Magazine Review: Featuring

The first issue of Featuring: magazine.

Thanks for hanging around while I spent a week running around the Valley in over 110-degree heat teaching business communication workshops. I appreciate your patience so much. Now, onto a new magazine I just received.

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Featuring is a new magazine for art journaling and mixed media enthusiasts. It’s produced in Holland with an international contributor cast. Featuring uses an A4 size, (11.7 inches tall  x 8.3 inches wide),  which is taller and thinner than a sheet of copier paper. The layout is clean and crisp, a two-column design that makes the most of artwork.

The articles are written in a fresh-blogger style with details that reminded me of how different Europe is than America.  You never have the idea that you are being rushed through the story, and there are enough wonderful images to be satisfying and tempting to join in whatever is being discussed.

There are articles about Andrea Joseph who creates amazingly detailed drawing with a ballpoint pen and an article on Rosie Rowe‘s combination of photography, digital art and haiku.

There are beautiful images and the story of an art collaboration that started on a bus–the collaboration between Seth Apter and Jill Zaheer. Poetry, collage, altered books–the magazine gives the story enough space to develop and the artwork enough space to show detail.

Lea Goode-Harris has a great illustrated article on labyrinths that highlights the wonderful quote, “you lose yourself in a maze, and find yourself in a labyrinth.”  She wants you to love them as much as she does and even gives a labyrinth locator so you can find one close to where you are.

There’s an article on an unusual kind of scrapbooking (accent on “scrap”), ATCs, how to create a store on Etsy, and sleep/dream journaling.

The article that caught my attention was about the Butterfly Project created by Houston’s Holocaust Museum. The museum is asking artists, crafters, children and anyone who wants to join in to remember the 1,500,000 children who died in Germany’s Holocaust. The project was named after the powerful poem called The Butterfly by Pavel Friedman who died in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. The idea is to create a butterfly and send it to the museum by June of 2013. You can participate, too, the rules are easy.

Featuring magazine costs €8.50 (About $10.50) I splurged and spent a chunk on shipping to get the magazine without having to wait until Fall.

Full disclosure: I purchased the magazine because I wanted to. I did not use images from the magazine because I didn’t ask for permission to do so.  You can see more at Featuring’s website.