Art Archives • Eckleburg

December 12, 2015July 19, 2017

Submit to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review

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**Purchase a copy of Eckleburg No. 19 and submit to Eckleburg while supporting your favorite contributor!**

GS AWARD SUBMISSIONS OPEN

ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB OPEN

SELFIE INTERVIEWS OPEN

“It’s a fantastic issue. The most exciting and adventurous and gutsiest new magazine I’ve seen in years.” Stephen Dixon

“Refreshing… edgy… classic… compelling.” Flavorwire

“Progressive….” NewPages

“Eye-grabbing… fun… bold… inviting… exemplary.” Sabotage

Listed among Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions 2012

“Eclectic selection of work from both emerging and established writers….” The Washington Post

“Literary Burroughs D.C…. the journal cleverly takes its name from the The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald….” Ploughshares

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Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts.

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NOTICE BOARD

READ. If you plan to submit work to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, please read the journal first. Read not just one story but several. Eckleburg is eclectic, literary mainstream to innovative. There’s no way to sum us up in one story or even a single issue. SUBMISSION PHILOSOPHY. At Eckleburg, we recognize that writers grow in their crafts the more they read and write. If we do not accept your submission, it does not mean we will not accept a later submission. We do sometimes give personal feedback on declined submissions, though, this is not often, and should not discourage you from submitting to us again. We simply receive too many submissions to provide personalized feedback to everyone. FUNDRAISERS. During the winter and summer months, Eckleburg will shut down regular submissions and offer our SUBMITTERS ARE READERS FUNDRAISER where submitters/readers can support Eckleburg‘s nonprofit mission by purchasing a print or digital copy while submitting. Thank you to our submitters, readers and contributors for your support of Eckleburg. We are honored to have you.

FICTION

We accept previously unpublished and polished prose up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise. We are always looking for tightly woven short works under 2,000 words and short-shorts around 500 words. No multiple submissions but simultaneous is fine as long as you withdraw the submission asap through the submissions system. Please do not email the editors to withdraw your submission. The submissions link is at the bottom of this page. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting.

Note: We consider fiction (and poetry) that has appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. Once the piece is published in Eckleburg, the author is welcome to re-publish the work anywhere and everywhere. In these cases, we ask that the original publication be credited each time to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. One rare exception is our annual Gertrude Stein Award, which allows for submissions of previously published work.

ANNUAL GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION

1st Prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. READ MORE & SUBMIT FOR THE GS AWARD HERE.

ANNUAL FRANZ KAFKA AWARD IN MAGIC REALISM

1st prize $1000 and publication. Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and magic realism no more than 8,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Stories published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Stories can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. READ MORE & SUBMIT FOR THE FK AWARD HERE.

NOVEL AND STORY COLLECTION MANUSCRIPTS

We publish short works at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. At this time, we do not publish novel, long memoir, essay collections, story collections or poetry collections at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. We do offer manuscript workshops at The Eckleburg Workshops. If you are looking to place a manuscript, we can suggest several excellent small and large presses whose excellent books are promoted through our Eckleburg Book Club — i.e., Random House, Graywolf Press, Coffeehouse, Tinhouse, St. Martins Press and more.

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POETRY

We are now accepting previously unpublished poetry of all forms. Please submit 1 – 5 poems as separate files in separate submissions. Please do not submit them all on one document. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting.

Note: We consider poetry (and fiction) that has appeared in print, online magazines, public forums, and public access blogs as being published. Rarely do we accept anything already published and then only by solicitation. Once the piece is published in Eckleburg, the author is welcome to re-publish the work anywhere and everywhere. In these cases, we ask that the original publication be credited each time to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. The submissions link is below.

POETRY COLLECTION MANUSCRIPTS

NONFICTION

We accept polished creative nonfiction/essays up to 8,000 words year round, unless announced otherwise. Preferences veer toward shorter works under 1500 words with an arts and culture focus. If you wish to include a bio, keep it short, under 200 words. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting.

ANNUAL ANAĬS NIN AWARD IN NONFICTION

Coming soon… Accepting entries year round. Eligibility: All stories in English and nonfiction no more than 5,000 words are eligible. No minimum word count. Essays published previously in print or online venues are eligible if published after January 1, 2011. Essays can be submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and agents. Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed. Each individual story must be submitted separately, with separate payment regardless of word count. Eckleburg editors, staff, interns and current students of The Johns Hopkins University are not eligible for entry. Coming Soon…

ESSAY COLLECTIONS AND MEMOIR MANUSCRIPTS

GALLERY | Visual and Intermedia Artwork

Send us a link for your online portfolio that includes all the works (at least 3, 10 or more even better) that you would like us to consider for the Gallery. You can also send a 100 to 200 word bio. If accepted, we will request attached, high resolution jpegs of the chosen works. The submissions link is below.

Music, Film and Arts Commentary | Send a YouTube link via email along with a short 100 to 200 word bio. The submissions link is below.

REVIEWS

Eckleburg is not accepting ARCs or press releases for books at this time. Some members of our editorial staff and some of our contributors write reviews for other venues such as The New York Times, Washington Post, New York Journal of Books, Washington Independent Review of Books and more and will post notices of these reviews at Eckleburg; however, our editors work directly with the outside venue editors in acquisition and assignment of these reviews. It is a common practice at these venues that reviewers review only work by authors who the reviewer does not know personally or work with personally. Please do not contact our editors about press releases or reviews of your book for Eckleburg. You should contact the review venues directly. We are, however, very happy to consider your book for our Book Club and/or an excerpt of your published book for Eckleburg publication, please see below information at Book Club. Please check out our free “Submissions Guidelines Workshop” prior to submitting. We also offer several review writing workshops.

THE ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB

Send your book cover, publication information and short excerpt to the Eckleburg Book Club.

Please forward a jpeg of just the front cover, not the full jacket;
Do not ask us if you may send us your book cover and information, etc., just submit it through the submissions system;
Please forward publisher, cover artist, blurbs, a short excerpt (a chapter, short story or poem) we may run with the book, as well as all copyright information typed into the email, not as part of the back cover;
We are not accepting self-published books, etc. If you own the publishing company or work integrally as a regular staff editor (as opposed to guest editor) with the publishing company that published your book, Eckleburg considers your book to be self-published;
SUBMIT to The Eckleburg Book Club.

RIGHTS & COMPENSATION

RIGHTS | If accepted, you are granting Eckleburg first North American serial, promotional, non-exclusive anthology (online and possibly print), and archival rights. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. If the piece is subsequently published in another venue, we ask you to source The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review as first publication. All fiction, poetry, nonfiction and visual art submissions will be considered for our annual print. Authors of works that are accepted for the print will be contacted by the editors.

PAYMENT | Print contributors receive a free copy. Print contributors who are also Eckleburg award winners receive award prize money up to $1000.

ADOPT A WRITER | We are running the Adopt a Writer program, where writers, poets and artists published in our online archives can sign up and receive 60% of reader gifts made through the individual contributor’s work url. To participate, the contributor must have a PayPal email and account. Contributors can sign up upon acceptance and also afterward on their site url page. If you have a work published at Eckleburg, go to your work’s url and submit your information there.

RESPONSES | Response times are now running three months or longer. If we haven’t responded by six month’s time, please send us an email here.

AWARDS | Editors will nominate works at appropriate times through the year. Individual authors/poets who are nominated will be contacted privately.

WITHDRAWALS | Please withdraw your submission through your personal Submittable account created upon submitting. This is your personal account and Eckleburg editors do not have access to it.

THE SELFIE INTERVIEW | All contributors past, present and future are invited to complete The Selfie Interview. The Selfie Interview is also open to readers/writers who have not been published at Eckleburg.

SUBMISSIONS OPEN: SUBMITTERS ARE READERS, TOO, FUNDRAISER

**Purchase a copy of Eckleburg No. 19 and submit to Eckleburg while supporting your favorite contributor!**

Proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Supporter of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts

Subscribe to the Eckleburg Newsletter

Advertise with Us

Submit Your Event

June 21, 2013March 9, 2018

Trashed

My work has always been about trash.

This didn’t start out of inspiration, but from a reaction to sheer poverty. Back in 2003, after moving to LA from a couple of other places, I didn’t have the money to afford real materials for my art. It wasn’t really my intention, but using these found objects and used materials from thrift shops collectively told a story within the work.

I was impressed how people not only wanted to buy the work but also wanted to know the story.

The Story of the Trash

I remember the day I began using trash and other found objects in my work quite vividly. I was downtown, outside a slightly sketchy area in Little Tokyo, and was supposed to be picking up a friend at a loft. After waiting outside for a good 25 minutes, I became frustrated and slid into the locked building when a resident exited from it. I didn’t have my friend’s loft number; so I aimlessly walked around the floors calling her until my phone died. As a last resort, I went over to the mailboxes to look for her name.

Sitting on top of the mailbox itself was a large manila envelope containing some small cylindrical object with a note attached. Curious, I read the note.

“Dear Crackhead. My child found your crack pipe in the garage by my car, you sick degenerate…” It went on for about a page explaining that this was a place where kids were present and the owner of said pipe should be ashamed of causing such social pollution. It was a nasty letter, to say the least. But, the writer was returning the crack pipe to the crack head, which boggled my mind. I took the envelope and ran all the way out of the lobby and down the stairs to my car. I locked the door.

It took me close to a year to work the note and pipe into some artwork. I’d create something and then quickly destroy it or show it once or twice, then rip it apart and start again. All of my paintings back then had at least 3 or 4 failed works underneath them. Most pieces floated from idea to idea until they found the perfect spot or someone purchased it before I could destroy it again.

The artwork finally came together with a no smoking sign from Starbucks and the portrait of a very classy white woman. In between the woman’s luscious red lips and her delicate hands, I placed the crack pipe. Above her went the no smoking sign. It was perfect, though no one purchased it.

I placed it in one of my exhibitions at the I-5 Gallery in Los Angeles, but the night before my drop-off, I changed the background from a charcoal ink splatter as I painted it a vibrant and striking solid red.

The piece, entitled “Crack” sold that day to a middle-aged optometrist, who was slightly more excited to have crack art in his home than should be expected. More pieces of mine began to sell, enough of them so that I could afford better material, though I rarely did this as I didn’t want to take my art in that direction.

The Newspapers

The newspapers were a natural progression of my artistic endeavors. In 2007, I traveled to London for the first time. I took the tube, where disgarded newspapers stacked up to my knees and covered the train floor. Londoners get free papers, read them on their journey and throw them on the floor of the train when they are done. I happened to be alone on that particular tube, my only company on that long journey was the newspapers. When I got off the train—my hands smeared with dirty newspaper ink—I had a pretty good idea where I wanted to take my art.

I love portraiture, old and new, but I really wanted to find a new and interesting way to show it. Enter: newspapers. I started to dig away into the heart of a person’s story by using newspapers. The drawings started to create a fuller understanding of the subtext—whether that be some deep metaphorical meaning or a joke.

The Work

Since 2007, three newspapers have gone out of business in the US on a yearly basis. Like “Newsweek” in 2011, the print publications go digital, changing the format so drastically that they have become tabloid—holding on to any for headline for ad money. And now everybody knows everything and knows nothing at the same time.

With the rise of this trend in digitalized information, now it’s just the weird hoarders and myself collecting these quickly dwindling newspapers. In opposition to society’s desire for quick information and adoration of seeming limitless technology, I feel there is actually something of value in these pages. Even though I take the piss out of them, cut up, rip up, tear up everything about them, I still—and perhaps always will—have a deep appreciation for newspapers and magazines. To preserve them in my own way.

I cover them in plastic and heat/light resistant glue. This is my way—the way in which I make art—to preserve these artifacts.

Each page is a story.

Each ad tells more than I could ever paint.

And I want the viewer to not just look at my work, but to read it.

Terrazzo’s artwork will be featured in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review’s gallery next week starting June 20, 2013.

Annie Terrazzo has been creating mixed media and trash portraiture for almost 10 years and has sold over 400 works in that time. “Detritus”, Annie’s recent artistic endeavor that is made completely out of newspapers and vintage magazines from around the world.

Originally from Colorado, Annie studied art with her family of jewelers and plein air artists, then moved on to study graphic design and portraiture in San Francisco. Since then, she has devoted her time to capturing the current depreciation of newspapers and found paper, making fun of it, as well as preserving them. In the future you can see her work at The Hive Gallery and Studios in downtown LA, and a solo show in Santa Monica at Hale Arts beginning Oct 18^th through the 30^th in 2013.

June 7, 2013March 9, 2018

An Interview with Mark Posey

Last month, Eckleburg Gallery featured Mark Posey’s paintings. We interviewed Posey to understand more about his creative process, what role art plays in his life, and how these utterly intriguing paintings help him to communicate with the world.

What inspires you to paint?

One of the reasons why I enjoy painting so much is because I deeply value expression. It’s what differentiates us from other animals and helps give us identity. Our DNA is close to 99% identical to that of chimps. It is the small 1% that accounts for the all the triumphs of man, i.e., art, science, technology. I feel like as humans we have been blessed with this 1% advantage and need to make good use of it.

Is there a unique story behind one or more of your pieces?

On my painting ‘Nothing to Lose’, the movement of the nose was completely accidental. I had been working on that painting all night and couldn’t get the nose right. I picked up the painting to move it to a drying rack and I accidentally tilted the painting, causing the wet paint to shift to the right. It looked great, so I kept it!

What is your favorite type of art and why?

As time has passed by, I have grown increasingly fond of abstract art. Abstract painting cuts to the bone of art and expression. Its about mark making, color, and emotion. Though I greatly admire the talents of many realist and representational artists, I grew tired of looking at paintings that were ‘safe’. I want to see someone go wild on his or her canvas. I want to see and experience someone’s raw emotions, and be able to look at a painting and know exactly what they were thinking and feeling. I want to see people taking risks! To look at a painting done by someone who colors inside the lines is just boring for me. Who wants to watch a timid person follow all the rules? Nothing is off limits in art; people should take advantage of that! I want to look at a painting done by an artist that is unpredictable and spontaneous, someone who will keep me on my toes and show me things I have never dreamed of seeing before.

Why do you enjoy looking at art? What do you think makes great art?

One of the reasons why I enjoy looking at art so much is because I feel that it can be an incredibly revealing thing. Everyone leads different lives and has been exposed to different things. Art is able to show those differences in a way that nothing else can. Great art is about the unique spirit of the artist, something that cannot be genuinely duplicated by any other person.

In what ways do you consider art to be its own type of language?

I think that everything, not just art, has the ability to communicate its beauty to you if you give it a chance. One of the reasons why art exists is to remind us of the beauty and creativity that lies within our everyday actions, mistakes included.

In what ways do you feel that art can speak for things that verbal language cannot express?

Many feelings are hard to put into words. Painting speaks for feelings that are often left unsaid. As Kandinsky said, ‘compositions can never be entirely rational, but a balance between reason and intuition.’

What keeps you painting and creating art?

Painting keeps me wondering and imagining. It’s the only way I know how to occupy my time, and is one of the only things I feel I really understand. I find it comforting. The only thing you can do wrong in painting is nothing at all.

Do you feel that painting is something that can be taught, or is it more of following an intuition? Or both?

One thing that really grinds my gears is when people say, ‘I always wanted to be an artist, but I can’t paint at all!’ What I have to say to that is if you really love art, you’ll need to push yourself to get through the first 50 or 100 or even 200 bad paintings before you produce anything worthwhile. Do you think Michelangelo was able to paint the Sistine chapel the first time he picked up a brush? Of course not.

As I write this I am surrounded by paintings of mine that are complete failures. I had high hopes for each one — confident it was going to be my next masterpiece, only to be let down and needing to start from scratch. Being an artist is a commitment that requires a tremendous amount of heartbreak and failure. If you really love it, you will get through it.

As for art being learned or intuitive, I will say that some people are certainly naturally more creative than others, in the same way that some people are naturally better at math. But remember, your brain acts like a muscle, and creativity can be strengthened with training.

Mark Posey’s work has been exhibited in New York, Milan, Tokyo and San Francisco, among other places. Read more at www.markposeyart.com.

“My current art thrives on intuition and spontaneity. I use thick layers of fluid paint to capture my energy, and embrace the unexpected movements of the paint. It is the randomness and an embrace of the unforeseen that makes my art true to my nature and to life itself.”