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Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994

Sara Schaff

Las Meninas (detail) by Diego Vasquez

I keep a postcard of Velázquez's Las Meninas above my desk at work, and I can't look at it without thinking of the summer I spent in Spain with R, the last summer we were friends. That summer I was … [Read more...]

Minimizing Monetization Earth: Agnes Denes’ Art

John K Grande

Agnes Denes Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule (detail)- 11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years (Triptych) 1992-1996, 1992/2013 Type-C print 36 x 36 inches Copyright Agnes Denes, courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York

Is there truly any art that can surpass the beauty and majestic power of nature itself? Wasn’t it Neil Young who said “Nature is a monument to be preserved,” or words to that effect? The earth is … [Read more...]

To Ride a Horse: The Art of Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Perceptions of Nature in an Age of Decline

Andrew J. Corsa

Nastja Säde Rönkkö, Take Me Anywhere, 2016 2 channel HD video, duration 10 min, video/edit Luke Turner

Think of seeing a horse. How often do we see a horse as something we can ride, and can we learn to look at horses without ever thinking about how humans can use them? When we see mountains, how often … [Read more...]

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Brooke Knisley

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid

I. In early 2015, I was invited to a popup art show in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. My good friend Megan, an actor in the event, described it as a living replication of Hieronymus Bosch’s … [Read more...]

Seven Abstract Comics by Dev Murphy

Dev Murphy

more trusting - Dev Murphy

… [Read more...]

A Carving Process: Ripple by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck

Matt Diage

Ripple by Havel-Ruck Projects

I first saw Ripple on its opening night. Formally a residence in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, Ripple is a sculpture created on site by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck who carved designs into the … [Read more...]

Cy Twombly’s Lepanto Green

Wm. Anthony Connolly

Lepanto by Cy Twombly (panel 2)

Someone has razed the house and hung its walls vandalized by a tormented resident. Standing back affronted, but scrutinizing the display nevertheless, twelve panels come into view as if roof, … [Read more...]

toriot: text art by paul hawkins

Paul Hawkins

toriot 14 (detail - paul hawkins

"Sometimes people say: 'What the fuck do you think you're doing? That's not art.' I say: 'Fuck off, assholes!'" -- Martin Creed … [Read more...]

Mary’s: Photographs

Dana Stirling

Mary's - Ice Cream by Dana Stirling

For a while now I’ve been collecting found footage, discarded images that once belonged to family archives, and repurpose them giving them a new meaning and a place in my own work. I received an … [Read more...]

A Third Scroll of Malachite: A Painting by Joost de Jonge and Poem by Norman Dubie

Joost de Jonge and Norman Dubie

A Third Scroll of Malachite —circa 800 AD The magus as a small boy in Egypt in his faded linens thought that the torchlight reflected in the harbor was a simple exchange of sleeping gulls over … [Read more...]

Standing room only: Inside the workshop of E.C. Brown Anomalies

Ephraim C. Brown

EC Brown Anomalies Shop Detail 6

For many artists, the studio itself as seen as the catalyst for things to magically occur. I don't generally look at it in that way, mainly because it is rare that I'm fully and completely relaxed in … [Read more...]

Thirteen mixed-media artworks by Hildy Maze

Hildy Maze

Visible Thoughts, Mistaken Appearances (detail) - Hildy Maze

Artist's statement: My work is driven by a curiosity into the investigation of mind thru art. None of us can avoid thoughts, but through awareness of our pitfalls, beauty, strengths and weaknesses we … [Read more...]

DADA Centennial: Day of the Dead at the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction Archives

Empty Mirror News

Show runs through January 2017 (by appointment) Reception Friday Nov. 4, 2016 from 4-7 PM DADA Centennial: Day of the Dead at the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction … [Read more...]

Burning Factories: Art by Sander Steins

Sander Steins

Burning Factory 1 - Sander Steins

It was the summer of 1980 when I was seven years old that I sat in the back seat of my father’s blue Opel Kadett coupé and saw the first smoking chimneys of the German Ruhrgebiet. Those were the … [Read more...]

‘weather reports’: visual poetry by hiromi suzuki

hiromi suzuki

Artist's statement: Weather reports rarely come true. Sometimes people changes their mind like sudden rain. They are falling and laughing like the sun-shower of letters. … [Read more...]

Collages by Ben Stainton

Ben Stainton

city by the sea - Ben Stainton

… [Read more...]

Four Landscapes (Through a Window) by Magie Dominic

Magie Dominic

Landscape 1 - Magie Dominic

Artist's statement: These four collages can be viewed separately. They can also be shown as one 4-part piece as seen through a four pane glass window, with the two blue and white pieces on the top - … [Read more...]

A Gallery of Collages by Nicholas Lockyer

Nicholas Lockyer

deathpunch - Nicholas Lockyer

Artist's statement:Visual artist Nicholas Lockyer’s collage work explores the relationship between the saturation point of digitalization in today’s society, Trash Cinema and lowbrow ephemera culture … [Read more...]

Eight paintings by Tom Melsen

Tom Melsen

Self Portrait )detail) - Tom Melsen

Artist's statement: What is important to me, is what I like to call "the art of destroying." I destroy a lot of my works. Most paintings I make feel like crap to me and only a few of the many … [Read more...]

Collages by Oscar Varona

Oscar Varona

You were made for me(detail) - Oscar Varona

… [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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