New Online Lit/Art Journal "Posit"

Posit magazine issue 1. Posit is the love child of literature and art

The first issue of Posit – an online journal of literature and visual art – features (artwork by) Michael Janis as the inaugural cover boy.

Posit was founded by Editor and author Susan Lewis and the Arts Editor is NYC based artist Melissa Stern. Susan has been the managing editor of MadHat Press, MadHat Lit, and MadHat Annual, fiction and poetry editor of Global City Review, and guest editor of Right Hand Pointing and Altered Scale. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and taught creative writing at SUNY, Purchase. Melissa Stern is a studio artist, book designer, arts journalist, and critic living in New York City and Shokan, NY. Her work is exhibited in galleries throughout the U.S. and Canada. She covers the New York art scene for CityArts and the New York Press.

Arts Editor Melissa Stern said of the inaugural issue artwork: “For Posit 1, it is my pleasure to present the work of three artists whose work shares a sense of elegance and grace. In these galleries, Michael Janis creates sublime narratives of extraordinary depth and dimensionality through the laborious fusing of layer upon layer of glass, bringing precision and construct to a parallel universe where science and reason adhere to their own logic; while Leah Oates’ gentle layers of image and tone build mysterious photographic journeys through countryside and city; a theme taken up by Kyle Gallup’s celebration of the past and possibility of New York, from Coney Island to old theater marquees, alternately documenting a world long-gone and fashioning a fantasy of what it might have been.” 

We wish the best of luck to the new online magazine! For the journal’s submission guidlines – both artwork and literature – click HERE. 

Melissa Stern KickStarter "Talking Cure"

>Melissa Stern – the mixed media artist that had a residency at the Washington Glass School this past summer has a new project/exhibition that she is seeking support.

The proposed exhibition integrates mixed material sculpture, contemporary literature, and audio technology – titled the “Talking Cure,” . The exhibition is scheduled to open in Seattle in March and in New York City in 2013.

The project title, “The Talking Cure,” takes its name from Sigmund Freud’s original description of psychoanalysis. The exhibition will consist of ten of Melissa’s sculptures each accompanied by an interactive audio track created by a literary collaborator.

Says Melissa: “My sculptures will be fabricated figures combining mixed materials, found objects, deeply drawn surfaces, and an abundance of personality. Seeing and saying, thinking and talking, will cure all your problems!

I have asked ten writers- poets, novelists, screenwriters, and playwrights- to each chose a sculpture to which they relate most intimately. Each is writing his or her imagined monologue of the goings on in the sculpture’s mind. These will then be transformed into audio recordings. A QR tag will accompany each sculpture. When the viewer points a Smartphone, Blackberry or I-Phone reading device at the QR tag it will trigger audio to hear the inner voice of the sculpture.

I have long been fascinated by what goes on in people’s minds when they look at art. What stories do they tell themselves? What emotions and memories are triggered? My work has always been psychological in nature. In the past I have made shows that deal explicitly with memory, childhood and family. By definition these subjects have a strong psychological bent. I am as interested in what others think the pieces are “saying” as in what has motivated me to make them.

In this project we will have a chance to hear what others think goes on in the minds of my sculptural ‘people.‘”

Click HERE to jump to Melissa’s Kickstarter project description.

Kickstarter is an online threshold pledge system for funding creative projects.

Visiting Artists – Melissa Stern

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NY- based artist Melissa Stern has been working recently in the glass school. Best know for her mixed media sculptures and drawings, Melissa has expanded her repertoire to include glass.

Melissa’s artwork is deceptive in its playful, childlike quality. Her highly imaginative (and frequently amusing) ceramic sculptures and drawings usually featuring human figures which call to mind sophisticated illustrations for children’s stories. Melissa sees her work removed from specific narrative and functioning instead in terms of psychology and metaphor. As much as we would like a ceramic standing figure–feet nailed to the floor, arms holding aloft a branch upon which large birds perch–to introduce a fascinating if disturbing fable, there is no story to explain it.

Summer in the South, collage, oil paint, pencil, 12 x 9


World View , clay, acrylic, paper, graphite, encaustic, 23″ x 5″ x 5″

Translating her drawn imagery with the use of glass frit powder, Melissa has really taken to the process, making it her own.


Melissa Stern’s fused glass frit components are assembled onto the glass panels she is creating.


Melissa and Tim Tate discuss the development of her panels.


Carving holes, tack-fusing texture, layering images – Melissa will ultimately add other non-glass elements to the glass panels she is creating.


We look forward to seeing the finished works by Melissa!
And congratulations, Melissa, on becoming an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College!