Moab has long been a haven for artists, drawn to the desert in search of inspiration – and Moab’s thriving art community features a talented cast of makers. Three local creators seek to showcase community art and tap into even more untold stories.
Molly Gurney, Ali Harford, and Megan Vickery believe this region is full of those who may just need a little push to unlock creativity – a small spark or prompt to ignite the mind and inspire a piece of art. They hope to provide that catalyst for artists through their storytelling collective, ephemeral, curating art from various sources to capture the landscape and culture of the Colorado Plateau.
Gurney, Harford, and Vickery work across various mediums, from writing to painting to block printing to photography. Each noticed the deep well of creativity locally – but also craved more, so they started ephemeral.
“We were all kind of craving a creative outlet,” Harford says. “This town is a very creative place.”
“This project grew out of this feeling where we wanted to spark creativity in ourselves and the community, and be able to have a platform to share it and share the writing and art that people are doing,” she says.
That passion is reflected in ephemeral’s mission statement: “We seek to harness creative sparks informed by and for the desert.”
The collective publishes a newsletter via Substack, in addition to a print magazine. The very first issue launched just this week.
The three founders and editors welcome art of all kinds – fiction, essays, paintings, poems, block prints, and more will grace the pages of Issue One. As the name suggests, the focus of the project is on the ephemeral – the short-lived – experiences of the desert west. Each print magazine will revolve around a prompt, publicized in the months leading up to submission deadlines, to explore different themes related to the landscape and culture of the Colorado Plateau.
The prompt for the first issue was “What are the odds?” – contributors were invited to ponder fate, magic, luck, and science through their chosen lens, and sent pitches to editors in June of this year. Now, a print version will make its way to readers, displaying 17 unique pieces of writing and art.
“The goal of the magazine itself is thinking about place, thinking about ephemerality, and thinking about experiences,” Vickery says. “We’re really excited to put it all together and have all these different interpretations of this question and reflections on experience here in Moab and on the Colorado Plateau.”
While each issue’s themes will guide contributors in new directions, the backdrop of this region will remain constant.
“I think the gap that I’m excited to fill is in giving people creative freedom via a prompt, but also having it so place-based,” Gurney says. “There’s an element of where we live on the Colorado Plateau in almost every piece.”
As that landscape and its culture inform the artists and art, Vickery hopes that each issue captures a snapshot of the place and the people who inhabit it. She calls it “a scrapbook about this place and its people, made by its people.”
The editors say that giving local creators a platform to tell their own stories has been an inspiring process for them.
“Especially when we’re seeing this political focus on rural America and outsiders coming in and trying to tell narratives and exploit rural people and their stories… it’s really inspiring to let people tell their own stories and make art or be creative in a way that comes from themselves, and they have agency in that way,” Gurney says.
While interested readers can enjoy selections and sneak peeks of the storytelling through ephemeral’s Substack newsletter, the importance of print is key for the editors, who hope that the physical issues will be well-read and well-loved by their owners.
“There is something really special about print that we are kind of losing in media today,” Harford says. “I love the idea of this thing sitting on your coffee table until maybe you don’t have use for it anymore and then you pass it off to somebody else – it’ll exist for longer than just somebody clicking through it online.”
The editors hope that the inspiration for storytelling extends beyond the print magazine. They’re continually looking for other ways to bring together the artistic community across the Colorado Plateau, calling in those who may not consider themselves artistic, but still have stories to tell.
The first issue of ephemeral is now available at ephemeralcollective.com, with a sliding scale pricing model and an option to donate to support the work. All profits will go toward paying contributors and printing the next issue. The print magazine can also be purchased at the Red Rock Art Festival on September 28th.
Readers can also subscribe to the digital newsletter via Substack at ephemeralcollective.substack.com and follow the magazine on Instagram at @ephemeral.moab for more updates.
