Since its founding in 2016, I have been the Art Editor at Boston Accent Lit, a literary journal focused on publishing work by emerging talents from throughout the country. For our two year anniversary, we ran a competition to select ten visual artists particularly worth following. What follows is my congratulatory essay to the selected artists published in Boston Accent Lit and the list of selected artists, linked to their work on the Boston Accent Lit site. Thank you to Boston Accent Lit's Founder and Editor-in-Chief Sarah O'Brien for supporting the visual arts in this publication, and for adding her thoughts to this essay in parentheses.
Boston Accent Lit was founded in 2016, and over the last two years we have published the work of numerous writers and artists. As Boston Accent’s Art Editor, I try to share a diverse range of work being made by artists today. It seems that now there are more artists, more types of media, more approaches, more points of view than there had been at any previous point in history. For the two-year anniversary of the journal, we mounted a contest to find ten emerging artists particularly worth following going forward. The artists selected represent some of the diversity present in visual art, and represent a small cross-section of some of the myriad approaches, from traditional painting technique to collage-based creating to performance, being used by young art-makers. Their works explore a range of subjects—taking on topics such as self-reflection (seen in Lydia Mozzone’s paintings of naked women celebrating their beauty in solitude), family dynamics (conversations to be found within Casey Cullen’s photographic work in Nicaragua), and healing trauma (depicted stirringly in Taylor Maroney’s oil portraits in which sitters indicated places on their bodies that held the most emotional stress). Most importantly, each of these ten innovators brings their own style to the table and they share art that is uniquely personal, honest, and, in some cases, even confessional.
It is only fitting that, as an editor in a literary setting, I should draw on poetry to contextualize the work of these artists. In his 1818 poem, “Endymion,” John Keats wrote, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never. Pass into nothingness…” (read an excerpt of this piece here). Setting whatever the academic interpretation of this might be aside, it is a reminder that a great work of art is inherently resilient to the changing tides of fashion, taste, or history. Each of the emerging artists selected for inclusion in this issue imbues their work with some of the qualities that make worthwhile art immune to the erosion of time: depth, originality, beauty, et cetera. It will be exciting to learn where each of these artists ends up, how their work evolves, and which paths their artistic careers pave as they craft their roles in the larger art community. Everyone at Boston Accent Lit is thrilled that we could play a part in sharing the work of these ten artists with you.
Selected Artists:
We will continue to share works of art in all media, by artists from a broad spectrum of backgrounds, belief systems, and points of view.
Thank you for reading.
Michael Rose