Spring 2019, Volume 26

From the Art Editor

In 2001 I plunged into San Francisco’s massive Open Studios for the first time, treasure-hunting for an artist or two whose work was winning and different from all I’d seen living on the east coast. Success!

I approached Katie Gilmartin’s studio because her open, animated voice reached out the door and promised joyful interaction. People were responding to her and to her art. They were making themselves at home asking about her process, background, classes, ambitions. (See “About Katie” on her website.) I joined in, became a student for a bit (linocut and monotype) and have remained a fan since.

For this issue, I asked Katie to submit work from two different series, a first for Verdad, because each in its own way is a compelling and natural foil to Verdad’s writers. Her ear for language and eye for visual structure and narrative egg each other on like a couple of consenting adults of similar power and authority. She’s offering narrative beginnings, visual short shorts, if you will, that are authentic to her concerns, that accept the zeitgeist for what it is, that celebrates aspects of the past (those pulps!) and invites us in to help continue the story.

                                                                                     — Jack Miller