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Baubo, by Laura Schmidt. Schmidt, also known as Tempest, is a twenty-something artist and writer. Tempest has acquired many awards for her art and scholarship, including the Francis&Shirley Hip Award, several National Pen&Quill awards, numerous scholarships, and is hoping to add to the list a Fullbright grant in the near future.

She is currently the Associate Director for a fine art gallery in Bristol, RI, as well as an Associate Editor and Creative Director for Crescent Magazine. In her spare time, she runs the Cauldron of Annwyn Pagan Society, the largest Pagan organization in Rhode Island.

In her artist's statement, Tempest writes,

"In my own personal experience, I have been driven to create the unseen, the unknown, and to many what can be conceived as unbelievable from their standpoint. Why? Well, the simplest reason is this: I am a Witch. My religion, my path, has provided a spiritual, physical, and metaphysical viewpoint that most common people do not encounter, or for that matter, wish to. Witchcraft is a religion of balance, meaning equal parts of light and dark, equal necessary forces. In the modern world we live in, it becomes very hard to mentally see and feel that balance for many reasons. Within my spiritual practices, I work to understand the balance of the world more clearly, and often, what I discover cannot be easily put into words, but it can be transcribed in the realm of visual art. This process is where the threads of myths reveal themselves to me visually. As I begin to pull away from the individual revelations, I am allowed to see the possibilities. When I am able to formulate the larger dynamic, my art ceases to be a self-oriented expression and begins to provoke opportunities to educate and illuminate others."