Labrys Art and Literature

Labrys was founded in 2001 by Tammis Day, Margot Atwell, and Rose Ellen Epstein. It is currently Smith’s only student-run publication of art and creative writing. Our mission is to share uncensored work produced by our students with the greater community.

Letter from the Editor

In her poem “I Need to Talk to You”, Courtney Arnold parses what it means to hear your own name spoken aloud: “Your vowels, gooey moans, / melted my name apart. / … / …is it yours now? / Will you ever say it again? / I hope so.”

Her speaker is one of many characters in this issue who is deeply curious about their relationship to another, wondering how we change each other, whether we can learn to see each other completely. You could argue this is why we are so interested in art and literature in the first place. What can we possibly tell each other about what it means to live these wild and disparate human lives? These questions haunt Labrys’ art as much as its writing—portraits by Madeline McCurry, Simona Miller, Ella Prince, and Alina Wang attempt to plunge into a subject and wrest out their inner life through shadow, color, motion. Some of the faces and bodies that have been depicted here are those of other people—the artist has tried to know someone by creating their image. Other images represent the artists themselves, which confronts a different sort of question: how do I show myself to you? Both prospects of can be deeply exciting but also precarious. “you know the fact of you scares me”, Ingrid Weimer writes in “like your mountains”, revealing a tension between two people that seems as unsettling as it is exhilarating. It requires bravery, vulnerability to be understood, for to be with others changes us indelibly.

In Janelle Tan’s love sonnet, the speaker is so altered by their obsession that the stuff of their self has changed: they profess they have “forgotten who i was before smitten,” reflecting the experiences of other characters contained in these poems and stories. A woman who playfully chides the family ghost at the breakfast table. A young tourist who is magnetically drawn to a stranger in Kyoto. A daughter who has absorbed so much of a mother’s love and attention that she has even picked up parts of her handwriting.

Thank you to everyone who has gathered with me to see this issue of Labrys into being: to vice president Mayrose Beatty, for opening a dialogue with our con- tributors; to the editors and art directors, whose curation and design shaped submissions into a magazine; and to the Labrys board, for caring about student art and writing at Smith. And of course, thank you to everyone who sent us their work!

While reading this issue I invite you—viewer, reader—to think of where you lie in relation to these artists and writers. Although you may never meet many of them, you have found a type a found of relationship. I am so grateful for the chance to introduce you. Keep each other company.

Julia Falkner '19

a r t w o r k

Kimberly Liu

chiasmus, Broken

Lauren Raimunde

Mirroring

Kelly Weng

Untitled

Chengsheng Wu

Winter in Hangzhou

Ella Prince

Untitled Woman 1

Samantha Brown

Still

Emma Crumbley

Baby Blue

Emma Wellik

The Kiss

Ella Prince

Untitled Self-Portrait

Alina Wang

Alterity-Portrait

Anonymous

Sophia P.

Simona Miller

Self Portrait