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Archives for April 2022

April 1, 2022 By Claire Guyton

Editor’s Notebook: Our Homepage Triptychs

Editor’s Notebook: Our Homepage Triptychs

April 2022

We always knew Waterwheel Review would be fully a child of the internet, an online magazine that would make use of and celebrate multimedia. We wanted to support and expand on each piece we published by presenting it with companion art, knowing the web would provide: paintings; photographs; music and singing; videos of dance and other performances, presentations, and compositions. We also knew it would take a great deal of focused energy and attention to select appropriate companion pieces, then get the design of each issue just right. To ensure we could deliver, we’d need to strictly limit the number of pieces we publish each issue. The right number, we decided, was three.

Next, we settled on the number of companions for each publication: two. If we presented more than two, the design would look like a chain or a grouping, inevitably the connections loosening and draining the intimacy between publication and art. With just two, each companion sits next to the star piece of writing—or, more precisely, the excerpted beginning of the publication, which links to the full text, in turn presented alone so the eye can focus on the writing. One companion wouldn’t be intimate enough; we like the sense of embrace that comes from companions left and right. Again, we rely on the power of three: One publication plus a companion on each side make a triptych.

Developing the three triptychs for each issue is a serious labor of love for all of us, and feeds our connection to every Waterwheel Review publication. We are very attached to all of them. But yes, of course, we have our favorites, though that’s a big group—we reviewed our archives for this post, fueling texts and emails gushing about no fewer than eleven of the fifty-one total triptychs we’ve produced. It was very difficult to whittle our favorites to just one each, and the process yielded small surprises. A couple of our favorite companions, for example, aren’t part of our chosen triptychs, which, again, speaks to the power of three.

Note that before each reflection on the chosen triptych, you’ll see an image of the triptych as it appeared on our homepage. In the reflection, we’ve linked each of the original two companions so you can see them in all their glory.

triptych for Philosophy of the Dance

Claire’s favorite: For “Philosophy of the Dance,” by Brooke Middlebrook, Issue #11

I love the softness of the background, which frames the hardness of the video of the rotoscope image superimposed on the dancer. This effect demonstrates just how difficult ballet is—the required angles, geometry, and quickness of movement are extraordinary. The x-ray of the foot en pointe echoes the hardness of the rotoscope effect, showing in stark relief the structure necessary to endure the pressure on the dancer’s body as she performs with such balance and grace. And I so love the opening two lines of the publication. The narrator asks if her form is correct, initiating a back-and-forth throughout the piece that reflects the delicate balance of form and grace in dance.

It's Possibile My Number Once Belonged to Your Deceased Loved One triptych

Suzanne’s favorite: For “It’s Possible My Number Once Belonged to Your Deceased Loved One,” by Peggy Hammond, Issue #12

While the birds in the painting “Detachment from Reality” can be interpreted as what’s being missed, I like to think of them as messengers connecting the woman to far-flung loved ones, perhaps to the loved one in Peggy’s piece, who now exists outside of time and place, as untethered as her caller. William Utermohlen’s “Head 1,” a self-portrait sketched late into Alzheimer’s, also shows a man out of time and place. Both pieces are set against the background rendering of global communication, which erases time and place, and leaves us staring at a small box, witnessing the world.

image triptych for "Release and Hold Harmless"

Cheryl’s favorite: For “Release and Hold Harmless,” by Lucy Wilde, Issue #15

I’m drawn into this triptych by the title, “Release and Hold Harmless,” floating with the lanterns in the background, symbols of releasing and holding hope, grief, or renewal. In the photo to the left, the woman at the window almost begs to be released. The still of the animated image to the right is intriguing because it’s abstract and yet intimate—it looks like it might be the mirror image of the woman at the window, a rendering of what she’s feeling—and I’m pulled in by the title “Thought of you” and want to click play. The dark and muted colors of both companions nicely complement the text in the center, immediately recognizable as part of an agreement or contract, binding all this hope for release into something stark and concrete. 

That’s the best we can do to convey why we feel so drawn to these three triptychs. Tomorrow, we might settle on three different favorites. Next week, another three.

—Claire Guyton

Filed Under: Editor's Notebook

April 1, 2022 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

From the Editors | Issue # 17

April 2022

From the Editors

Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words
and everything in the world understands it. —Frances Hodgson Burnett

closeup of three women in separate Zoom screenshots

That was not what I meant at all—this line marks the end of the budding romance in “After Uncle Louie Got Me on Some Nights at the Daily News” by Joe Benevento, a piece about laboring in the act of meaning-making, both in a newspaper’s printing press and with a Bic pen on a pad of paper. “A Brother Is” to love, says Nancy Huggett, but also to lead you down paths of loving that have no answer for disconnection. Her exquisite paean to a sister’s love somehow finds the words. Of birdsong and squawking and chattering “feathery discourse,” Jeff Schiff asks in “Bird Say,” Has to be meaning in it / right? We think there is meaning in it, yes, and Jeff made still more. There are so many beautiful things we understand without words. And then there is so much beautiful art that exists only because we can name things.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl


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Filed Under: From the Editors

April 1, 2022 By Cheryl Wilder

Who made it? Issue # 17

Who made it?

April 2022 | Issue # 17

With “After Uncle Louie Got Me on Some Nights at the Daily News” by Joe Benevento

“Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan.

With “A Brother Is” by Nancy Huggett

“Brother” by Kodaline.

With “Bird Say” by Jeff Schiff

“World’s Weirdest Bird Sounds – Part One” by Bird Kind.
The Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 44.88 x 61.02 in, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Acknowledgments

Photo of men with rolls of newsprint from the series DOCUMERICA via Wikicommons.

Background photo of vintage punch clock by Brad Calkins via Dreamstime.

“Family record of [blank] / Chapman Bros. Lith. Chicago” via the Library of Congress.

Background image of sister and brother walking down path by Annie Spratt via Unsplash. Photoshopped by Cheryl Wilder.

Background photo of paper cranes by Rishabh Dharmani via Unsplash.

Filed Under: Who made it?

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