"To engage as an alchemist/artist is to be the perpetual student of the present moment, to synthesize culture, so-called science, and the implications of existential borders into a discipline that is repeatable, a practice. Art and alchemy are not singular, unified pursuits. Their practitioners are trans-disciplinary, disjointed, and solitary in their practice, and their labor and the ordering of their lives become porous, overlaid in the pursuit of other-than or beyond-dominant modes of understanding.

"Alchemy and art are not about finding resolution, but building the capacity for curiosity, formulating questions that invest fields of knowledge with possibility, prompting the unexpected and emergent to manifest."

—Bryan McGovern Wilson, from the introduction to Issue 7: Alchemy

From the Files

Curator Kate Irvin moons over Space Quilt, an artifact from the future.

Double Takes

Conservator Mimi Leveque and scholar Florence Friedman consider matters of life and death in an ancient Egyptian faience pectoral; curator Emily J. Peters and scholar Stephen S. Bush eye the divine apparition in Rembrandt's The Scholar in His Study; professor Rachel Berwick and poet CA Conrad reflect on the magic of a 19th century glass witch ball.

Object Lessons

Art historian Douglas R. Nickel charges with meaning Hill and Adamson's calotype Edinburgh Castle from Greyfriars; curator Dominic Molon discusses dynamic damage and the RISD Museum's Walead Beshty copper box; curator Elizabeth A. Williams extols the trash-to-treasure alchemy practiced by glass artist Amber Cowan.

Portfolio

Various and assorted combinations and conversions of all that glitters.

Artists on Art

Markus Berger and Michael Grugl deliver a bewitching augmented-reality experience, while artist Doreen Garner presents The Phrenological Chart of Black Excellence.