Dear Reader,
When I was a young boy, I often found myself sitting on the floor in my mother’s studio, watching as she fixed her eyes on a large canvas mounted to the wall, smoke from the cigarette in her hand rising slowly to surround her face. Fascinated by what fascinated her, I was distracted only by the smell of pizza drifting in from the pizzeria next door, a treat we indulged in for dinner on the occasional Friday night, when my mother was busy painting. The studio also served as her bedroom in our home, the first floor of a duplex on Mosholu Avenue in the Bronx. Beside her bed were cans of gesso, masking tape, sketches, X-Acto knives, brushes, and tubes of paint smeared on the outside with the colors they contained. My mother spent countless hours working in her bedroom studio. At the age of seven I spent many of those hours with her, sitting quietly, trying to figure out what it was that held her rapt, her eyes fiercely committed to the canvas. I also wondered why I didn’t merit equal attention.
A painting, a poem, a short story, an essay, a photograph, a concerto, a novel—behind each piece of work is an artist who pursues their craft with a fervor that is primal, the pursuit itself as vital as food and water. Henry James wrote, “We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
The impulse to create art is as vital as any human imperative. At its core lies our thirst as a species to commune through sharing our life’s perspective and circumstance.
Is it really madness though? Many years removed from the floor of my mother’s studio, I’ve come to think the impulse to create art is as vital as any human imperative. At its core lies our thirst as a species to commune through sharing our life’s perspective and circumstance. Artists seek to reveal a path with paint, images, words, sounds—a path guiding us to that point of resonance where we see ourselves and each other at once and as one: to our shared humanity. As Maria Popova writes, “Art is what makes us not only human but humane.” The artists found in the pages of The Sun work, despite the long odds of economic success, to convey beauty, hard truths, questions, irony, sorrow, joy, and laughter. Our passion and our task is to bring them to you each month, as The Sun has for fifty years.
Many of you write to tell us how much you appreciate the beauty of the magazine, its words and images: a beauty emerging even from painful experiences; a beauty that helps us see our own lives and the world a little more clearly. You also express gratitude that you’re able to turn or scroll through our pages without being asked to purchase one thing or another—a respite from the commercial and transactional culture that pervades our lives.
Hand in hand with our decision not to sell advertising comes the reality that the cost of a subscription doesn’t come close to what it costs to bring The Sun to you each month. It’s a reality we embrace because we know how much you value the intimate and reflective space we try to create for you—a space that would be much more difficult, if not impossible, to maintain with ads vying for your attention.
If the beauty, honesty, and authenticity of the magazine are important to you, please consider becoming a Friend of The Sun. By making a tax-deductible contribution, you’ll help us meet the rising challenges in this age of mass distraction and rancor in the public sphere. Your donation will enable us to find new readers, who are essential to the life of our publication. It will allow us to compensate writers and photographers fairly, and to put their work into the hands of those who can’t afford it—the impoverished, the incarcerated, the marginalized. You’ll help us to continue this unlikely experiment for another fifty years.
There’s something about art that too often goes unnoticed: art requires we engage. Each month we receive thousands of submissions of prose, poetry, and photography from people hoping to be published in The Sun. And we engage with each submission in hopes of finding those that will resonate most with you. Our commitment is to bring you the best we can find, the writing and photography that help to unwrap the layers of gauze we wind around ourselves and which obscure the things that matter most.
We are profoundly grateful for your support.
Rob Bowers
Editor and Publisher
P.S. You can become a Friend of The Sun by visiting us at thesunmagazine.org/donatenow. Your gift is tax-deductible, and we’ll send a receipt for your records.
