Easy on the Surface, Heavy at the Core
When Kyleigh tells you she’s always been a songwriter, it’s not a reach. Before the polished studio releases, before her latest single, Easy, she was a kid playing pretend pop star with her best friend Drew in the basement. No cameras, no stage, just two eight-year-olds writing silly songs and dancing them out. “That’s really where my songwriting journey began,” she said. “I’ve always been super creative. A storyteller. I didn’t know it was songwriting at the time, but I just had to get the words out.”
That same instinct still drives her today. If you strip away the production and the arrangement, her music begins in the same place it always has. With a feeling. “I’m pretty sensitive,” Kyleigh said. “So when I feel something, I have to write it down. That’s always where it starts.”
Creating from Intuition
There’s a certain quiet in Saturn Oak’s photographs. An in-between stillness that slows you down. It feels like you’ve wandered into someone else’s memory. Like a dream you can’t quite place.
It makes sense once you talk to him. Saturn Oak is just as drawn to the surreal as we are to his lens. His photos are imagined timelines born out of intuition and feel. “I like to bring almost like a fever dream quality to it,” he explained. “My goal every time I do a shoot is to almost make it feel like it’s on Earth, but it ain’t on Earth.”
Still That Kid: Marly McFly and Active Imagination
Marly McFly didn’t set out to build a brand. He just needed a break.
Back when he was working an office job. One of those desk-bound routines that slowly grinds away at your imagination. Marly didn’t take smoke breaks like his coworkers. Instead, he picked up some colored pencils and zoned out into the pages of his sketchbook. “Leave me alone,” he’d joke. “I’m just coloring something.” What started as a way to survive the day eventually sparked a whole new chapter. That quiet rebellion, that decision to escape into his art, eventually became Active Imagination, a coloring book that invites adults back to the headspace they had before the world hardened them.
“I never said it, but people picked up on it. It was never for kids,” he admitted. “They already have that imagination. I wanted adults to use it. Just take that moment to escape.”
In Full Color: Black Women in Production
There’s a groove to being behind the scenes on a film set. A quiet influence. A type of presence that shapes the outcome without demanding the spotlight. And that’s where this story begins, not with the final cut, but with the women who make it possible. Who plans the shot. Who calls the wrap. Who keeps the set moving when no one else knows what comes next.
It’s easy to credit the face on the poster, but the vision? That’s often in the hands of the people off-camera. Nuri Muhammad, Anna Ray, and Chenita Adé are three Black women working behind the scenes in film across North Carolina. They’re producers. DPs. ADs. Writers. Storytellers. Problem solvers. And more often than not, they’re the glue.
Get to Know Buku Love: Healing Through Sound and Story
Buku Love is making music and building a space where healing can happen. Blending hip hop, R&B, soul, and jazz, her sound invites listeners into a deeply personal experience that reveals who she is at her core. Each song is a chance to connect not only to her story but maybe even to your own.
Milton Gore on Art and Impact
Milton Gore sees art everywhere. In a face, in a fleeting moment, in a quiet expression. “I literally can look at someone and see an art piece,” he tells us. That kind of vision has shaped his work as a digital mixed-media artist and designer, and it’s what led him to build his own business, M.G. Visual Studios.