spirit and story of feminist water-ballet group The Clams. A commercial and editorial photographer who has worked throughout Europe and Australia, Hammond uses her visual language and ability to connect with her subjects to illustrate a message of femme strength, confidence, and humor.

Have you always considered yourself an artist? When did you first feel like you had found your voice artist voice? I haven’t always considered myself an artist, actually. I hold that word and title in very high regard and I don’t think that everyone who makes “art” is an artist. Artist to me implies a very high level of commitment to a certain type of work and practice.

Visual artist, performer, and curator Kelly Boner has appropriately given herself the title of ‘Bubblepop Electric Creative Powerhouse’ with her own aesthetic and drag influences stemming from eclectic sources ranging from Georgia O’Keefe to anime. Boner’s curatorial project and exhibition Fulfilled Fantasies: Contemporary Drag Works, currently at Hokin Gallery at Columbia College, features photography where the image-making process is a collaboration between the photographer and subject. With b

Scott Anderson’s work creates a fresh visual language with whispers from late modernism masters such as Robert Rauschenberg and Francis Bacon. His compositions demonstrate a layered and balanced intricacy within his signature figurative abstraction that continues throughout his work like a subconscious narrative, familiar yet unknown. The unique sense of texture and colour in Anderson’s paintings adds to his already singular style.

The Chicago Archives + Artists Project (CA+AP) is an initiative that highlights Chicago archives and special collections that give space to voices on the margins of history. Led by Chicago-based writers and artists, the project explores archives across the city via online features, a series of public programs and new commissioned artwork by Chicago artists.

Throughout art history, the figure in painting has been reinvented time and time again. If you are an artist whose work focuses mainly on the figure as its subject, it must offer something new and fresh to the viewer. This is where Hungarian artist Akos Ezer will not disappoint. His work shows male bodies in action, mid-motion, and creating dynamic movement across the composition. You will find most of his subjects falling or tripping, and often in what seems to be a state of anxiety.

The paintings of Zoe Nelson contain a curious collection of objects—fragments and pieces that evoke a sentiment of wonder and intrigue. Saturated hues seem to glow from the surface, each object emanating bright and brilliant reds, greens, and blues, creating a stunning contrast that is just as visually striking as the contents of the painting.

Edra Soto has transformed the Commons at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) with her work Open 24 Hours into a beautiful place filled with remnants of histories that gives birth to transcultural discourse and new meaning. Fittingly, Soto’s culturally charged work is the inaugural project for this new “civically engaged space” at the MCA.

Meet Spring Issue 7 guest curator Benjamin Sutton who, along with curating exhibitions in various galleries around NYC and his current Brooklyn neighborhood, works as the news editor for the online art and culture publication Hyperallergic. Having written for a variety of publications over the years, including artnet News and Brooklyn Magazine, Sutton has delved deep into each weird and wonderful corner of the art world.

The Chicago Archives + Artists Project (CA+AP) is an initiative that highlights Chicago archives and special collections that give space to voices on the margins of history. Led by Chicago-based writers and artists, the project explores archives across the city via online features, a series of public programs and new commissioned artwork by Chicago artists.

Come explore the magenta jungles, neon mountains, and peachy skies that make up the brilliant work of artist Shara Hughes. Fantastical hues loosely construct unique and lush scenes of nature, which offer a sharp contrast to the more traditional scene that you might be expecting when you hear the word ‘landscape’.

Although much of your work is rendered in graphite charcoal, your more recent work has adopted the use of color as well as elements of further abstraction. Tell us about this development. What inspired you to diverge in style as well as palette? I change the medium I work with to fit the subject of my work. Right now, I am looking at male bodies performing survival tasks in the contested location of “wilderness” and trying to figure out my attraction to survivalism reality television shows.

The satirical paintings of Paul Gagner conjure up the humorous and bizarre nature of the life of an artist. His work includes text like “How to impress and baffle people with artspeak” and “How to do everything and nothing all day. Tomorrow” that is both hilarious and somehow undeniably relatable. The artist’s paintings, which look similar to self-help book covers, poke fun at the seriousness of art and lighten the mood of pretentiousness that can often be found in the art world.

Koak’s bold and defining lines create curves that outline twisted bodies, expressing a range of raw emotions. It is easy to get lost in the flowing curves of her figures, as each winding limb can at once create such wild movements and tranquil poses. Like that of the cubist masters, Koak’s paintings and drawings abstract the figure; bodies are simplified, features are broken down.

If you suffer with a chronic illness, specifically one that others cannot see, the anxiety of  whether or not others take your pain seriously, on top of the endless physical battle with your own body, is very real. There is a hierarchy of illness in our culture based on assumptions of “seriousness” that is rarely acknowledged or discussed. A social judgment of validity is made about an illness, and if you are a woman suffering from an illness that is not only invisible but also widely unknown th

Bill’s art is inspired by the natural world especially the inner workings of living things and how we all coexist and evolve together on this planet.

Threadwinners, a play on the concept of the typically masculine term “breadwinner,” aim to subvert the patriarchy and status quo through the vehicle of crochet. They examine American and pop culture, the body, psychology, nature, gender roles, and femininity in their work.

London based artist Olivia Bax creates large-scale, sculptural forms that are bold both in color and in presence. Many of her sculptures possess elements that are of the familiar, such as what could be a handle or a pipe. However, their unconventional form and candy-colored hues abstract their function. Combine that with an irresistible, textural surface, Bax’s work entices the viewer to touch and feel the tactile details that are created by the artist’s hand (print).

Teresa graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts with a First Class Ba Honours in Fashion Design and Textiles. Her personal design philosophy is to fuse three of her interests together: Illustrations, Embroidery and Surface pattern design.