As managing editor, the best part of my job is inviting guest staff to help develop and curate an issue. I was especially excited to reach out to poet, editor, and creator of What Is Reality Plushies, M. Mack. A previous contributor of ours, M. was the perfect editor to guide us in traversing the interchange between art and writing.
In her essay “Fold and Gather,” T.A. Noonan writes, “…crafts are rarely considered art. Remember that ‘and’ in ‘arts and crafts’? The crafts are separate, dismissible.” Not here. In our Winter Makers’ Fair you will find poets who collage, who quilt, and who cook, and artists who find their audience in comics and typography. Originally an art installation as part of the 2015 Farm/Art Dtour, our spotlight, “Flood” by Molly Rideout, sets the tone for our issue—a creative spinning of the 2008 floods in Sauk County, Rideout’s four-part story takes us by the hand and casually walks us past the border of writing.
When Kate Hammerich and I began cahoodaloodaling, we set out with some vague notion of the direction we would go—always towards and never away. And while now there is some contention amongst our staff over towards vs toward, our dream has in many ways been realized as we continue to grow in number both in staff and in potential contributors. This issue is the dream Kate and I must have dreamt and forgotten by morning—and perhaps in the future, when someone asks me, So, what does ‘cahoodaloodaling‘ mean?” I’ll answer, Have you traversed Issue 19?
We hope you enjoy the sights.
—Raquel Thorne
