First Blush - Maia Derrevere ‘24

This piece explores the juxtaposition of life and death as well as beauty and decay. I created it in my printmaking class at school and was inspired by Ana Mendieta’s work with the human body in nature. I try to explore the ephemerality of humans and our bodies — how they face entropy and inevitably fail us over time.

Dioxazine melts sunny girls

the heat and dandelion wisps stick to the blonde valley grass of wheat, on the head of a golden retriever of a man, picking and choosing who to pollenate and move on. A buzzing bee unaware of the looping routine of planting a seed, then leaving. The schoolbus traps them at a stop rushing away at illegal speeds crashing into unaware schoolgirls in sundresses and mary janes. He doesnt want me, hes looking to use me and floss me away like a piece of movie popcorn stuck in his teeth, but i dont want to leave, let me stay a few days, between your gums, between your arms, just existing. Dont kick me to the curb studded with sand from our beach trip, french vanilla ice cream cone emotions dripping into fluorescent rooms i had to file an incident report in. The sunset ocean is an illusion, it looks entrancing, but the liquid quicksand lowers as the unsure girls drown in the olive oil dripping of him. The more you try to wash it off, the more you spread the oil.  This isnt a flower anymore, thorns overgrown. its a nightmarish augmentation of him, he replaced half of me with himself. No longer human, just chameleon blending into his brain.

Lumps and sticky substances in this horrid house full of plush grape pastries smearing across our faces, one of them you had intoxicated with the mindset of mistakes that happened when the room smelled like lavender while you turned off the LED strips in your room. What even happened? Stomach pains cradled me like an imp stealing babies, a myth. Walking to the kitchen a shirtless siren eating a plum. I see the bruising indent on his skin and time rewinded, and i remember. The stomach pains made sense, or was it a dream, it has to be true with the marks of my braces on his shoulder and the tulip petals traveled from the bed to the floor. Its true. I disregarded it while gulping the grape medicine. Exiting a bathroom, signals of red and blue mix on this embryonic pixie stick, looking at the 2 lines displayed, i can tell that, soon enough, it wont be sunny anymore.

London Sanford ‘25

This piece was inspired by my interpretation of the colors of the rainbow. I picked two colors that contrasted and brought them into the real world. People like to romanticize situations and sugarcoat what happened which is common in a lot of toxic relationships.