Erik Parker is a painter living in New York City. His work is represented by Paul Kasmin Gallery (http://www.paulkasmingallery.com/). Speaking to writer Carole Kino in a March 2009 profile in The New York Times, Parker said, "A lot of the little intricate bits and pieces that make up those figures are the same motion you go through doing the writing part of the text-based paintings. I had to figure out how to take that matrix of lines and consolidate it into a mark-making process to build a figure." I went to college with his wife, Brooke, if you must know.
I came up with the title of this issue as a kind of acknowledgement of my personal tastes in the short-short/prose poem genre. I do like them more arcane, less tied to conventional notions of narrative or literal sense-making, than some writers like to write them. And I wanted to see what kind of writers would be fearless enough to respond to such a theme. However, I soon realized that this presented me with a unique challenge for the visual element of the issue -- what images could possibly stand up to it? I felt I knew -- I asked several cartoonist friends if they could make me art for this issue. It would have to blend a Lucy In The Sky kind of psychedelic, fluid imagery with a more contemporary grit. It would have to be a little Victorian, a little modern; visual, but with letters, words, phrases threaded through the images. It would have to be sort of funny, and sort of threatening, ominous, creepy. And I would like it best if it came in laffy-taffy colors of bright rich blues, sickly pinks, reds the color of watermelon bubble gum or raw stomach linings. The task was daunting. Then Brooke posted an invitation on her Facebook page -- come to her husband's art opening! I couldn't travel the 1,300 miles but I could click a link and when I did I knew I had found what I was looking for.