Meatspace Art Magazine
A magazine created by and for San Jose State University’s artists, writers, photographers, directors, and designers. I joined Meatspace for the Fall 2020 Issue 1: Digital Natives as a contributor and said goodbye to the community we’d built with Issue 9: Greener Pastures, as Editor-in-Chief in Spring 2023.
From the beginning, Meatspace’s identity has always been playful, because it’s a community that maximizes creative expression and is designed to capture the interest of students and professors alike
contents page for Issue 06: Consumerism and You
Layout design by James Vreeland for PATE by Dylan Huang
Much of what I see as the beauty of this magazine, being 100% student work and 100% student-run, is that saying “YES” comes much more easily. As long as someone felt passionate about the project they pitched in our beginning-of-the-semester meetings and were at least slightly connected to the theme, it was a yes, no matter the medium or major. As an experimental space, Meatspace taught me a lot about interfacing with other artists and producing creative works on a production timeline. In my time as Print Designer and Editor-in-Chief, my experience taught me how to recruit talented peers, manage a team with diverse responsibilities, and effectively communicate with many different audiences.
Pedestal envisions human effort directed towards uplifting the life in natural landscapes around us rather than seeing the advancement of humanity as counter to the interests of the natural world. The green glass pedestals were blown in San Jose State University’s hot shop. The flora supported by each of the four blown glass vessels was ‘rescued’ from neglected spaces between human constructions such as freeways, construction sites, and sidewalks.
Undoubtedly there are more complex metaphors to be made in land art, but for a broad audience, I found this piece to be very popular. Pedestal was the final piece I made for Meatspace, to be included in the Greener Pastures issue which focused on presenting an optimistic view of a sustainable future. This was also our second environment-focused spring issue in partnership with SJSU’s Office of Sustainability and the hopeful tone of Greener Pastures contrasts well with the frustration expressed in Issue 6: Consumerism and You.
“Seat 12” is one of my more absurd Meatspace pieces, an interview with a seat on one of the Valley Transit Authority’s light rail cars made for Issue 5: Off the Rails
These two posters were inspired by WPA-era national parks art, but focused on local San Jose gems in their most idealized form, made for Issue 6: Consumerism and You
