HFR
Hayden's Ferry Review
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Two Works by Despy Boutris

Plum Scouts

“Plum Scouts” by Despi Boutris. Collage. Black and white photograph of three Girl Scouts holding hands and walking. Colorful plums covering their faces.

Golden Hour

“Golden Hour” by Despi Boutris. Collage. Drawings of two nude figures in repose in the foreground. Colorful flowers and ancient columns in the background.

Artist Statement:

Don’t we touch each other

just to prove we are still here?

-Ocean Vuong

These hand-cut collages—created with found photos, pen, marker, and scratch paper—focus on the act of touching: the impulse, the force of gravity, the vulnerability or security that it can bring. Within these works, blues and bright oranges juxtapose the black-and-white subjects in the foreground, who—holding hands, or lying side-by-side, looking up at the sky—find a sense of safety in each other.  

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Despy Boutris is the author of the fiction chapbook Burials (Bull City Press, 2022) and also has appeared in Ploughshares, Guernica, Agni, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she lives in Oakland, where she serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.