Aubrey Ann Laughlin – Five Photographs

The Lake Castle

Storm 

This Little Light Of Mine

Snowcone

Dome of the Rock

Artist’s Statement on Beauty

I believe beauty is largely based on our capacity for wonder, imagination, and connection. Beauty is always present, but the ability to perceive beauty comes from each individual’s capacity for awareness and level of connection to the world around them. When artists write, perform, paint, draw, sculpt, photograph, or express beauty, they tap into their readers’ or viewers’ emotions and often express that which their audience thought to be inexpressible or inadequately expressed. In many ways, artists capture the beauty of fleeting moments and interactions, which many of us take for granted each day. They highlight the significant details present all around us – the tiny flower growing through the sidewalk, the old man asleep on the park bench, or the hopeful graffiti painted on a wall of oppression. They whisper or sometimes yell, “Stop! Look! Notice the world around you, for it is a part of you!” And for a moment, we as readers or viewers enter the artist’s world, which is our own, and we are filled with the wonder of that space. And by repeating these experiences, we expand and notice beauty regularly and discover that we each have the creative ability to express it ourselves.

Aubrey Ann Laughlin is a graduate student of comparative literature at San Jose State University. Her multidisciplinary interests include psychoanalysis, ancient Near Eastern literature and languages, mythology, feminist studies, natural sciences, and travel writing. Besides writing research papers and poetry, she is also a traveler, singer/songwriter, conference speaker, and published photographer – translating into art what she learns in life. She has work published in Elephant Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections Volume Seven: Writing the Femme, Convergence: An Online Journal of Poetry & Art, and Aelurus Journal. More at: www.hummingbirdhymnal.com.