Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Kimberlee Frederick from our tenth issue.

Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?

Kimberlee Frederick: Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time learning to become a lot more aware of sensations, of my physical experience of the world moment to moment. As it turns out, that’s an enormous driver of my creativity; I find that as soon as I have any curiosity, delight, or even resistance toward something I feel physically, I want to collage about it.

Talking to other creatives is the other sure-fire way for me to get the little buzz of urgency to make something. There’s something about discussion ideas, process, or (often) total silliness with others who love to create things that just deepens the pool of inspiration.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?

Kimberlee Frederick: How does one whittle this list down?! I’m almost obnoxious in how much I look up to my friends and my family, as well as the artist communities I get to interact with both online and in Portland, Oregon. I’ll keep it at that, for fear of leaving out  someone who absolutely deserves to be mentioned.

I will call out Anais Nin specifically, though. Her powerful, grounded writing has been a recent obsession of mine, and reading her journals and essays frequently motivates me to start creating.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?

Kimberlee Frederick: A lot of the collages I make are rooted in natural entities, actually. Specifically natural entities that are at odds with the body. I play around with mushrooms a lot, and bugs of all sorts. I can’t seem to stop combining vivid florals with grotesque anatomical imagery. I’ve been doing a lot of work recently with the ocean; I think it’s the tension of the terror and allure that really gets me.

Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?

Kimberlee Frederick: The collage that was accepted to Tiny Spoon is a digital-analog hybrid piece, but it started its life as a cut-and-paste project. When I work manually like that, I tend to get started when a particular image in my stash of ephemera tugs at me and won’t let go. From there, I feel like I’m having a conversation with the narrative that underlies my initial attraction to the image: I ask it whether this cutout or that abstract color strip feels relevant; I sift through stacks and stacks of magazines and scraps and junk mail multiple times, adding and discarding elements in different configurations. I don’t actually know what really works about this process; I can’t even tell you how I know when I’m done. It’s extremely intuitive, and most of the time I don’t really know what the piece is trying to be until after it’s glued down and I go to name it.

When I assembled the collage submitted to Tiny Spoon, I didn’t realize how important it was to the figure in it that she kind of blended with the other mycological elements in the piece. Only when I went to name it and found that the muted color, her solitude among the mushrooms, and her posture conveyed hopelessness did I decide she wasn’t quite done saying what she needed to say. When I made the figure more inextricable from her surroundings, more of the mushrooms than among them, it felt finished.

That’s fairly indicative of the difference in approach to hand-cut versus digital collage: purely intuitive when cutting and pasting gives way to more conscious intentionality when I work digitally.

Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?

Kimberlee Frederick: I’m striving to develop a more consistent and evolving writing practice alongside my collage habit. I envision the two coming together in something like a chapbook that explores my desperate discomfort with dentistry, teeth, and their ilk.

Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?

Kimberlee Frederick: There’s so much cool, weird stuff that smaller presses and independent creators are putting out there!

Check out Wrong Publishing and Body Fluids Lit for regular doses of great weird poetry, flash, and art. I discovered a weird little book of stories called Melancholic Parables by Dale Stromberg through Wrong. Also the insultingly incisive poet Carina Solis.

Some great music is hitting Portland recently: Breezy the Band is killing it with their kitchen sink amalgam of rock/punk/hardcore/etc. and tremendous songwriting.

Lament Cityscape is making me rethink everything I thought I knew about loud industrial.

Fever Deacon goes so hard with layers and texture in his dark bass stuff; I never know if I want to dance or have an ego death when I listen.

Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?

Kimberlee Frederick: I keep my website pretty updated: www.kimberleefrederick.com

I’m on Instagram fairly regularly @unrealcitypdx.

Tiny Spoon: Do you have photographs or images you would like us to share?

Kimberlee Frederick: Yes, my studio assistants 🙂 Dale (left), Circe (top), Sampson (bottom)

Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with William Clark from our tenth issue.

Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?

William Clark: There are artists or writers I tend to turn to for sparking ideas. Perhaps the most essential three poets for me are Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and A.R. Ammons. Specific books of theirs I routinely dip into are Dickinson’s fascicles, Stevens’s The Auroras of Autumn, and Ammons’s Sphere: The Form of a Motion. I also keep a record of images I see in dreams. It’s not a dream journal per se, but just a sentence or two about a single specific image I might have glimpsed. Most times when I practice more routinely, the effect is to expand that particular generative part of my imagination (and sometimes making dreams more vivid). Because I often get flashes of ideas from little things I see or experience in dreams, this can be very productive at times.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?

William Clark: The most influential artist in my life is John Coltrane. For many years I was a practicing jazz musician before writing took over my creative output. I was lucky to encounter Coltrane’s work at a very young and impressionable age. I’m not entirely sure why, but even as a teenager there was something about his music that I felt was speaking directly to me. I very quickly gravitated to the rich complexities of his most experimental work. In my eyes, there is no other figure that better represents the true consummate artist. If you examine only the last decade of his life, 1957 to 1967, the artist you hear at the end is barely recognizable from the one at the beginning. That is to say, I can’t think of any other artist (of any other medium) who innovated as much as he did. His last recordings are some of the most transcendent music ever created.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?

William Clark: This question reminds me of how we’re all riding on the shoulders of previous generations of writers, even if we’re not even conscious of it.

Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?

William Clark: I know that I’m in the groove when I get so deep into a project that I simply feel like a conduit for ideas, or that the words are writing themselves. It’s a blissful feeling, one that if you ever experience you want to return to again and again. My biggest struggle with the creative process has to do with making my conscious brain more receptive to when the subconscious surfaces an idea. It can be quite hushed and invisible. And then when I do recognize a surfaced idea, the challenge becomes developing the discipline to run with it, to not delay it.

When it comes to writing poetry, I like to think of the words and phrases and images I use as brushstrokes. That’s one of the reasons why I use irregular spacings and line breaks. In my mind I’m word-painting with different textures and variations of lines, curves, and slants. I try to avoid any set pattern and instead let my instinct inform me of how to shape something. I’m also always conscious of the opposing forces of chaos and order in my work. For example, I use sound and rhythm in my poems––not end rhymes per se, but sonically linked words––as something that helps ground the chaos of the metaphors or lack of punctuation or syntactical irregularity. With regards to the two poems appearing in Tiny Spoon 10, I wrote both of them late at night on my smartphone. I developed this habit after my son was born about six years ago, when the only time I had to contemplate poetry was late at night after everyone went to sleep and the house was finally totally quiet. It helps to keep my poems more concise and deliberate, and less purely improvisatory and wild. Both poems are at least in some small part related to trauma and how the mind adapts to it. It’s a topic I’m fascinated by, not only on a personal level, but also a societal level.

Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?

William Clark: I’m in the process for finding an agent for two novels I have written. I also have a poetry collection I’d like to publish, one that I’ve been tinkering with for the past few years.

Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?

William Clark: Find a list of John Coltrane’s Impulse! records, which roughly represent the last 5-6 years of his life. Start from the beginning, don’t rush it. Steadily work your way to the end. If an album seems too harsh, go back to the one before and sit with it a while longer. But it’s important to keep trying. His last few albums are otherworldly and utterly transcendent, but you can’t just jump to the end and expect to get anything from it. You have to work your way up.

With respect to books, I never really know how to answer this question. There’s rarely a single book by an author that has an outsized influence on me. Instead, it’s more of an artist’s entire oeuvre that shapes me. In other words, I find when I really invest in spending a great amount of time and effort to inhabit the worlds of others, the influence comes from total immersion and not necessarily from a single piece.

That said, for some reason Virginia Woolf’s book, The Waves, just popped into my head. What an incredible book, but also incredibly weird and inimitable. There’s simply nothing else like it. Also, something else that just popped into my head is James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover, another book that is both totally fascinating and utterly strange.

Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?

William Clark: Two online journals you can find my poetry are Clade Song 3 and smoking glue gun, volume 4.

Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Irina Tall from our tenth issue.

Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?

Irina Tall: Nature inspires me, I often listen to birds… I have a jar on my balcony where I pour food, and then I watch how birds eat and communicate.

One time a hawk flew to the balcony, a large female, she hunted sparrows and caught a few. She ate them right on the balcony, and then cleaned the feathers for a long time.

Sometimes I go to exhibitions, and more often I am inspired by the films and books I have watched.

I probably wrote a long and incomprehensible phrase, but I really love birds of prey. At night, I often look at the stars, I like their distant fire, the moon month … I want to imagine a different life on them and I start to find out that it is possible that there is a person living there like me and he has the same thoughts, the same life …. and I sit down and draw some kind of worms with human heads, fish in which, instead of a body, a naked skeleton and several human heads.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to? 

Irina Tall: One of my series of works was inspired by Yaoi Kusama. I love bright red, I saw her work, and then a year or more passed and a series about eggs matured inside me, when I drew, I thought exactly that the egg is a circle shape, only it was changed a little. I often imagine abstraction when I draw some object or person.

Once when I went to the museum, I was struck by the portraits of Angelica Kaufmann. And as a child, I tried to repeat the self-portrait of Zinaida Serebryakova, she depicted herself in front of a mirror when she combs her hair, then this gesture seemed to me like a stretched bowstring, after I compared this gesture with the famous archer Mikas Cherlyunis. In imitation of this artist, I later made a series with raspberry drops, where a bird, a human head, a web, a horse grew out of each.

I really like Egon Schiele, perhaps this is my idol.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?

Irina Tall: A kick moves me very well, sometimes a creative stagnation occurs… And then you realize that your whole state is like stupidity that has rolled over you, and you just have to watch… and then a hop and something starts to move you. It’s good to get kicks, after one such kick, I took part in fifty projects in a year.

Sometimes my friends or just strangers make me move, sometimes even one phrase helps. Once I saw a manager who was buying a piece of cake in a store, I saw how she communicated with the seller and I noted that she had artistic abilities, and then the thought came to my mind how many obstacles she had to overcome in order to achieve the position in which she my depression, which sometimes rolls over me, has evaporated somewhere. Episodes like this keep me moving forward.

Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?

Irina Tall: Oh, I have two methods of work. First, I just sit down and do it, no matter if it’s lines or spots. Second, I watch people, go somewhere to watch a performance or an exhibition. And inspire what they see.

Since 2021, I started making monotypes in ink, I had thin paper and I thought what I could do with it, from this the series “Ghosts” was born (it has five chapters and is not yet fully completed). I think that you don’t need to watch how others draw and imitate them, you need to invent something of your own, even if it’s not very successful at first…

I like to read books, I like mythology, I often draw some mythological creatures.

Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?

Irina Tall: Now I am working on a project dedicated to Judith, at least in the story that I want to portray is the legend of Judith and the head of Holofernes. Giorgione has a famous work on this subject. It was this work that first inspired me.

In my project, Judith becomes a heroine placed in a kind of parallel world, from where people travel to everywhere where there are colonies on Mars, Venus. And where she is a girl from the highest aristocracy kills a high-ranking person who raped and killed. Probably this official is a kind of blue beard, since most often women become his victims.

I’m also doing a project about famine and war… These are even two different projects, but it’s hard to talk about them, at least talk about them. I have sketches, but they were not easy for me.

Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?

Irina Tall: I like Handel’s The Four Seasons, Mozart, almost all classical music in general. When I watched the movie “Interstellar”, I was struck by the music, and then I found out about the composer Hans Zimmer. I constantly turn on and listen to concerts from YouTube by this composer.

Once I was at a performance by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and literally fell in love with his works.

This is probably a difficult question about books, I like Czeslaw Miloš, but I’m like a lazy artist, but I read them all. At one time, I was struck by the non-linearity of the narrative, some kind of hidden philosophy in the erotic, by Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.

One of my favorite books is a book about Roman emperors.

Now I am subscribed to many mailing lists of English and American magazines that publish contemporary authors. I enjoy reading short stories and poetry.

Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?

Irina Tall: My self-portrait is the Siren, the essence that wears a mask and where you can see the essence in the slit of the irons.

I believe that the main thing for a person is to move forward and it doesn’t matter in which family you were born, you just need to work hard and work.

Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?

Irina Tall: You can see my works on social networks, I have an Instagram: @irinanov4155, @irina369tall

Lately I’ve been into collage. And for International Women’s Day, I made a collage with the image of a little mermaid. Probably everyone knows Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale about the little mermaid, I wanted to show a different image, an independent and complex girl who, when faced with something, does not give in, but overcomes. I consider the image of the prince in this story to be weak, or rather, he is a weak person who cannot make a decision, and then the girl makes the right decision, she refuses it and returns to herself.

Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Amy Guidry from our tenth issue.

Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity? 

Amy Guidry: Galleries, museums, nature, animals

Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to? 

Amy Guidry: There are many artists I admire, but based on many personal reasons I relate most to Frida Kahlo.  I admire her for creating beautiful, intriguing art despite what life threw at her.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work? 

Amy Guidry: The natural world in general inspires my work.

Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general? 

Amy Guidry: All of my paintings begin as a thumbnail sketch.  Sometimes I have an image in mind, other times it may be a concept that I’d really like to cover through my work.  Either way, I do tons of thumbnail sketches, which may just be slight variations from one to the next or they can be wildly different.  I go through this process just so I can flesh out an idea until I feel like I have the “one.”  I save all of these sketches because I’ve actually created subsequent paintings from ideas that I didn’t feel strongly about at the time.  Just looking at them with fresh eyes can lead to something new. 

Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share? 

Amy Guidry: I’m presently working on a painting for an upcoming show at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco.  This group exhibition is titled Beyond the Horizon and features works inspired by star patterns, planetary bodies, and the monumental myths that inhabit the night sky.

Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?  

Amy Guidry: I’d highly recommend reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.  For artists, I’d recommend Leonora Carrington’s exhibition, which I have to enjoy online, going on now at Recoletos Exhibition Hall in Madrid.  I haven’t kept up with new music lately but I’ve been listening to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?  

Amy Guidry: As an artist, one of the more influential genres for me has been Surrealism.  With my “In Our Veins” series, my style was becoming progressively more surreal, and I was looking to challenge myself technically and conceptually.  One of the themes explored with this series is animal welfare.  It’s an important issue for me on a personal level, but I also feel that it is a significant part of the future of our environment.  They go hand-in-hand.  “In Our Veins” explores the connections between all life forms and the process of the life cycle.  This includes the interdependence of the human race to each other and to the rest of the animal kingdom, as well as the planet itself.  One cannot exist without the other, therefore it is of the utmost importance that we care for each and every living thing.  Of course, I believe this is important not just for the survival of the planet, but also out of a moral and ethical obligation as well.

One of the “trademarks” seen throughout the series is my depiction of animals.  I wanted to emphasize their importance and do away with the notion that animals are “less” than humans.  So, each animal- be it mammal, bird, etc.- has been endowed with something we consider a “human” quality.  For example, some animals such as wolves, have more “human-looking” eyes or the animals are posed in a strong, maybe domineering, manner, or they have a facial expression that could be considered “human.”  Above all, even if they are depicted in a state of distress, the animals featured have a strong presence.

Surrealism allows me to delve into environmental issues and animal welfare, creating strange worlds that reflect the current state of our planet.  I’ve been inspired by imagery that comes to mind when first falling asleep or through free association.  What seems illogical can come to life through painting.  Truthfully, I do feel like what I paint is a mirror-image of our reality, though.  Maybe a Through the Looking Glass reflection, but a reflection nonetheless.

Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?

Amy Guidry: Website: https://www.AmyGuidry.com

Instagram: @amy_guidry_artist 

Facebook: @AmyGuidryArt 

Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Niels Noot from our tenth issue.

Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?

Niels Noot: I think that for many who create there is this internal drive of I have to do this or I will go crazy, and however cliché that might be, I believe that is the case for me as well. This may sound quite paradoxical looking at that I just came out of a creative block that lasted almost half a year. With a new project I suddenly started – without a plan or idea – I am getting out of it. There is just another obstacle in my way now, that obstacle being the question of what my, or rather our responsibilities are as writers, artists, creators. And it is an obstacle I am slowly finding the answer to through the current text I am working on. Writing was initially a way of dealing with things for me personally, it was the personal I wrote about, but now my focus has shifted, and I find myself writing more about what is going on around me, in my city, country, the world. Édouard Louis was once asked about the political or societal aspect of his work, and his answer came down to ‘’How can I write about things that are not political, while there are so many bad things happening’’. In that light, it was a certain luxury I afforded myself to let the words I was able to put on a page not be about how action is needed. Now I do not afford myself that luxury anymore – it has now become the public through the personal. I would still go crazy if I would not write, but now it is because the guilt of inertia or inaction would be too much.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/  idols/ friends that you look up to?

Niels Noot: I There are so many great people who do truly amazing things everywhere, and I am trying to surround myself with the people that stimulate me, who constantly make me reconsider and reinvent my viewpoints and ideas. I will have to highlight some people around me, such as my dear colleague at Simulacrum Magazine Marta Pagliuca Pelacani, with whom I curated and edited the documenta issue, who has unending curiosity and the will to follow up on that curiosity. There is of course Jérémy Bernard, who, together with the rest of the editorial board, is fighting against the capitalistic tenets of publishing through Loose Dog Magazine and its admirable non-hierarchical and anarchic publishing practice. This has shown me the possibilities and has pushed me to start my own publishing practice. I cannot mention all, but in order to highlight some independent magazines that deserve the limelight, one cannot forget Arts of the Working Class and Solomiya Magazine. You can’t go around them in Europe during these times of war, upheaval, and social issues. They do a great job at standing up for those who need it, and continuing to highlight the beauty in the mess, the people.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?

Niels Noot: No natural entities for me, unless you can call a big frustration with the world right now a natural entity.

Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?

Niels Noot: What I love about the creative process is that it always changes. I was talking to a writer recently who is also a father, and he said that when you are a father you cannot wait for inspiration to come to you because the ‘creative time’ is more limited. I, on the other hand, still have that ‘luxury’ of being able to wait around, so I change my surroundings and experiment with what events or things trigger any ideas, sentences, or words even that I can work with, and I try to make the most out of all this time I have right now.                       

Every time a work of mine appears somewhere it is such a big honour. Knowing that there will be people reading it – maybe, hopefully, it will have a positive influence on someone; knowing that all the late evenings and cigarettes and frustration and drafts are appreciated. Of course, it is, in some way, a wonderfully self-congratulatory and selfish thing to attach much meaning to a publication, posting it online and all, but that YES among the NOs does help occasionally in order to keep going.

Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?

Niels Noot: Definitely! As mentioned briefly before, there is this new project I started working on, as a part of the collective publishing practice I started (MIASMA). The project is called The Complaint Project, and what we are trying to do now is collect as many complaints as possible and publish these, make them available in public spaces for people to take and read – or use as toilet paper if they disagree with the complaint. The complaints can be as small or as big as you want, they can be anonymous or with your name in full display. We launched the website recently and the complaints are rolling in, I wrote a manifesto, how cliché. But what happened is that for a long period the project just stood still, due to my inaction, and that was frustrating. So what I did was start this text, I don’t think there is a name for it. It is becoming a bit of a monster in the way it diverges everywhere. Perhaps it might become an exhibition text if the project comes that far, perhaps it disappears in the drawer, but for now the complaints are coming in and they are great to read. It shows that people are good, the kids are alright, and even though our western society looks so polarised on the surface, you see that they are very much connected in the problems they encounter. The whole topic of the complaint as a concept, and the urgency attached to it, calls for a theoretical framework in the ways they function nowadays. We might not always realise it but the conceptual object that floats in bureaucracy called the complaint illustrates and almost embodies some vital issues going on right now. Ourcomplaint nowadays is one against a certain entity or problem, but it always functions within and plays by the rules of those same entities. It has become a tool of appeasement, that is effectually futile, for people who can afford the time and futility in order to calm their minds. And that is where we come in, we skip the bureaucracy, we skip the filtering, and make all these complaints public and available for everyone who wants to. In very simplistic, and perhaps controversial, semantics we are practicing offline cancel culture of the commons – if cancel culture even exists.

Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?

Niels Noot: Recently I have gone a little bit down a Foucault rabbit hole, so that is where my mind goes immediately. It is really interesting to learn about and recognise the power structures guiding – or fooling – us right now. Next to the classic Foucauldian power theory and how spaces influence us in that way as well, it is enlightening to read The Order of Things.

Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?

Niels Noot: For the editorial and curatorial work I am involved in you can always take look a look at MIASMA (miasma.nl & @miasma_mag) and Simulacrum Magazine (simulacrum.nl & @simulacrum.magazine). Regarding the rest, The Complaint Project can be checked up on here miasma.nl/complaint-project, and everyone is always to shoot me a message @nielsnoot in case I am slacking with my work.

Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Ash/ley Frenkel from our tenth issue.

Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?

Ash/ley Frenkel: I love little moments: the sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes of the everyday, of an intimate encounter, a meal, a memory. A playful exchange or a fun thought-provoking prompt or question also really get me going.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?

Ash/ley Frenkel: I avoid having idols to avoid disappointment, but Anthony Bourdain’s deep sense of wonder, caustic wit, and appreciation for food as a vessel for community and culture is a combination that I don’t think I’ll ever quite get over.

Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?

Ash/ley Frenkel: Things like love and lust and water and light, as cliché as it might sound, continually draw me in and remind me that we live in a moving fluctuating rhythmic world. This answer just makes me sound like a weird horny plant… but if the pot fits.

Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?

Ash/ley Frenkel: For poetry, my notes app plays a not insignificant part, at least as a place for early ideas, to get things started. My journal also acts as a gathering place that I pull from. And I cannot understate the importance of cafes, especially for editing. Sitting in a café, setting that time aside and letting the small noises of the place and people lull me into rare focus, plus a little coffee and pastry, oh yeah.

Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?

Ash/ley Frenkel: I perpetually have too many ideas floating around and have a few ideas for zines that bridge writing, photography and collage in fun ways, but they’re very early on so that’s all I’ll say. I do plan to expand on the book I self-published last year and organize some sort of meal with performative and interactive elements, but that’s also very much in an ideation phase.

Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?

Ash/ley Frenkel: I hate recommending music to people, but as far as books go, I have many, many opinions. These are just some. There are always more:

• Cooking as Though You Might Cook Again by Danny Licht
• Bluets by Maggie Nelson
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
• The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia Butler

As far as visual art goes, Pixy Liao is creating really compelling photography that takes collaboration and partnership and gender and fucks with it all in really exciting ways. And an oldie but a goodie, but if you haven’t done a close-up deep dive of the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, you should consider it.

Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?

Ash/ley Frenkel: I love to bake and cook for people and I like to laugh a lot, snorting and all.

Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?

Ash/ley Frenkel: I am in deep need of a new website, but for now Instagram is the best place to catch me @cardamom.communion

Tiny Spoon: Do you have photographs or images you would like us to share?

Ash/ley Frenkel: Here’s a picture of the erotic garden, the chapbook/zine I self-published and handbound forty copies of in 2022. Inside are twenty poems inspired by different fruits and vegetables, with prompts for the reader to interact with and move through different facets of love, lust, and whatever falls in-between.

Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.

“Offering 3 (black mountain) “

“Heart Opening”

“Rock Form 4”

Bio: alexandracatalina uses traditional silversmithing techniques combined with clay hand-building to make sculpture that evoke a landscape, in which the feeling, memories, shapes, and colors of a place are distilled into a type of totem: an object of beauty, mystery and silent power.

Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.

“Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not n1”

“Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not n2”

Bio: Born in 1987 in São Paulo, Brazil, with a degree in Digital Design, Shee (Sheila Gomes) began her work in visual arts at the same year she graduated from college. Shee has been showcasing her work in a variety of exhibitions, collaborations and projects, with curated works featuring international books and magazines.

Edythe Rodriguez is our May 2023 Tiny Spoon Resident! You can sign-up for her workshop here. We interviewed Edythe about her creative visions, inspirations, and writing tips!

Her LIVE, donation-based workshop, Actually, The Poems Keep the Score: Writing Memory, Family, and The Shifting Self, will be held on May 20th & 21st from 12-2 PM MST / 2-4 PM EST.

Workshop Summary: In this generative workshop, we’ll be writing/righting the past. Through childhood vignettes and investigating our complex family histories. By centering remembrance. By healing past our traumas and the people who handed them to us. We are unlocking and remaking memory. The workshop is donation-based, no one will be turn away. Donate on our website to register or send us an email: tinyspoonlitmag@gmail.com today!

TS: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you? Do you follow any rituals or creative exercises to spark your writing process?

Edythe: I love a good writer’s cliché. Small internet cafes, matcha lattes and a lit candle. I have a neo-soul writing playlist and everything. I think my favorite one is writing when I’m not supposed to be. When I’m up against a deadline or at work, I sneak off to write. My pen works better under pressure, sometimes.

TS: What inspired you to begin and maintain these practices?

Edythe: Writing (and reading) for me was always an escape from something else. I think that’s also why I wrote so much about world building and refuge. I use my poems to create safety and live in another moment when the current one doesn’t feel bearable.

TS: Does your writing intersect with other creative practices?

Edythe: I’d say it intersects with the idea of poet as witness and all the other art forms I get to admire. Going to museums. To art shows. To plant shops. Look at a pink princess philodendron and tell me you don’t want to write a poem about that. 

TS: If your work was a song, what would it be?

Edythe: Every song LaRussell ever made.

TS: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends who have been influential to your work?

Edythe: Sonia Sanchez. Amos Wilson. Lucille Clifton. Shakeema Smalls. Marcus Garvey. Ashia Ajani. Amiri Baraka. Danez Smith. Tonya Foster. M. NourBese Philip.

TS: Are there any natural entities that move your work?

Edythe: I feel like spirit moves in my work. And it moves me to begin the work in the first place. I’m also a Virgo sun, Pisces moon, Leo Rising. Just enough earth to ground the work. enough water to put my heads in the cloud, to lose realism in service of the impossible. And enough fire to burn us all in the making.

TS: What is on your reading list this season?

Edythe: Concentrate by Courtney Faye Taylor, Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, and (I’m suuuper late to this beauty) The Sobbing School by Joshua Bennett.

TS: Can you share your philosophy on sustaining creative communities?

Edythe: This became my favorite part of being a writer and being able to grow a whole family from the page. Black women writers are truly my safe space and getting to commune with the people that I center in my work is so invaluable to me.

TS: What advice would you give to emerging writers?

Edythe: Read. Explore. Be inspired by your own small, everyday greatnesses. And advice is less valuable than you think. Be your own North Star. 

TS: What projects are you working on? Can we find you at any upcoming events, etc.?

Edythe:My chapbook We, the Spirits is forthcoming with Button Poetry at the end of this year / beginning of next so stay tuned for that! The best way to keep up with all my things is on Instagram @edythejai.

TS: Where can people learn more about what you do? (website, social media, etc., if you wish to share it) 

Edythe:
I’m on Instagram and Twitter at @edythejai and on my website www.edytherodriguez.com.

Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.

“Catcalling is Not a Compliment”

“Untitled”

“Peony Pussy”

Bio: Caitlin is a multidisciplinary surrealist completing her master’s degree at the University of Sunderland.