What I love about being a magazine editor is bringing a vision that melds verbal storytelling and visual appeal. And as my first issue overseeing the magazine from start to finish, the winter edition of the Carleton College Voice offers a clear view of both.
For the powerful cover, illustrating Amy Goetzman’s excellent piece on Carleton’s approach to artificial intelligence, I turned to Aesthetic Apparatus’s Michael Byzewski. Art for the cover, inside front cover, table of contents, and the story itself tell part of the story of how the college aims to ensure that AI supports human intelligence instead of subverting it. Byzewski deftly melds a gritty, handmade aesthetic—including some throwback imagery like library cards and anatomical illustrations—with modern symbols (keyboards, binary code, circuitry).
The issue also includes my first feature, a profile of David Lefkowitz, an art professor and artist so varied in his practice that he jokes every solo show he’s in is a group show. He makes oil paintings, minimalist sculptures, conceptual works, public practice. In one series, he envisions Nirthfolde, a “college town situated in a parallel universe that neatly overlaps Northfield” (Carleton’s town) by making tourism-style brochures of local attractions many might overlook. One maps the 89 Sod Wedges of Nirthfolde, those weird patches of grass built into new sidewalk projects. Another maps the 97 trees in the four quadrants of Northfield’s Central Park, renaming them after first names popular in the US during four decades.
“Addressing trees by forenames implies intimacy,” I write. “We name our pets, Lefkowitz points out, yet many farmers refrain from naming livestock destined for the freezer case. ‘What does it mean to give something an identity?” he asks. “Are there ways that we can engage with the world that might resensitize us to the environment?’”
David Lefkowitz in his studio. Photo: Ackerman + Gruber
The piece, which quotes Robin Wall Kimmerer, Carleton art historian Ross Elfline, and art professor Jade Hoyer, is illustrated by the family photography duo Ackerman + Gruber, whose superb mastery of light and shadow really brings Lefkowitz’s art to life.
The issue is rounded out by: a feature by former Utne Reader stalwart Jon Spayde, who chronicles how Minnesota legalized adult-use marijuana while keeping both racial equity and economic opportunity front and center; interviews I did with Carleton’s new chaplain (a non-believer) and a pair of 90-year-old alums whose witty banter and recollection of literature inspired me to name my new puppy after Willa Cather; and two pieces on artist and photography professor Xavier Tavera, including the first in our Object Lessons series, which looks at instructional classroom items, in this case, the Polaroid’s apartheid-era ID-2 camera.
