Paul in particular was a crucible, because the story is vacuum-sealed inside his head and he’s in virtually relentless agony. He was cathartic to write, because his pain and rage came from such a real and visceral place for me, but for that same reason he was absolutely exhausting. Julian’s story was rough for different reasons—he just wears it well, and Paul himself doesn’t notice as much as the reader might.

Four houses on your left, the boxy white one trimmed in turquoise, that’s my place. Wagging his index finger in the direction of my chest he popped, Little chilly? I play for the other team. Downshifting his voice, as though right out of a movie, he added, I’m Jake, your welcoming committee. A swing in the back yard under a shady oak tree makes up for the frontal ugly of my house

Painting

Aiden Arata is a writer, director and new media artist from Los Angeles. She lives on the internet at @aidenarata. 

The name would never be her own. She still disliked the way it sounded—sibilant—knifelike. She drove out along the dirt driveway to the farthest reaches of the vineyard. The workers were there picking from the outermost row of trellises. They did not raise their eyes to the departing car but Maria still flicked them a parting wave.

I don’t build still lives to capture or pose sitters. Most of my photographs are “found” — scenes already unfolding; a natural-looking mess I couldn’t have made myself if I tried; people

Kadar Brock is a New York based artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. His abstract paintings physically deconstruct myths about the artist, gesture, and masculinity.

Painting

Sixty-three years after the coal mine closes, sixty-one years after Roger Delano Hinkins, the future John-Roger, founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA), is born to a Mormon family in Rains, Utahs…

By Matt Jones

That’s how it feels to survive a plague, to be living after an outbreak that claimed a
generation. A break in the middle of what should be my history, a black hole consuming

Allison Hunter is an artist and full-time faculty member at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She draws with light when editing her photographs and paints with light when creating installations. 

Photography/Video

I think less of full characters than of glimpses. Books offer glimpses of mind—and therefore can make life richer for others. Among these glimpses there are some that are deeper or richer than others. Sometimes it is by chance.

Interview by Heather Palmer

Odell’s book does not contain any clear-cut lists, steps, programs, or formulas for a more optimized life, and in this way it is not particularly motivating. As the author admits early on, the title of her book is a minor deception…

By Anna Ruth Yates

Jeffrey’s spooky vision maps the duality of his worlds, one with dutiful allegiance and the other with sexual talons, the two occupying competing spaces. Detective or pervert—we wonder what will become of our goodest boy.

By Kristiana Gambuti

The folds on your face, how and when did they arrive and mark you? I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help iron them out…

By Thanh Le Dang

Everything is set up spontaneously at this specific moment. No matter what, it is always the same feeling, that I have to take it.

Photography

There is racism, poverty, homophobia. Florida boasts one of the highest numbers of hate groups of any state. But it’s a great place to go on spring break (in fact, Harmony Korine’s 2012 film Spring Breakers was shot in St. Petersburg). The landscape is beautiful. There’s a complex and contradictory history.

Interview by Quentin Greif

I know it’s just a door. But to me it’s more than a door. It’s an oasis in a desert of tackiness, stupidity and unbridled inbreeding. It’s beautiful. It’s unadorned. It’s steel. It’s brown. It’s not even brown. It’s not even a color.

By Whitney Porter

What we might largely consider a macabre and even morbid gesture, these artefacts instead acted as celebratory tokens for their owners, conjuring memories of a loved one and even standing in for a non-existent body.

By Samantha Ozer

How bright life sits just above its melancholy brother…

By Olivia Hebert

I first met Antonio Lopez seven years ago, when we were both living our gay stereotype fantasies and working the women’s designer apparel floor at a high-end department store in Houston, Texas. I was drawn to him initially because of his penchant for Dries van Noten floral patterns, classic mariniere shirts, and killer oversized acetate glasses that put Iris Apfel to shame.

By Nick Peña

Aptly Editor Quentin Greif, dragged boxes of advanced reader’s copies from a publishing conference he attended at the start of the year. Here’s what he wants everyone to read this year.

By Quentin Greif

Robert Zehnder is interested in how we visualise the human psyche and experience in a post-digital/internet age, amongst many other things. 

So cut off from the divine embrace that they couldn’t feel each earthquake for what it was: the reluctant shudder of a mother shaking lecherous children off her breast…

By Delilah Friedler

Carolyne Loreé Teston (American, b. 1988) is a photographer based in New York. She creates work that attempts to find balance between a longing for serenity in nature and a dependency on technology.

Walking through the galleries evoked the experience of witnessing an uninhabited house fall into disrepair and feeling the human life leave the space, only to discover the detritus left behind has a secret life that continues, mirroring the rituals of its former tenants.

By Anna Ruth Yates

Identifying as a certain kind of artist brings with it labels and expectations that have been limiting for me. If you imagine that you’re an amateur then you can follow the thing that you love a little more.

Emily Brown interviews friend and and collaborator Julia Anrather

Enlighted was something like a bible to me during several incredibly difficult periods in my life and only a show as gorgeously crafted with an actress as talented as Laura Dern can invoke feelings like that in people. I like to imagine Amy Jellicoe is finally happy.

By Quentin Greif

I had a teacher once tell me I was obsessed with food. She asked if I knew. You mean how I eat everything?

By Heather Palmer

I don’t know that I’m motivated to be an entrepreneur, honestly. Truth is, I haven’t really known the alternative well enough to feel like it was an option for me. I’m a college dropout with little to no work experience and a “sky’s the limit” mentality.

Interview by Katherine Espinosa

Tonally, the episodes capture these beloved stories ingeniously. The opening shots of the stifling post-war neighborhood which Lenu and Lila spend the books escaping from and being inextricably tied to, capture the drab dusty buildings I pictured in my mind down to the most minuscule of details.

By Quentin Greif

I wanted him to ravage me, like before, but he was tender, careful, the inevitable transference of a new father’s love for his daughter.

By Christine Olivas

Milwaukee-based painter Ariana Vaeth depicts snapshots of her life.

Aptly discusses some of our recent favorites: Food 4 Thot, season 3, Serial, season 3, and Citations Needed.

By Aptly Editors

Some of us, when it is time, might hear the odd murmur of vulgar mechanics or feel a seismic shift in our composition. Less fortunate numbers will experience the smack of collision or the bullseye point of criminality. Others may go to sleep and miss the end, which, though perhaps painless, seems like a shame.

By K. Krombie

Rachel Schmidhofer received her MFA from Yale University and her BFA from Washington University in St Louis. She has had solo shows at Jeff Bailey in Hudson, NY, Novella Gallery in New York, NY, and Glike Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

Can I deep fry the cry, Of a seagull…

By Caroline Cooper