Every copy of CP16 includes a limited edition accordion book by Slavko Djuric and 9x13 woodcut titled Who Owns the Sky by Rob Swainston. Issue 16 of Carrier Pigeon, the artist-run fiction and fine art quarterly, keeps with its established tradition of exploring parts of the inner-workings of human perception and a dark look at the human condition.
This issue is sealed within Rob Swainston's featured print and cover design, "Who Owns the Sky?," of a startling x-ray of a pigeon's skeleton. It's a look at what is inside the bird, the bare bones and the mechanics of its movements caught in stillness. Once this issue's seal is broken, the six works of fiction and six artist portfolios shatter this stillness and take turns revealing ruminations on darkness within the self.
Adam New's "And Her Also" drops the reader into the dystopian world inhabited by people like our female protagonist who is driven by her animalistic desire for the exhilaration of death - lined up facing a gun or with claws in human flesh. Raisha Friedman's stark black and white illustrations, highlighted by splashes of yellow bring out this spare and anonymous woman's secretive tale of woe. "Tales From Ukraine," by Tatiana Ryckman delve into the strange and almost surreal pieces of flash fiction which piece together unfamiliar yet intimate human moments in a Ukranian village. These dark-humored domestic dramas are brought to life by the illustrations of Frances Jetter which capture and tease out what could be described as a comforting grotesqueness. The reality of resolution by death comes across in Chad V. Broughman's "Hodgepodge O' Flash Fiction." Dark glimpses into moments of mortality and deep sadness are carefully crafted by each story's small arch that culminates in a meditation on loss. The stories are paired with illustrations by Bruce Waldman, whose dark figures seem to exist in unidentified spaces with facial expressions that seem tormented by their desire to share a piece of themselves. Josh Saltzman takes a look at the humor of human existence to a new level with his dark non-moral story, "The Mayor of Roses." Stately Stone village, defined by its perfections, including the increasingly deluded mayor, soon has to face the reality that it will be defined by its imperfections. The simple yet evocative illustrations by Boeeuen Choo capture the beauty in the gore of this tale - a poo covered man or a blood-red rose. Meghan McDonald showcases in her story, "A Mirrored Mind," a neurotic main character who is determined to ascribe an emotional/psychological label to a woman unknown to him. He can't decide if he hates her or loves her, all the while, she displays unrequited emotional responses to every interaction she shares with him. Marie Roberts's illustrations bring cartoonish action to the park bench drama which portray the main character's frustrations to a T, while also realizing the cool and collected responses of his female counterpart. Life is destabilized by Scott Archer Jones's story "Contentment," as it tells the story of Joseph, an elderly, sexually-charged bachelor who exercises his will to live up until his final moments. The sexual under and overtones throughout the story are depicted aptly in the varying phallic and death imagery in Joo Chung, Suhyun Lim, Min Kyung Kang, Jing Yao Chen, Minju Sun, and Amanda Konishi's illustrations.
The issue's artist portfolios begins with Rob Swainston's feature portfolio, "Prints of Darkness," which showcases lithography, woodblock, silkscreen, intaglio, collagraph and inkjet prints. They detail the mechanization of art-making, blurring the lines between styles presenting each piece as a confrontation of print images and icons through subtle tinkering. Peter Krashes, activist and artist, reaches off the page and into the community with his re-empowerment of moments during community gatherings or political meetings captured in photograph, then painted over to amplify the continuing positive effects of those social gatherings. The third artist portfolio focuses on what hat is lost and then found, as displayed in Jario Alfonso's "Hoarding & Disassmbling." This colletion of drawings brings together unlikely objects into a shared space that forces layers of textures and symbolism to amplify, while simultaneously cancelling each other out. Art Werger's portfolio of mezzotint prints, "Transitions," give a secret look into hazy memories of love, loneliness and betrayal. They appear in series like scene cards of layered emotions, which allow the viewer to connect with any given moment the transition of one emotion to the next. Susan Rostow's collection of sculptural books bring the possibility of language and a book's binding off the page and over and around the covers. These sculptures recombine found and created objects to mimic the undulation of life and living things while destabilizing the traditional creation of the book. The issue culminates with Slavko Djuric's portfolio, "In Pursuit of Happiness," which is a liberation of his prints from the printing medium. His deconstruction and then recombination of his prints into multi-media and texturized pieces embraces errors and slight imperfections in the repetition of print-making to create a new way of experience the art of prints.
The sixteenth issue of Carrier Pigeon is full-color, 10x13 and totals 177 pages. The designer is Travis Witmer.