When I sat down with this issue’s cover artist, Michelle Perez, and asked what has been inspiring her recently, she brightened: “Girl monster movies.” Specifically, Jennifer’s Body. After moving to Providence from Jacksonville, FL (which she describes as stripmall country) to study illustration at RISD, Perez started researching the local lore and learned of the […]
“I was born and raised in Providence. I’m locally grown organic,” says cartoonist and illustrator Matthew Kramer. Kramer graduated from Brown with an MFA in Literary Arts and works as a freelance artist. They just returned from Paris where they completed a three month poetry residency. “There’s always people in the parks lounging in Luxembourg […]
Photo: Rites of Ochún, Carmen Christina Moreno. As summer tapers, the leaves will fall, annual flowers will die, apples will drop and rot into the ground. The sweet stench of plant death will be absorbed by the soil and digested, if it’s lucky, by underground structures called mycelium. Mycelium are the root-like, fungi structures that […]
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” When there is little quiet time to […]
Is there a moment in a horse’s stride when all four hooves are off the ground? was the question Leland Stanford wanted Eadweard Muybridge to investigate. In 1878, Muybridge, a photographer roaming the western U.S. in a horse-drawn carriage/darkroom, took a series of photographs at Stanford’s Palo Alto racetrack. Muybridge photographed a horse named Sallie […]
Mad Max inspired food truck race. Illustrated by Zoë Anderson. This month, Motif was honored to welcome back Zoë Anderson of Warwick for our July Food Truck Award nominees issue. This is the sixth time her work has graced our cover. Taking inspiration from Motif’s Food Truck Awards, Anderson also drew inspiration from the Mad […]
Contrary to popular belief, Warren-native John Rego is NOT a 17-time Olympic gold medalist for synchronized swimming. However, he is an egregiously talented illustrator whose work is currently on display at Out of the Box gallery in Jamestown alongside work by his wife, illustrator Sanika Phawde. Rego’s cover art was inspired by walking around PVD, […]
Erminio Pinque: the creator of extraterrestrial creature phenomenon Big Nazo, our comics editor, and nuanced pad and pencil enthusiast spoke with me about his design for this Motif’s cover. “Since it sure doesn’t seem like spring yet, but hints of it, the idea is to depict the mindset most of us are in, which is […]
The cover artist for our health issue is automotive mechanic and part-time welder Nick Marshall. Marshall chose smooth pulleys and gears with teeth to show the complexities in our brain. He says, “I used all different materials to show how complex the human brain is and show so much happening inside it, so much still […]
Ripples and Reflections is an original painting by Rhode Island artist Joel Rosario Tapia – a segment of the work was restructured for our November issue, to acknowledge Indiginous People’s month. And because it looks amazing. Tapia is a US veteran, author and Urban Aboriginal visual artist who has made it his mission to keep […]