Introducing ✦ Refrakt

Hello friends,

I come to you today with a bit of an announcement. I’ve decided to do a slight rebrand / refocus to the newsletter here, & with it comes a new name: Refrakt.

I’ve had a blog & a newsletter for several iterations now, & it’s changed a lot over the years. Recently, I’ve been thinking more about what I want the goal to be here, or what I hope to convey, both out of the blog & the newsletter. As I was re-writing the “About” page at the start of this year, I felt I got a bit more clarity for myself, only furthered by some of the thinking I’ve been doing lately. For a few years now, I’ve had a list going in my notes app of things to write about, separated as “blog posts” & “newsletter ideas.” The distinction made sense in my head… until it didn’t. The lines have started to blur a bit, in a way that I think a refocus might help distinguish again.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the blogs & YouTube channels run by artists. Isn’t it weird so many of them seem so uninterested in making art? Instead, they’re talking about running a business, or about gear, or process devoid of practice. (Unfortunately), I think there’s value in this sort of “productivity content,” but I want to do things a little different.

Like I wrote on the about page:

I want a space to explore, document, & directly share my attempts to see & perceive the world more vividly, think clearer & more broadly, & find a more thoughtful & holistic connection to myself, my interests, the people around me, & the world.

I aim for clarity & purpose, in body, mind, & soul. I’m going to continue to write about things that catch my interest, but I want to do so through this lens of curiosity, warmth, & striving for more. That will continue to be Monochromatic Aberration.

So what then about the newsletter? I'm hoping to commit to a bi-weekly publication schedule. Here, I want to leverage this more intimate space for more direct discussions of art-making, particularly across writing & photography. What am I trying to explore in my work? How can art-making contribute to a thoughtful, examined life? I don’t want to lose sight of the end goal here, but I also want to cultivate a community of people like me, who want to get just a little bit more out of life, & see curiosity, exploration, & creativity to be key to that process.

I always include my photos at the top, but I want to add some more photography throughout. I want to share what I'm working on, how it's going, how I'm thinking about it, & what's influencing me. I also hope to share more of what I've been fascinated about lately, what's been on my mind, or good articles or videos I've seen lately.

On that note, I'm shifting fully into prep for StoryBoard 2024 here—that's the week-long intensive writing program I was accepted to. It's a cohort of 10 including me, under author and professor Matt Bell. This will be my first time in a real workshop setting, and we're also doing craft talks. It's been a lot of fun reading everyone's work-in-progress stories and make notes.

Why Refrakt? Well I think it sounds cool, for one; but also, it encapsulates themes I continue to come back to. Just as Monochromatic Aberration refers to the way light spreads & blurs through the edges of a lens (either artificial or simply your eye!) in monochrome (like black & white images, or text on a page; get it?) Refrakt also conveys this blurring—the bending & shaping of light, of understanding—when filtered through some lens, some process—some worldview. I think about how light curves differently though different lenses, of course; but also how our memory changes when we recall something, how words change in different contexts, or how our perceptions shift in different situations. The scene is one thing—the lens it’s filtered through is another.

Well, that’s the long & short of it. Hopefully, this doesn’t change too much on your end, but moreso provides a clearer goal for me to work towards. This is still the blog & newsletter of me, Ian J. Battaglia, just hopefully with a bit more clarity.

I really would love to foster a community of those who are working towards the same aim I am, & as always, feel free to hit reply & let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you. Only together can we make a more wondrous world.

Stay Strong,

From Chicago with Love,

— I