"... How do we navigate our natural world: the communities we inhabit, the cultures we share, the emotions we feel?

I intended for this issue to feel rich, organic, and authentic, thinking about how we are inspired by materials in our daily life, though initially, this perspective was nothing more than a skewed fantasy, focusing on the truly beautiful and idyllic: fractals, symmetry, and balance. But while sitting in on one of our student peer review groups, a poem about a plastic lawyer led me to formulate an honest version of “environment.”

In a world so filtered and curated, the questions began to surface more urgently: how do we distinguish between natural and artificial? How do consumers exist within nature itself? And what does it mean to inhabit a world we are constantly reshaping?

When you begin this journey through Issue 38, I ask you to think through these unknowns with us: to appreciate our art and writing for their idiosyncrasies, their organic progressions, and their imperfections—but most of all, the way they persist in making us ask questions..."