Featured
Sifting Through Stardust: Conversations with Astrophysicist Raymond Frey
In his new column for Combustus, astrophysicist Raymond Frey, head of the University of Oregon physics department, takes questions sent in by readers on everything from, “Is time travel really possible?” to “What is dark energy, anyway?”
Read MoreThe New Year and the Self-Portrait as Self-Reflection: Interview with Jaakko Savolainen, Finland
“Making a self-portrait is a very emotional and impulsive process.”
Read MoreThe Sea Casts Its Spell: Interview with Oslo, Norway Figurative Painter, Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen
“If you as a child would approve of how you live your life, then you’re doing it right.”
~Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen, painter, Oslo, Norway
The Interior Life of the Observer: Interview with Figurative Painter Christina Sealey
“I have often found myself in the position of the observer. This creates a feeling of loneliness that pervades my work.”
Read MoreGary Briechle, Rockland, Maine: Wet-plate Collodion Camera Slows Life Down Into Intimate Moments
“When I make a photograph, it has the feeling of a miracle. Almost like a zen thing. The good pictures, I can’t take full credit for them. You don’t make a photograph so much as receive it. I wander around with my eyes open, and I’m just hoping for the best. Sometimes things that you’d never think would be special, you just hit upon, not fully understanding at the time why.”
~Gary Briechle, photographer, Rockland, Maine
Let Me Tell You About My Father…
I invited some of the special people I know ~ from poets whose work has appeared in Combustus magazine to a dancer friend of mine who immigrated from Hungary ~ to share with us some of the wisdom they’ve received over the years from their fathers as well as what has been passed on to their own children.
Read MoreOf Love, Loss and Rebirth: Motoi Yamamoto’s Saltscapes
The former dockyard worker from Hiroshima decided that instead of creating one enduring piece to serve as metaphor for a love never-ending, he would construct a series of temporary installations meticulously fashioned from the painstakingly slow arrangement of so many tiny grains of salt.
Read MoreChristina Bothwell, Sculptures in Glass and Stone
“I was a little surprised to hear so many people express that they perceive my pieces as being intentionally disturbing. Wanting to explore the workings of the unconscious tends to make people feel uncomfortable. They imagine death…I like to think of insects caught in amber.”
Read MoreThe Life Imagined: Interview with Psychotherapist, Andrew Nargolwala
“Every relationship is an interaction. And a healthy relationship is an act of constant creation. That is why I always say that no one can ever know what he or she desires sexually until that individual explores the possibilities with their unique partner.”
Read MoreBeauty Lies In Our Ability to Abandon Ourselves: Interview with Muralist Dante Horoiwa
“After a mural is finished, people will begin to picnic in front of the painting. It is almost impossible not to look at it.”
Read MoreNow We Bow Our Heads: Interview with Poet Ralph Pennel
But I believe that we all, at the very least,
should have some. Beauty, that is.
Maybe even just a little more. That
even in a poem about beauty
we must be moved to see its two sure hands
and how our own fit perfectly inside them.
The Fertile Ground of New York City Oil Painter Martin Wittfooth
“I’m exploring allegories of rebirth: the notion that we often have to let something die (metaphorically speaking) for something else to be allowed to be realized and flourish.”
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