Readers,

This volume takes you across continents and into studios, celebrating artists who challenge norms and embrace their poetic contradictions.

We’re honored to bring you intimate, in-depth interviews with artists finding magic in the everyday. Emily Vezza reflects on creative pivots and captures the quiet beauty of ordinary moments with bold color and tender precision in her colored pencil works. Dasha Slastyon shares her multidimensional, cross-cultural work blending Eastern and Western traditions, often incorporating sculptural and unconventional elements to explore the full arc of life, from shame to deep joy. Stephen Oni speaks to the healing power of paint and channels African cultural memory and abstraction. We also had the chance to visit Richard Ballantyne's Art Studio, a ceramicist who infuses wit, texture, and narrative into raku-fired forms.