Four Poems

Elinor Nauen

Elinor Nauen’s books include The Alphabet’s Dilemma, Now That I Know Where I’m Going, Snowbound (a dos-à- dos book with Stephen Willis), My Marriage A to Z, So Late into the Night, CARS & Other Poems, American Guys and, as editor, Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women writers on cars & the road (Faber & Faber, 1997) and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women writers on baseball (Faber & Faber, 1994). Her work has appeared in New American Writing, FICTION, Exquisite Corpse, The World, KOFF, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Aethlon, Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, National Endowment for the Humanities Magazine, American Book Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She edits Julebord with Maureen Owen and for 12 years co-hosted, with Martha King, the reading series Prose Pros. 

Elinor hails from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and for many years has lived in New York’s East Village with her husband, the novelist Johnny Stanton, and their cat Lefty, who recently advised her in a dream that when they are out in public she should refer to him as Mr. Money. She holds a 4th-degree black belt in traditional Japanese karate, and is hoping to be fluent in Norwegian by her 80th birthday. ElinorNauen.com

Mason Owens

STATEMENT

I’m particularly drawn to experiences that I share with friends and loved ones, and those that are imbued with a warm sense of nostalgia, humor, or childlike curiosity. Those moments persist in my memory and act as the initial inspiration for many paintings. Through the course of developing a work I often end up changing the elements completely. With a playful trial and error mentality, I will paint over sections and scratch others. I will pursue interesting lighting, a particular landscape, or add narrative elements and objects from other moments. I will change colors and characters until I feel the painting more truthfully translates the magic of the original inspiration, despite sometimes having less in common with it in reality. Ultimately I feel like I am making paintings for the friends and family who are depicted in them, or those who are familiar with the places, objects, and sentiment that is involved. My paintings are journal-like objects that visualize moments I cherish and are meant to share a familial bond that is created through shared experience.

BIO

I am a multidisciplinary artist working in Baltimore, MD. I received my BFA from the University of the Arts in 2013 and studied abroad at The Glasgow School of Art, in Glasgow, Scotland. After college I completed Maryland's Beginner Farmer Training Program and worked as a farmer, gardener, or landscaper for the next seven years. In my free time throughout this period, I slowly developed an art practice focused on drawing and painting. In 2022, I began working with egg tempera, finding its naturalness and beauty an apt extension of my previous interests and have continued using it exclusively.