There was no intended theme for issue #4. However, in retrospect a few leitmotifs appeared. No effort has been made to speak explicitly to the relationship between art and the unconscious, but the material we present is full of examples of such a relationship. One simply senses movement along a spectrum that ends somewhere in the depths. At the shallow end (one might think) we have “tchotchkes”—although, with just a little thought, one has to suspect that tchotchkes themselves are little gateways to the unconscious. Maybe Freud’s famous dictum could be revised to “dreams and tchotchkes are the royal road to the unconscious.” At any rate, in this issue—and in various ways—these little items play a role, as with J. Kathleen White’s “Collection of Vases,” artist Rue Harrison’s account of how a tchotchke can get to one and in Karen Haas and Tom Leddy’s “The Pleasures of Tchotchkes.”
     Although in our coverage of Viola Frey and her work, we haven’t focused on her fascination with the figurines of popular culture—what she calls “the left-overs,” which appear in much of her work—those who know her work will be aware of the relationship.
     Chester Arnold’s paintings, of which only three appear here, are eloquent meditations on our culture’s fixation with material possessions. In one painting he suggests what the ultimate status of artworks as “things” might be. In counterpoint, Katina Huston's work speaks to an inner struggle we can easily recognize. 
     In the time spent with the three artists interviewed, I was brought back again to the question: what is the meaning of the artist’s struggle?
     When art is mentioned as one of the fundamental categories in which human activities are classified, it often used to be coupled with religion as in the phrase, “Art and Religion,” or “Art, Philosophy, and Religion,” each referring to a category of study or practice that addresses aspects and realities of the deeper ranges of our experience. Do these phrases have the same resonance today as they once had?
     The interviews with the three artists featured in this issue brought such questions back for me, especially my encounter with artist Viola Frey, who said she needed to make art to survive. And in our conversations with artists Dickson Schneider and Terrance Meyer, it’s clear that making art is somehow foundational for their being-in-the-world.
     In terms of their relative success in the artworld, these three artists occupy different places on the spectrum. Yet each works from, and pursues a search for, something difficult to describe precisely—an authentic voice, a deeper integration, the uncovering of hidden parts, new levels of awareness. This is not a matter that bears any direct relationship to an artist’s place in the artworld, and one might ask, as I do, what’s the place for such a search? —RW