What does it mean to embody creativity?
Maybe it means allowing the things you love to become part of the home you create.
Maybe it’s planting one flower and discovering that you want to grow thousands more.
Maybe it’s spending decades developing an artistic voice that finally feels unmistakably your own.
Or perhaps it’s simply choosing to live a little closer to the things that make you feel most like yourself.
This fall, The Turquoise Iris Journal explores those ideas and more with Volume 25: Embody, releasing October 15, 2026. Wrapped in rich green, our newest volume brings together artists, makers, teachers, storytellers, collectors and creative thinkers whose lives demonstrate just how many forms creativity can take.
And today, we’re giving you your first look at some of the people you’ll meet inside.
What Does It Mean to Embody Creativity?
Each volume of The Turquoise Iris Journal begins with a theme, but we never expect every artist to interpret that theme in the same way. That is part of what makes the Journal special.
Creativity isn’t limited to what happens at an easel.
It can live in the rooms we create, the flowers we grow, the objects we collect, the stories we preserve and the businesses we build. It shows up in the way we notice the world around us and decide what deserves our attention.
Embody invites us to consider what happens when creativity becomes more than something we think about. It becomes something we live.
The contributors joining us for Volume 25 offer a beautiful glimpse of just how different that can look.
Meet the Contributors of The Turquoise Iris Journal Volume 25
Kimberlee Bollbach: Creating a Home Filled With Memory
When Kimberlee Bollbach and her family downsized from their suburban Northern New Jersey home to the shore town of Point Pleasant Beach, the move opened the door to an entirely new creative project.
Kimberlee describes herself as a memory keeper. For years, she has preserved her family’s stories through scrapbooking and digital memory keeping. When it came time to renovate the family’s beach cottage, that instinct found a new canvas.
Instead of simply decorating a house, Kimberlee began imagining a home filled with meaningful details, treasured memories and the little moments that have helped define her family.
Her story is a reminder that creativity doesn’t always result in something we hang on a wall. Sometimes, we live inside it.
Abigail Davison: From One Dahlia to a Creative Dream
For Abigail Davison, it began with one purple dahlia. The Kent, Ohio, teacher received the flower from her sister-in-law and quickly discovered what many dahlia growers already know: one can very easily lead to another. And another.
That single flower grew into a passion for flower farming and eventually an entrepreneurial dream.
But Abby’s story as a maker began long before the garden. For about a decade, she upcycled thrifted clothing into colorful creations, including technicolor sweater coats, which she sold at craft shows, art shows, and online.
Today, flowers have become another way for her creativity to take root. Her journey is one of curiosity, experimentation, and following the creative thread wherever it leads.
Marci Shumway: A Lifetime of Making Art
Marci Shumway has been creating art for nearly 40 years. Working from her home studio in Zanesville, Ohio, under the name NovemberGirl Art, she draws inspiration from nature while exploring graphite, colored pencil, watercolor, painting, and other mediums. Her work ranges from nature-inspired pieces to portraits of people and beloved pets.
Marci studied at Savannah College of Art and Design and holds a master’s degree in painting from Marshall University. Her work has received recognition in competitions across several states and has been published nationally.
Yet perhaps the most compelling part of her story isn’t a particular award or medium. It’s the longevity. There is something powerful about continuing to make, explore, and pursue the work that calls to you through different places and different seasons of life.
Carolyn Zbavitel: Painting What Catches Her Eye
Carolyn Zbavitel doesn’t feel the need to put too many rules around what she paints. From her home in Scottsdale, Arizona, she finds inspiration in the desert landscape, the cities she encounters while traveling, and whatever happens to catch her creative attention.
Over years of painting, Carolyn has developed a recognizable visual language filled with color and a loose, expressive, abstracted quality.
She has taught watercolor, participated in plein air events, received awards, and been featured in Oceanside Magazine. Today, she works from her own creative studio and gallery while nearing the end of another enormous creative undertaking: a two-year home remodel.
Her approach is a wonderful reminder that developing a distinct creative voice doesn’t necessarily mean narrowing yourself into a box. Sometimes it comes from making enough work that your voice begins to emerge on its own.
Robin Zachary: Styling a Visual Story
For prop stylist, creative director, photographer, and educator Robin Zachary, objects are part of the story. A lifelong creative and vintage collector, Robin inherited a houseful of vintage tableware and ephemera from her mother. Those pieces eventually became part of the foundation for The Prop Styling Experience®, where Robin helps other creatives discover and develop their own visual voices.
Her styling brings together flowers, color, organic materials, vintage pieces, and unexpected objects to create visual stories for contemporary brands. Robin is also the author of Styling Beyond Instagram and has taught through the Fashion Institute of Technology and New York Botanical Garden. Her work has appeared in Better Homes & Gardens, The New York Times, and Where Women Create.
At the heart of her work is an idea we love: creative expression becomes more powerful when it looks like you.
Meet the Curators of Volume 25
The contributors aren’t the only creative voices you’ll encounter in Embody.
Each volume of *The Turquoise Iris Journal* is also shaped by our curators: artists, makers, writers, and teachers who bring their own experiences and perspectives to the Journal. For Volume 25, we’re welcoming a mix of familiar faces and new voices to the curator community.
BJ Massa
If you’ve been reading the Journal for a while, you probably know BJ Massa and her wonderfully unconventional approach to creativity. The artist behind Junk’d Up has spent more than 25 years painting furniture, collecting vintage treasures, and finding creative possibilities in things others might overlook. Her work now extends into mixed media, surrealist portraiture, and found-object assemblage, all connected by curiosity, experimentation, and a willingness to embrace the unexpected.
Ann Tudor
Ann Tudor joins us as a new curator for Volume 25, bringing a creative life that has never been confined to one medium. A longtime lampwork glass artist, knitter, and mixed-media maker, Ann has spent years learning, experimenting, and following creativity wherever it takes her. Her willingness to continually explore something new makes her a natural fit for the creative conversations within the Journal.
De-Anne Strange
Joining us from Australia, new curator De-Anne Strange is a contemporary mixed-media artist whose work brings together color, layers and expressive mark-making. Her creative practice reflects the freedom that can come from experimentation and trusting the process, adding another distinct artistic perspective to our growing curator community.
Royce Hunt-Bell
Royce Hunt-Bell brings a love of approachable creativity and hands-on making to the Journal. Her projects remind us that creativity doesn’t always need to be complicated or precious. Sometimes the invitation to make something with your own hands is exactly where inspiration begins.
Deb Andress
New curator Deb Andress, founder of The Tattered Artist, brings together art, storytelling, faith, family, and an appreciation for the beauty found in life’s imperfect places. Her creative perspective is deeply personal, finding meaning not only in what we make but in the experiences and stories we carry with us.
Deb Kraska
Nature, hope, and resilience are recurring threads in the work of new curator Deb Kraska. A mixed-media artist known for expressive florals and layered, intuitive paintings, Deb spent more than two decades as a teacher before becoming a full-time artist. Teaching remains an important part of her creative life through workshops, classes, and her regular creative appearances on local television.
Porsha Chalmers
Porsha Chalmers is an artist, writer and storyteller whose work is deeply connected to memory, transformation and the stories held within the materials we use. Through The Silver Bohemian, she works with upcycled textiles, handmade jewelry and other meaningful objects, often exploring the relationship between creativity, nature and our lived experiences.
We aren’t revealing exactly what each of them will bring to Embody just yet. But that’s part of the fun.
As October 15 gets closer, we’ll share more glimpses inside Volume 25 and the ideas, stories, and creative discoveries waiting within its pages.
We aren’t revealing everything they’re bringing to Embody just yet. You’ll have to wait just a little longer for that.
25 Volumes, 200+ Creative Lives — and a New Way to Find Them
As we prepare to welcome Volume 25, we’ve also been looking back at the creative community that brought us here.
Since The Turquoise Iris Journal began in 2020, more than 200 artists, makers, designers, writers, and creative voices have shared pieces of their lives and work within these pages.
But six years is a long time in a creative life.
The artist you discovered in an early volume may be doing something entirely different today. She may have opened a shop, written a book, launched a product line, discovered a new medium, or reinvented her creative business. And someone whose work you somehow missed the first time around might become a new favorite today.
We wanted a better way to keep those connections alive.
Our new Artist Directory brings together the people who have helped shape the Journal since the very beginning. From one place, you can discover an artist and begin exploring her history with The Turquoise Iris Journal, including the volumes in which she has appeared.
It’s one more step toward something we’ve been building all along: A library of creative lives.
Because being featured in a magazine shouldn’t mean that your story is celebrated for one season and then disappears into an old issue.
We want readers to be able to remember someone whose story stayed with them and find her again. We want newer readers to discover artists from years before they subscribed. And we want to be able to see how creative lives and careers change over time.
The directory also belongs to the artists themselves.
If you’ve contributed to The Turquoise Iris Journal in the past, go find yourself. Your profile is becoming a living record of your history with the Journal. If your creative work has changed, your business has grown, you’ve launched something new, or your bio, website, social links, or photo simply need an update, you’ll find an option on your page to send us your latest information.
We want readers who discover you today to be able to find what you’re doing today.
And we’re just beginning.
As the Journal continues to grow, the Artist Directory gives us a way to connect six years of volumes, stories and creative people rather than allowing each issue to stand alone.
Explore the Artist Directory. Revisit someone you remember. Discover someone you missed. And see where her creativity has taken her since.
Previously featured in The Journal? Find your profile and use the update option on your page to help us keep your information current.
A New Volume Is Almost Here
Twenty-five volumes. That’s a lot of artists, stories, ideas, experiments, lessons, homes, studios, and creative lives gathered between our pages. And there are still so many stories left to tell.
The Turquoise Iris Journal has always been about more than looking at beautiful artwork. It’s about getting closer to the people who make it. Understanding what inspires them. Seeing how creativity changes as we change. Volume 25 feels especially fitting for that mission.
Embody asks us to look at the relationship between creativity and the lives we are actually living. Not someday. Not when we have more time, more confidence, or the perfect studio. Now.
And on October 15, we’re inviting you to explore what that looks like through the artists and creative voices of Volume 25.
Volume 25: Embody Arrives October 15
The Turquoise Iris Journal is an independent, ad-free art magazine created for artists, makers, and creatively curious people who want more than a quick scroll. Every quarterly volume is designed to be read slowly, returned to, and kept, more like a creative coffee-table book than a traditional magazine.
Volume 25: Embody releases October 15, 2026, in digital and collectible print editions.
Subscribe now and join us for the next chapter of The Turquoise Iris Journal.
