Chances are your college or high school funded and tacitly supported a literary journal chock full of angry poetry and a few depressing photos of trees and puddles, and more resembling a pamphlet than a magazine.
It’s no wonder — such publications (okay, journals for you purists) are the blood and sweat of only a handful of people, and transient people at that. Each year, new students bubble out of their freshman/sophomore haze and into projects of substance, leaving things like literary journals with generally only two years (at most) of dedicated service and experience.
“It’s a sword that cuts both ways,” says Keith Foster, the USM junior who is the publisher/director of Words + Images this year. In fact, Words + Images was nearly headed for the shredder last year. “At the time I was part of the [student activities] executive board who almost had to dissolve it. . . . We almost killed it because we couldn’t just hold funding for an organization that exists in name only,” Foster says.
Last year’s publishing director Hudson Wyatt and a handful of other students including Foster stepped up to the plate, though, to accept responsibility for the $25,000 (and an additional contribution from the discretionary budget of USM President Richard Pattenaude, says Foster, in support of the journal) in funding that comes from the university student activities pot to keep it afloat.
With the new blood came innovation and change, two perennial hallmarks of Words + Images. More a small book of almost square shape than a typical journal, Words + Images solicits both written and artistic submissions from all over the US. Yes, the journal is sprinkled with submissions from USM community members, but the bulk of its content, which includes a variety of mixed-media display, poetry, and prose, comes from elsewhere. And this year, says Foster, the journal seems to have a greater focus on art than literature — photography, watercolors, teabag blots, and digital creations abound. He credits that to art director Rebecca Stockbridge.
But what really sets Words + Images 2006 apart from its predecessors is in the way that artists and writers are identified — they’re not. Not on the pages where their work is highlighted, anyway.
“I sort of had an epiphany when I was in a gender identity and modern art class last semester. We were discussing representations of female artists in New York and the galleries that highlighted women’s work. It got me thinking that that kind of presentation changes viewership entirely, even if the art is of the same quality or standard. The fact that it could change your appreciation for the work itself frustrated me, and I began to think about how to avoid that,” says Foster. “How can I go to a gallery now without thinking about the artist’s gender or ethnicity? I wanted Words + Images to really be about viewing art in a pure form. All the names are off the artists’ art, and there’s no signature on the publishing director’s letter, either. So, the concept is very thorough.”
