Art is the fastening of hope with disillusionment–the coexistence of contrasts. TMS is a borderless space, where borderless does not refer to the absence of borders, but rather the traveling of them. Borders are permeable; they remind me always of how I can reach across them, and find on the other side, something closer to me than my own self.

For me, art is a way of processing and understanding the world, like plotting a map to see the bigger picture. Simultaneously, it is the process of looking at life up close so you can see all the little cracks and bumps. It is light and shadow, and all the spaces in between. By charting the world through art, I imagine we document our realities, for one another right now, and perhaps for the people who will come after us. For me, editing a magazine is an opportunity to curate life through the eyes of different people. 

Creating meaningful art is a process that forces us to slow down and turn our attention to the task at hand, as opposed to how we generally rush through our workdays. It makes us linger, look back, shift angles, and reassess. Always, there is that exhilarating sense of relief and anxiety when you send your work out into the world for others to see. I am hopeful that we will give creatives the necessary space they need in these uncertain times (is there any other kind of time?) to produce work that can both rupture the expectations of “good” art and also help them understand the world so that together, we can continue to change it.