Click to read Janelle talk to Sarah for The Journal. 

Flowers offer so many things for one to appreciate when around them—color, changing form and shape, sometimes a fragrance. Choosing black and white lets the viewer take in just one of those amazing attributes and makes it more impactful. I also think we can become immune to certain flowers, like daffodils. We see them in the grocery store—there they are in yellow bunches—we can walk right by them because we’ve seen them hundreds of times. But if you view them in black and white, and study them strictly on the basis of shape and form, I think it reminds people how truly beautiful and unique a daffodil really is. -Sarah Skeen 

Click to read Janelle talk to Charlie for The Journal. 

My design work is my primary focus, as it’s my profession and source of income. My interest in medium-format photography started with a desire to incorporate the photographs into my design work and became my preferred way to capture the world around me. I also incorporate screen-printing into my work, as I have a strong interest in old technologies. The computer is a Lite-Brite for bad ideas, and I’m always looking for new ways to work with my hands rather than look at a screen. -Charlie Wagers

Click to read Janelle talk to Lina for The Journal. 

I believe that multiple realities can exist simultaneously and that something can be both real and artificial at the same time. Sometimes nature can feel wild, and yet completely composed. The natural history museum dioramas are a surrogate for natural environments. We can go to one building and travel across continents, visit various ecosystems, and observe wildlife in extreme detail. There is something eerie in the still silence of the diorama; real creatures are not so quiet, and yet these animals are real, and the environments are exact. - Lina Tharsing

Click to read Janelle talk to Larissa for The Journal. 

I tell students who are depressed or having the “block” that depression has its own music. They should write no matter what and not think they have to be “high” to write good poems. Philip Larkin’s “High Windows” comes from a deep, flat place. He’s brooding and the brooding gives way to a kind of mental chutes-and-ladders. Depressed, he has to create all those altitudes in order to move the poem along. When the poet is already “up,” the poem can be restricted by a reluctance to descend. There is something courageous about flatness, strange as it sounds. -Larissa Spzorluk