We’ve found the perfect cocktail for you to sip while contemplating the Motif Cannabis cover. It’s called the Bong Water Shot, and recipes can be found at tipsybartender.com. According to the website, this distinctively colored three-tiered concoction “tastes amazing, and packs a fun, 420-themed punch,” the 420 representing the amount of active chemicals in marijuana. […]
Cover artist Elliott Italiano of Jamestown is a self-made glass artist. As a young adult, Italiano’s interests centered on fashion, inspiring thoughts of pursuing a degree in luxury marketing and design. He relates to his past self by being “very particular about how I look,” the artist explains. “I believe that how you present yourself […]
Cover artist Mina Miki of Providence calls her baby blanket her longest friend. “His name is Blankie, but now he looks less like a blanket and more like a piece of tangled silk,” she says. That’s because it’s been with her since the day she was born. “It’s a version of myself as a very […]
Amid sharp cuts in federal monies to the arts by the Trump administration and a drop in funding from some other sources, The Steel Yard (TSY) in Providence’s Industrial Valley has been hit by a financial crisis. As Drake Patten, who was recently named interim director, put it: “The current fragility of the nonprofit world […]
“I want my artwork to resist this moment we’re in,” says Apollo Rios Lomba of Providence, who identifies as a Black Latino and transmasc, and created the cover for this issue. “Those and other identities will not change. They’ll just get stronger,” he emphasizes, referring to the White House’s continuing attacks on gender equality. His […]
Rhode Island’s first feminist and gender-expansive cultural center has changed its name to The Alcove from Gather RI ,and moved to new digs at 189 Broadway from Atwells Avenue in Providence. Why the change? “We wanted a name that truly evokes the feeling of what we do,” said Amanda E. Strauss, the founding executive director […]
Cover artist Dalton Kaplan of Pawtucket always had the art bug. “When I was a kid, I watched way too many cartoons,” the illustrator and graphic designer laughs. While sitting in front of the TV he would always draw, sometimes cartoonish characters, sometimes scenes. And he really got bitten by the bug at Mount Blue […]
“It went pretty well,” said Bobby Forand about the “Give or Take” food drive he coordinated on Thanksgiving weekend at the News Cafe on Broad Street in Pawtucket. “People stayed, and there’s a lot of food.” Forand, the drummer of The McGunks, which was one of three punk groups that played at the iconic bar […]
“I make art in the same way you walk, or breathe, or eat a meal,” says illustrator and designer John Gendron of Providence, who created the cover for Motif’s year-end issue. “I try to process the world around me, and communicate it to others.” He gets his inspiration from daily events, along with the jokes […]
Who spit on our cover? The cover art chose itself for this issue, says photographer and printmaker Carey Good of Providence, who created it.“I started etching on three copper plates. Soon, I discarded the biggest of the three. The second plate had a woodsy and pondish feel to it. But with the third scratch plate, […]