Suzanne Farrell Smith, Author at Waterwheel Review

January 1, 2021 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

Editor’s Note Issue #5

January 2021

Editor’s Note

“This is a day to remember, frankly, in a year to forget.” — British Health Secretary Hancock, announcing approval of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine.

Hancock was half-right.

We have, with one second ticking to midnight, put 2020 behind us. But we will not forget. Like any grief, we carry 2020 forward, to reckon with, to peel apart. To name.

In my October editor’s note, I asked why we should make art now, in this time of anxiety and hardship. As one answer, I talked about the artist’s drive to document catastrophe. Now I turn to January, and our fifth issue, mulling all that art can do.

2020 is over. The end of the beginning. For most of us—medical professionals, first responders, politicians, scientists, essential workers, historians, economists, teachers, parents, students, loved ones of the sick and dead—the reckoning has started. For artists, too.

Our January authors grapple with aftermath. Zebulon Huset sketches the inevitability of loss. Sarah Twombly portrays what happens to a woman when her unseen and unbearable load finally takes its toll. And Heather Diamond traces adult choices to a girlhood game that forces children to peer into an uncertain future.

January’s companions also steer me into the new year. Pulses of turmoil, mistrust, fear, and loss accompany Zebulon and Sarah’s pieces, while Heather’s friend, artist Sandra York, conveys a hopeful step toward something new. And ice skater Tiina Pakkenan, in the most moving short film I’ve ever seen, shows us that sometimes, what nature and the human body create together is wondrous.

Why make art now? Art asks big questions, captures human experience in disasters global and local, brings solace and joy, and more. It will do all of these things, always.

Informed by our individual and collective memory of the year that was, we are poised to tell the story. A decade, a generation, a lifetime of art is about to unfold.

Suzanne Farrell Smith

November 24, 2020 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

Sickly Sweet Companion

I wanted my co-editors to weigh in. “Which one is the creepiest?” I texted. Answer: THE BUNNY.

Presenting our publications with companion pieces—a photo, song, video, whatever supports and expands appreciation for our authors’ work—has been part of our vision for Waterwheel Review from the start. And next to discovering remarkable work in our submissions queue, finding and making these companion pieces is my favorite part of the job.

Sometimes we land on the right piece in collaboration with the author; other times the perfect song or video or image presents itself with a simple Google search. I have paired writing with creations by a friend, a son, and, in the December 2020 issue, my sister Deb. Occasionally a piece emerges from the oddments of personal experience. In the case of Creepy Bunny, deeply personal. And deeply odd.

W.A. Schwartz’s “Wish” shook me up. It’s all of 91 words, but it feels bigger than its small size. One sweet little scene in 91 words. A sweet scene that turns strange and then, by the end, sickens me. That particular combination of sweet and sick… I knew exactly where to look for a companion piece.

After our mother died, my sisters and I faced the herculean task of her house, built by our newlywed parents in the early 1970s. I say herculean because Mom kept everything she touched, especially after our father died in 1983. Much of the stuff was relatively easy to assess, categorize, and dispatch—give to loved ones, sell at auction, donate, trash. Some, we divvied up during long, boozy negotiations. The leftovers, out of grief and exhaustion, we stored for future reckoning.

round jello mold with ice cream cone hat like a clown

That time arrived with the pandemic. In March, I started sorting. And all the determined, head-down plodding through the leftover bits and pieces of my childhood home led to Creepy Bunny. In a nod to Catherine Schmitt’s “The Family Dollar,” also in our November issue, and to offer a proper sense of Bunny’s provenance, a list of a handful of the items I sorted:

~Advertisement for a crocheted Victorian-era tablecloth.
~Empty paper bag from Vality Department Store.
~Canceled check paid to my nursery school in 1981.
~Pamphlet: “Your Mysterious Cat.”
~Article: “New cookie recipes feature raisins for chewy goodness.”
~Lined paper marked by a single long-division problem.
~Show times for the Old Country Cloggers.
~A Dear Abby column that states, “Only divorced women are addressed as ‘Mrs.’ followed by their first names. A widow keeps her husband’s name until she remarries.”

And: Amazing Magical Jell-O Desserts.

orange jello flat circle with creepy fruit for face

Flipping through the Jell-O recipe book, I saw creepy. And sickly sweet. Ill-advised recipes, bizarre photos, clown-like expressions, persistent calls for corn syrup… I got a disturbed feeling from that recipe book. It slants what should be sweet treats into here’s-candy-get-into-my-van nightmares. And that’s exactly the feeling I get when I read “Wish.”

I chose the three worst recipes and snapped photos for my co-editors. Check out the honorable mentions “Funny Lemon Freeze” and “Jellied Joker.” For creepy, Bunny stands above. Marshmallow rabbit head impaled by toothpick whiskers. Torn purple gumdrops for vacant eyes and a red blob for the mouth. Mired in a glass of green pudding and set against a pattern of… Santas riding motorbikes? “Bunny,” texted Claire, “is creepy as fuck.” Cheryl added, “The toothpicks make it look like it’s been stabbed through the face.”

handwritten note from a mother to daughter

A good companion piece both supports the publication it appears with, and interacts in some small way with the issue’s other two publications and their companion pieces. For me, Creepy Bunny’s connection to “Family Dollar” is this: If I wanted to make Bunny Mousse, a dollar store would be the quickest, cheapest way to pick up the ingredients. And this picture of a comically awful dessert meant to be fun for kids fits the nod to tilted, murky, half-remembered disappointments and confusions of childhood in Mary Warren Foulk’s “Corralling”—another sweet little scene that ends in something sour.

My mother has been gone for five years. I’ve reduced the leftovers to seven or eight bins, which still test my attention and energy. Now at least one of those bits gets a new life. Because my mother just reached across time and space to give me this small gift, her note stuck to the front: “I found this cookbook among mine. It was a gift to you when you turned 5. I’m sure you will want it.” As it happens, I do.

Suzanne Farrell Smith

October 1, 2020 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

Editor’s Note Issue #2

October 2020

Editor’s Note

Just after midnight on March 3rd, an EF-3 tornado churned through an East Nashville neighborhood, killing five. The tornado missed the home of close friends, with two young children, by two blocks. A few months later, in my Connecticut home, I strapped bike helmets on my boys as we sheltered under a blanket during an Isaias-spawned tornado warning—my first ever.

As I write, deadly wildfires burn the Pacific Northwest, where two of our October authors live. Tropical storms and hurricanes (so many that we’re into the Greek alphabet) soak the Southeast, where our third author resides.

Why, in times of fire and flood, do we spend an hour hunting for a word, a day inside an idea, a weekend cutting and pasting… only to return to the original. Why make art now?

Recently, I came across the Nashville tornado again, in the beautiful “Specific Air” by Rebecca Titus. Titus writes that after the tornado, a friend, whose property was heavily damaged, sent her a text: Let’s document with art. Whenever there is daylight come. There are side streets.

I read those lines over and over. Three lines in a text by an unnamed friend of an author I don’t know who lives close to people I know well. I noted the lack of comma between “daylight” and “come” and read it like a prayer.

Our authors this month write of torrents and wild flora, fire and a hungry sea. Makers of our companion pieces show storms and middle-of-the-night fear, a flight along cello strings and a flower as seen by my six-year-old son.

Let’s continue to document. When our places are burning and flooding, let’s take the side streets if we have to, and make the art we need.

Suzanne Farrell Smith