Mindfulness - a statement from artist Cristine Cambrea

As a visionary artist, I use my inner emotion and intuition to guide me. I do not work in the traditional process that incorporates sketching and planning. After that first line, shape, or color makes its way to the canvas, I get lost in non-thought. It is my time to meditate--and when my time with the canvas is complete, I have a creation that in some way represents my dreams and life experience. This may not be understood for quite some time, but from experience, I now trust in my process and can dissect it when I am ready.

My painting process is very expedient. I quickly make a decision as to what colors I am going to use. Ultimately when I paint, I am preparing the canvas for my drawing. When I feel like there are enough options to work with, I am done painting. At times, the painting can take as little as ten minutes to complete. After the canvas is prepared, I study it in the four directions, deciding which direction it will go. I would say that this is when I am most attentive in my creative process and snap out of dream world to make a decision--which way is up? Sometimes I see it in multiple directions and this has lead to the "Flipped" series. Once the direction has been determined, I then bring the piece to life with my ink drawing. The shapes formed by the paints dictate what I draw as do the negative spaces. I often see faces throughout the piece--but this "seeing" is not limited to art, it includes my every day seeing as well.

My hope is that my work will be a tool of this special kind of seeing for people. Not taking an object simply at face value. Everything we see is more interesting and complicated than the title we attach to it. You can look at a tree OR you can SEE the tree in its individuality. Trees are very much like people in the way that their environment and experiences with it make up the tree. A harsh winter, a bird pecking at the surface, or an animal digging a hole inside to live in, a kid climbing it--all of the experiences the tree has had have changed that tree just like what we have gone through in our lives has altered and changed us and not just physically but emotionally and energetically as well.

Statement from Cristine Cambrea, cover artist #5 issue of 10x3 plus poetry journal, "Mindfulness"

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS - XXXVI

The following poets and poems have been nominated by 10x3 plus for 2010:

Michael Gessner, "HOODOOS"

Michael Gessner, "PARTHENOGENESIS"

Mary Christine Delea, "Occupants"

Lamont Palmer, "Politician in a Boat"

Michael Bazzett, "Rooms and Days"

Sonja James, "Passing Storm at Woods Hole"


PUSHCART PRIZE selections for edition XXXVI will be announced in April, 2011.
Good luck to these poets and poems.

Primrose - Tomas de Faoite

Delicate childhood flowers
flourishing in shady places.
Raindrops with second thoughts
trying to get back to the sun,
or the sun with second thoughts
wanting back what it didn't need
billions of years before.
No wonder they smell so fragile,
an almost indecisive smell,
not knowing where to belong,
here, in shady places
or back at center, the sun.

Tomas DE FAOITE
First published in DUST,
Reinart Edities

from THIS GREAT UNKNOWING - Denise Levertov

from "Celebration"

"Brilliant, this day--a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green--
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes--
greener than ever before."


from This Great Unknowing, LAST POEMS
Denise LEVERTOV

Appalachian Night - Mark Jackley

Enfolded by pure darkness
a train slips through the hills,
past the occasional litter of homes
leaking yellow light.

In a kitchen window
the silhouette of an enormous man who thinks,
gazing at the train,
he could love anyone on board.


Mark JACKLEY
Collected in THERE WILL BE SILENCE WHILE YOU WAIT
Plain View Press

September 11, 2001 - Mark Jackley

Returning in darkness
to her mother's, my two-year-old glanced
at our neighborhood woods
and whispered, Listen, monsters.

Before I could reason with her
she climbed into my arms,
placed a tiny hand on my mouth
and commanded, Shhh.


Mark JACKLEY
Collected in THERE WILL BE SILENCE WHILE YOU WAIT, Plain View Press