Category: Latest Issue

93 Featured Artist

BARRY UNDERWOOD received his Masters in Photography
from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work is situated at
the intersection of land art, staged photography, and Minimalist
sculpture. He strives to foster awareness of environmental
change by engaging viewers in playful interactions,
offering a novel lens through which to consider the impact
of human action on our surroundings. Barry has been an
artist in residence at the Banff Center for the Arts and the
Center for Land Use Interpretation, among others. His
award-winning work has been exhibited, reviewed and collected
in a wide variety of contexts in the US and abroad.
barryunderwood.com

93 Truth Matters

A Discourse

by Alireza Nurbakhsh

In a time when fake news, climate change denial, and conspiracy theories loom large in our lives, it is important to remind ourselves that the driving force behind both our scientific enterprise and spiritual awakening has always been our search for the truth.

Truth matters not simply because we want to have an objectively correct view of the world and ourselves, but because a worldview based on falsehood will eventually lead to our demise. Truth also matters as the basis of scientific inquiry.

In Sufism, the aim is to experience the truth of the divine through love, not the falsehood of thoughts and actions that stem from the ego. The goal is to realize that we are part of the whole, to experience the Unity of Being without seeing ourselves as different and distinct from the whole. For the Sufis, the truth lies hidden within oneself and therefore the seeker of the truth is ultimately on a path of self-discovery.

ARTWORK © MICHAEL MAPES

92 Featured Poet

RAPHAEL BLOCK is the author of several books of poetry, including Spangling Darkness and most recently, Strings of Shining Silence: Earth Love Poems. His work speaks to Earth’s call for a heartfelt response to our ecological crisis. Born on a kibbutz, Raphael spent his boyhood playing on the hills of Haifa. His family later returned to London, where learning British English shaped his ear for sound. He currently lives and writes in Northern California.

92 Featured Artist

MATIKA WILBUR is from Swinomish and Tulalip in Washington State. She studied photography at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Montana and the Brooks Institute of Photography in California. She has exhibited extensively in regional, national, and international venues such as the Royal British Columbia Museum of Fine Arts, The Nantes Museum of Fine Arts in France, the Seattle Art Museum, the Burke Museum of Natural History and the Tacoma Art Museum. She is the creator of Project 562. (See Artists & Photographers.)