DREAM OF A
DARK HORSE
It will help to let you know on the first page of this issue that we at Reverie Fair are Midwesterners. Our four seasons are unique characters, each dramatically different from the others. Fall is wild, passionate, and moody.
Every week in October is cooler than the one before it, but the days are still warm. Afternoons deepen to gold as the arc of the sun across the sky draws closer to the horizon. Clear evenings are rich indigo blue. Overcast is thick and grey, so low you are tempted to reach up to see if it feels as soft as it looks. Tall corn is cut from vast expanses of land, leaving it bare. Wind rushes through the empty fields at night, sighing in the dry grass, and you can feel the chill growing.
Hay is baled and stored in barn lofts to feed and bed the horses in their stalls through the cold months ahead. Winter is coming. They sense it. But there is time left to run, manes and tails flying, through brisk evenings scented by burning leaves, hazy with distant bonfires.
As we finalize our fall issue it’s still only late September. Trees still have green leaves. Harvest
hasn’t started yet, except perhaps for the tomatoes. You wouldn’t know that to look at our fall cover, though. It glows like a gold autumn sunset, covering our models in the shadows that dreams rise from. The shadows are soft as velvet, and
dark enough that we open our eyes wide to search out the dreams hiding there.
We are thrilled with the results of our first writing contest. The winning story is presented in this issue, as well as the prompt for our next contest.
This issue contains our first double feature. Our subject for The Conversation is Diana Zwinak, Executive Director of the Teen Writers and Artists Project. Diana is also a writer, and her poem Journeys was so fitting, we made it the subject of The Pen.
The Trove describes a talisman. Writing the article on Christina Norlin’s stained glass and jewelry, we thought about ravens and read up on them. They are discerning, playful, and among the smartest creatures in the animal world. It made us wonder, What is my talisman?
In researching The Kiln, we learned that the Veneto region of north-eastern Italy is home to a great many ceramic artists. The women of Bottega Krua live there in the town of Nove, which means “new” in Italian. The name refers to the land on which the town is built, near what was once the bank of the river Brenta. When the river receded, it uncovered soft soil that was rich in clay. The first artisans of the region used that native clay to produce their pottery.
Jennifer Cox creates fragrant glycerin soaps. To write about her works, we learned what a
rock hound is, and how geodes
are formed. You’ll see the
connection between soap and stone in The Nest.
The photography of our featured artist in The Lens is the purest form of autumn fantasy. Lissy Laricchia’s photos are darkly whimsical, perfect for a Reverie Fair October.
After all the fiction we’ve read about strange and mysterious places reached through portals, Barbara Barrows showed us a few we didn’t know about. Consider searching out one of the titles she mentions in The Nook for your bedside reading on chill autumn nights.
The artists in this issue inspired us to think beyond their works. Every one of them is an inspiration to wonder what we are capable of. What creative works are sleeping inside us?
We hope you will dream on that thought while you read and enjoy this issue. Thanks for coming.
By Laura Slivinski
Senior Editor
Reverie Fair / Oct., 2014 2
Reverie Fair Fall Edition 2014
DREAM