This week’s Featured Artist is Taylor Barnes, a Fibers MFA candidate at the University of North Texas. She works with concepts dealing with identity and displacement. She’s attended several Spiderweb showcases and loved being there to support local artists, buy zines, and mingle with friends new and old.

Matthew Sallack has been involved with Spiderweb almost from the beginning; he had his first art installation, a take on the Guess Who? board game, at a show in August of 2012. In addition to displaying art at the shows, Matthew has designed many of the Spiderweb zine covers, posters, and generally provided art where art is needed.

Spiderweb Salon’s newest Songwriting Scholarship recipient, DFW-based artist Shelby Orr, seized the opportunity to try something she’s been wanting to do for a long time: record a track of Kitbashes, her rollicking and rocking musical project with co-creator, M.

During her first Spiderweb Salon set at this year’s Winter Formal, Anjelica Fraga had the crowd cheering with a timely poem for the #metoo era. We’re excited to bring you that poem, “Brown Girl,” as part of our feature series.

Today, we’re bringing you Machele Johnson’s poem, “The Warning.” Machele says, “[The poem was] born from a dark journal entry that was focusing on my bruised heart and body pains,” and certainly, the rawness of that journal entry is still present, albeit shaped into some beautifully rendered verse.

Stacy Tompkins is one of those artists who amazes you in the range of her work. We love her colored pencil sketches as well as her sculptures, strange intricate works full of found objects and crafted with all manner of materials.

This week, we are featuring our very own art editor, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam. She is quite an accomplished writer and an active member of the DFW literary community. She runs an her own annual event, a collaborative project called Art & Words, at Art on the Boulevard in Fort Worth.

Adam wrote “The Apple Skinner & The Elephant” around a year and a half ago while trying to say more with less. By focusing on clarity through an economy of language, Adam paints an evocative portrait of a mistreated circus elephant.

Marco Zavala is the gentle powerhouse behind much of the beautiful imagery accompanying our Features series, but he also contributes often to zines, workshops, and showcases as well. We don't know what we'd do without him! 

We are excited to bring you Kelsey Cooley’s poem, “I’ve Left Myself on the Carpeted Stairs.” Kelsey remarks that her poems over the last year have emerged from her daily journaling, and indeed, “Carpeted Stairs” has the markings of deeply-felt confessional poetry.

Joe Duncan got involved with Spiderweb around 2013; the first show he attended was at Dan’s Silverleaf. He started participating in shows the following year, attending workshops and contributing to zines.

We’re pleased to welcome Megan J. Arlett to our features collection with her poem, The Cabin. Megan is relatively new to Texas and is currently working on her PhD at the University of North Texas for Literature and Creative Writing.