comfort zones

From an early age I have always identified with myself as a poet, a writer, never as an artist. But the reality is … I have always been both. As a teenager, I was much more involved in large scale art projects than any writing activities. My Grandmother was an artist (and poet), and three of my sisters are artists. But coming from a family of artists, why do I always identify with myself as the poet? I think it is because art is my passion, but poetry is my comfort zone. The poetry is my identity among my siblings. We are artists. I am the poet.

Prior to the advent of Photoshop and other digital photography platforms, I constantly sought ways to integrate poetry and photography. I busied myself with learning the limits of standard photography. I worked and breathed as a commercial photographer on the front lines of photography in Chicago. I freelanced for over 20 years across the country. I used every camera format available, and I ushered in the digital photography age while running the print department of a photo plant at night in Oklahoma. I learned all aspects of photography, lighting, building sets, shooting on location, shooting in the studio, printing, darkroom techniques, developing, color correction and filtering, print and negative touch up, graphics, airbrushing … all the while hoping to discover that elusive secret to the delicate balance between image and word and thought.

I am still trapped in this inequity.

And I have Photoshop now. And I am so very, very close.

But I am about to get so incredibly busy (the likes of which I have never known), I‘ve been putting it off really. Watch me step out of my comfort zone. I have this very magazine to create and publish with my good friend Nicole Turiano (Editor-In-Chief), and I also have a book begging me to keep writing, I don‘t talk about it much anymore. But rest assured, the book is still here. And it will be so.

So I pass this challenge on to the world at large. Step out of your comfort zones with me. Create something new, something different, something special, something the likes of which makes the world gasp in disbelief and wonder. Collaborate with a friend. Collaborate with a stranger. Collaborate with a crew. Create the impossible, and then … send it to us. Stela. Remember Stela. Remember us. We are Stela and we want the impossible.

Send us the impossible.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers (Publisher)

from Stela!