Endicott Redux

The High Fashion of Classic Comic Books

Woody Hochswender has a hilarious article about the new show of Comic-book inspired high fashion, "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy," currently at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept 1, 2008). This high-powered installation (designed by curator Andrew Bolton who was also inspired after reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) combines large splashy backdrops of comic book art with haute couture designs from the high-powered fashion houses, with the likes of super-fashion-heroes Thierry Mugler and Jean-Paul Gaultier. And what a bizarre collection of clothing it is, "dark and edgy, with themes of fetishism, domination, virility, sexual identity, and 'hegemonic masculinity'." Happily, most of these cat walk fashions won't be appearing on the racks in the future as they sure look uncomfortable -- and maybe a bit difficult to get in and out of an elevator in.

Hochswender has so much fun in the article -- both admiring the avant garde experience and poking fun at the "fashion-academese" used to explain the works. "The world of fashion, we learn, like that of comics, is a world of 'signs,' and that 'logos serve to ensure the body's passage into the field of the symbolic and representational.' Holding the thought and passing into the field of the Spider-man exhibit, we learn that "just as Superman's costume proclaims him a superman, Spider-Man's costume proclaims him a spider man.'" His further observation is that these clothes for the most part are "strictly for indoor wear, perhaps to answer the door for your dominatrix."

Definitely stop by the Museum's website to see more images from the show and to read their short essays about the show.  And here's another review from the Wall Street Journal, with an accompanying slide show.

Dreams for Women

Here's a lovely video from Antigone Magazine, a Canadian journal whose mission is to inspire young women to engage politically and civically. The video is part of their Dreams for Women project, which they invite you to participate in. Here's the description:

"Antigone Magazine is launching a Feminist Postcard art project and fundraiser, but instead of asking what your secrets are [as per PostSecret], we want to know what your Dreams for Women are. What are your own dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and send it to us."

For more information (and to see copies of the postcards they've received so far) go here.

(via Feministing)

Sleeping in Magic

Terri's post last week showing a magical bed made me think of my own favorite magical bed. I ripped this picture out of a magazine in 1991, and have been saving it for the day I stop moving around and can sleep happily ever after in this woodland fantasy. Only a wee little part of my mind wonders how much dust will collect up there on the draped fabric. The bed was a one-of-a-kind creation by Mariette Himes Gomez. You can see more of her work here, although none of the pieces look anything like this bed.

But wait, I've just recently fallen in love with this bed above, too, designed by Chris McCloud, the owner of the interior design firm Design 6. Philadelphia magazine quotes Chris: "I thought, 'How interesting would it be if a tree fell through the roof and was carved out into a bed.'" The bed is made of sustainably harvested English burled elm and took its makers at The Wood Shop 273 hours to create.

And here's one last bed, below, complete with its own fairy tale. It's part of the La Lune Collection. I'm hoping that Grandma is napping elsewhere, and not inside that giant dog.

To sleep, perchance to dream....

 

Oh lordy, I so want this magical bed, created by scupltor/metal-worker Shawn Lovell in Oakland, California. Lovell specializes in one-of-a-kind and commissioned works using traditional and modern forging techniques. Visit the Shawn Lovell Metalworks website to see more. (With thanks to poet Debra Cash, via Delia Sherman & Ellen Kushner, for the link.)

And for the complete "fantasy woodland" bedroom, here's an enchanting rug created by one of my favorite designers, Tord Boontje, (a Dutch artist who lives and works in France), for the Spanish rug company Nanimarquina. You'll find lights, fabrics and other items for this fantasy room in the "Projects" section of Boontje's website, Studio Tord Boontje.

   

Dreaming Methods: Writing Infused with New Media

I am always attracted to experimental flash animation in combination with fiction. I think it is one of the most interesting new art forms -- allowing for a richly textured and interactive experiment with fiction. Dreaming Methods is a website that offers quite a few of these experiments -- combining art, flash animation, and narrative together in complex and adventurous ways. There are many ongoing projects -- so it's a terrific site to come back and visit regularly to see what's new. You will need flash and a fast connection to view and participate fully in these projects. And do subscribe (it's free) as it will give you access to more projects and an interesting look at resource materials associated with each project.

One of the projects I found really amazing was the The Sketch Book of Annie Sykes, a fascinating collage of text, imagery, sound (which is best turned up), and video. "Turning" each page presents a kind of "living" journal.

I also find this work really interesting because I think it is perfectly tuned to mythic fiction and art despite its technical demands. It creates a version of oral story telling, allows for a mythic interpretation of the tale through art, music, and flash animation, and also allows the audience to connect to the tale though interactive play. I am looking forward myself to having an opportunity to do a project in flash. For another great example of this new frontier in mythic arts, have a look at the recent work of Connie Toebe and Lisa Stock (Through The Cobweb Forest). And for poetry, have a look a Born Magazine. 

Forget about the house...bite on this!

Remember those gingerbread houses that sat on the dining room table until slowly, gum drop by gum drop, wall by wall, over -- oh, a month -- you ate the whole thing? Well, here's a new challenge for those architectural taste buds. As part of a family project, Dave (of Miss(ed) Manners) built a gingerbread and candy replica of Minas Tirith during the Battle of Pelennor Fields from the novel, The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Stop by the blog and check out all the amazing photos of this incredible project -- all of it faithfully, and with inventive use of candy, reproduced. (via the delectable Ms. Bond)

8, The Endless Forest, and The Path: Interactive Games from Tale of Tales Studio

Over the last two years I have been following the work of a very talented pair, Michael Samyn and Aurie Harvey, of Tale of Tales, a Belgian studio producing interactive online computer games based on fairy tales. Currently they have three projects in various stages of development: "8," "The Endless Forest," and more recently a new game called The Path, a spooky (and very punk-looking) version of Little Red Riding Hood.

Their first experiment, 8, is an exploration of different versions of Sleeping Beauty which takes the player through some beautifully designed locations. Here's a description of the plot: "A young girl gets trapped in a luxurious palace surrounded by a thick forest. Everyone in the palace is asleep. They should have woken up by now. The Prince should have come by now. But the Princess is in no condition to meet him. Assisted by a Wicked Fairy out for revenge, eight unworthy princes have penetrated the forest and disrupted the magic that once protected the sleeping court. The power of the spell is fading. The forest branches are growing. The palace walls are crumbling." The project is still in its developmental stages, but the website lets one wander through the fascinating landscapes and have a peek at the conceptual art created by Lina Kusaite, Martin Michl and Gorik Lindemans.

In The Endless Forest, a multi-player online game, one enters the game in the form of deer (the various avatars are wonderful!) to explore an enchanted landscape and interact with other deer and with this magical world. From the description: "Although not goal-oriented, there are several activities that you can engage in. Nothing very demanding or violent. Just fun things to do in a nice environment. Once every so often, the forest deities will appear, either in person or through their divine powers. Beware of falling rocks and sudden showers!" There's lots of fun to be had here -- one can change other players' horns or pelts, or even shapeshift them into squirrels, bats, frogs, or birds through spells collected from eating mushrooms, from pinecones, or from mushroom "fairy circles." (With more fabulous concept art from Lina Kusaite.)

The most recent project is The Path, the team's first commercial single player game (available 2009), based on a very dark interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood. Here's the introduction: "There is something wrong with the forest. No matter how bright the sun shines, it remains dark and foggy. It smells like something died. Strange noises fill the rusty air. Squeaks and screeches. The dull thump of someone chopping trees. The wind playing eerie melodies on ghostlike flutes. Shivers run down her spine. She just left the city. Cars can't drive here anymore. Mother told her to go visit grandmother. The old lady lives all alone at the other side of the forest. Quite a walk from here. It's probably best if she stays on the path." As before, there is no set goal for this game, rather an invitation to journey through the dark forest and decide whether to adhere to the path, or to wander....

(*Thanks to Carisa Swenson for reminding me about this wonderful studio.)

Online Salon with The Interstitial Arts Foundation

   
I recently received word from Interstitial Arts Foundation board member Kris McDermott that the topic of their upcoming online salon is THE comics collective The Chemistry Set...

The comic that caught our eye was one by Phillipine artist Andrew Drilon, called Mang Tomas the Story Hunter – in which the Hero mutters, “INTERSTITIAL FICTION – KISS MY GUN!” We’re not sure if he’s giving us a shout-out or a slam, but we loved it! And then, of course, we wanted more.

He – and many of the other writer/artists on the site – approach graphic storytelling from a joyous mix of perspectives. I’m particularly intrigued by Drilon’s incorporation of Filipino archetypes and myths into his stories, but other series – Steven Goldman’s Styx Taxi, and Elizabeth Genco’s Scheherazade also use the handy vehicle of myth to explore some exciting intersections between visual and literary culture.

So visit the site and come back to discuss your impression of this project. Is the graphic novel/comic book the most interstitial form of pop culture going today, and if so, what is its future? What else have you encountered like “The Chemistry Set”? Does multiculturalism aid and abet interstitiality – and vice versa? Our conversation will begin here on December 8 and continue for a week. Hope to see you there!

WHEN: Saturday, Dec. 8-Saturday, Dec. 15
WHERE: This thread @ the IAF message board
WHAT: Discuss The Chemistry Set – we call ‘em interstitial; do you?

Needless to say, I'm tickled. Andrew Drilon is a stunning talent - if you haven't checked out his Kare-Kare Komiks yet, you're in for a treat! Andrew recently took 2nd place at 2nd Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards.  He's definitely a creator for fans of mythic arts to watch. 

My latest favorite from Andrew: Grinwit.

Watch out for...

 

FAO Schwartz, the famous Manhattan toy store, has reported a goblin infestation -- in the form of plush toys designed by Brian and Wendy Froud. (We're told the toys will be available through the store's Christmas mail-order catalog too.)

Brian, of course, is no stranger to goblins, having published books on the subject including The Goblin Companion and The Goblins of Labyrinth with Monty Python's Terry Jones, and Goblins! with Ari Berk.

You'll also find plenty of goblins in the magical books that feature Wendy's work: The Art of Wendy Froud, and the "Old Oak Wood" series of picture books for children.

Of Refrigerators and Leonardo

The annual Webby Awards select the "best of" in a variety of categories for websites on the Internet -- including personal websites and the best sites for flash animation, education, business, and science. It makes for absolutely fascinating browsing to see what riches the Internet offers.

In the Art category, Electrolux Design was this year's Webby Award winner. Every year Electrolux Design offers a global competition for young designers to invent and design products for an eco-friendly, futuristic house of 2010. The inventions are remarkable -- and beautiful! I fell in love with this "soft refrigerator," a 2005 nominee. It's portable, and can expand in size to adapt to the amount of stuff inside the cooling chamber. "The soft-membrane coat insulates the contents and gives the appliance a soft, alluring look. The center pillar sustains the weight of the fridge and transports cool to each layer." Sure beats a dorm fridge!

The Universal Leonardo was also a nominee in the Art category and is another fascinating place to visit. This interactive site, for both children and adults, explores Leonardo's many contributions to the fields of drawing, painting, sculpture, and scientific invention. The site is rich and deep, providing brief explanations of Leonardo's influences, the details of his many paintings, the historical background of the period, and a wonderful gallery of images. (The image to the right is Leonardo's "Young Woman with Unicorn.") There is even a bit of "play," with a program that allows the viewer to create monsters as Leonardo did. This site is really a treat.

Metamorphosis #7: Carolyn Ryder Cooley

Performance and installation artist Carolyn Ryder Cooley creates "emotionally driven narrative spaces" and modern mythic stories in three-dimensional form for viewers to enter into, experience, and explore. Her work is informed by fantasy and folklore, nature, history, politics, the mystery of abandoned places and found objects, and the secret lives of insects, birds, and animals (especially deer). She is an interstitial artist who weaves visual art, performance art and music together as she endeavors "to engage viewers on multi-sensory levels that alter their experience of time and place."

Her intent, she says, is to "invent haunted dream worlds that echo political and cultural phenomena of past and present. Video, sound and site-specific lighting create an atmosphere of dis-reality. Rescued materials are transformed into props and garments which reveal incomplete evidence of pasts. Emerging from post-industrial waste, pollution and decay, these installation places give refuge to new habitations of marginal hybrid species. Mythical androgen creatures stem from cracks and crevices as drawings and performance characters. Their bodies are often scarred, bandaged and modified through plastic surgeries and transfigurations that abandon notions of gender and identity. By performing improvisationally and collaboratively within these installations, I myself become a Utopian gutter creature."

The photograph at the top of this page is from Ryder Cooley's "Serenades for a Dead Deer," performed in Troy, New York in 2006. The next image is "Serenade for Factory Factories and Mills," North Adams, Massachusetts, 2006. To the right is "Apparitions, Serenade for Tabor," in which a mysterious veiled figure in a feathered gown performs at various sites in the town of Tabor, Czech Republic, 2004. Just below is "The Riverbird Serenade" (North Adams, Massachusetts, 2005), which the artist describes as follows:

"A chair is suspended from a bridge. Musical serenades are performed in the chair 10 ft. above a river with cars driving overhead and birds flying around. Performance and chair are viewed through the gallery windows. Concurrently, an indoor installation consists of four chairs suspended in individual window wells. One empty window invites a view of the chair outside. Beneath each chair is a nest of rocks collected from the river. During non-performance hours, serenades can be watched on video and the performance gown hangs alongside the video monitor."

The last two images come from Ryder Cooley's performance piece "To End All War," created in 2005 to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The artist explains:

"The central character, Vigil Deer, is an antlered doe. She is clothed in red, the color of martyrdom and blood as a reminder of the suffering caused by war. The iconography of this project stemmed from a series of deer encounters during the rutting and hunting season, and the subsequent discovery of a hermaphroditic deer species, known as the Velvet Horns, who live peacefully in alternative communities."

Ryder Cooley received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in sculpture in 1993, spent several years as an active member of the San Francisco arts community, and then earned an MA in Combined Media at SUNY, Albany. Her work (which also includes drawings, paintings, and murals) has been exhibited widely, from California and New York to the Czech Republic, Morocco, and Indonesia. She has participated in community arts workshops in El Salvador, is a recipient of a Belle Foundation Grant, and her work was included in the 2006 Hot and Cold catalogue acquisition at MOMA in New York. To learn more about Ryder Cooley's multi-faceted art, please visit her website, which is fascinating, inspiring, and magical. (With thanks to Ulla and Midori for the link.)

Kinetic Sculpture

This little video is simply amazing:

You can see a slightly larger version of the video here. And yes, the guy is a genius.

(With thanks to Alan Lee for sending us the link.)

Pinocchio hits the cat walk

What can I say about this? I just think it's mad and wonderful: girls dressed up like various versions of Pinocchio, complete with those odd wooden structures to make them seem more doll-like. These pieces (more art than fashion) were designed by Koji Arai for his "Last Supper" show in Antwerp in 2006. The work is on display until tomorrow at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

I can't wait until Terri and I publish our "fashion issue" of the Journal of Mythic Arts sometime next year. (Thanks to the wonderful Ullabenulla's blog for this and other fantasy fashion moments.)

Spirit Books

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord is a book artist whose work has been exhibited and collected across the United States. Born in Rahway, New Jersey in 1951, she now lives and works in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Her exquisite Spirit Book Series has a distinctly mythic quality, evoking the spirit of stories told for centuries in both oral and printed forms. 

"The Spirit Books bring together my love of the book and my response to the natural world that we see and the invisible one that lies behind it," the artist writes. "...I feel a deep connection to older powers as I gather twigs, branches, vines, and roots. Using them to cradle books, I link them to the longstanding tradition of books as testaments of faith and belief."

The book pictured in the paragraph above, for example is called Sacred Speaker. The name "refers to the fan shape, and the original use of folding fans in Japan -- for communication with the gods."

The book below is Hope Offering. "The hawthorn is a symbol of hope. In Ireland and Wales, women hang bits of cloth on branches near sacred wells, a custom that was originally an offering to the goddess. Here the hawthorn is embellished with beads and seed pods from the rue plant. Rue is the symbol of all good things at weddings in Lithuania."

In addition to creating these one-of-a-kind books, Gaylord established Notan Press in 1990. The name of the press is taken from the Japanese design principle based on the interaction of dark (no) and light (tan). "I first encountered the concept in a design class with Brenda Lowen- Siegel," she explains. "I was intrigued. I came to see the world in terms of notan when I took a weekend workshop with artist/calligrapher Jenny Groat. For Jenny, notan extended beyond the page and into life. From her experience with Zen Buddhism and Jungian analysis, she saw notan as more than a design principle; it spoke to her of the importance of acknowledging and balancing light and dark, positive and negative, in all aspects of life. The workshop with Jenny occurred in the year that had brought the death of my mother and the birth of my first child. Her ideas touched me deeply and I, too, came to embrace this view."

To see more of this amazing artist's work, visit the Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord website.

            

Invented Worlds: Kahn & Selesnick

 

Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick are a pair of artists who create imaginary places and faux histories that are mythic, funny, and surreal. Working in collaboration, they make elaborate series of photographs and text documenting invented histories, geographies, and cultures. Born in New York City (Kahn) and London (Selesnick), they now work out of a studio in Brooklyn, New York. You can view their work on their new website -- but be prepared to spend some time there, for it's full of fabulous pictures and stories.

       

One Kahn-Selesnick project is The Greenman, for which they interviewed "locals" from an imaginary British village (dressing them up in various Greenman guises clearly inspired by Arcimboldo paintings) and "discovered" faux-historic Greenman Day photos from rural Germany. Another project, The City of Salt, contains imagery and stories from a wholly invented metropolis. "Behind the city," they write, "beneath its every surface, is a hidden landscape, a mythological topology, the universal destination of our dream explorations, forever half-remembered, a lost Eden."

Scotland Future Bog is a hilarious, surreal glimpse of Scotland in an imaginary future. Discussing The Bakers photograph from this series, Kahn said:"We created this image during a residency at Philips-Andover working with the students and teachers in the giant studio. We designed and built rubber garments with the students and then bought all the bread the Italian bakery in Lawrence Massachusetts could sell us. It's based loosely on the composition of Andrea Mantegna's great Renaissance painting cycle "The Triumphs of Caesar," but set after the apocalypse in some remote soggy corner of Scotland, the rival clans returning with their baked spoils of war. But we prefer to leave all this as a mystery, an unfathomable absurd future that seems to be racing at us whether we like it or not in the guise of a code orange alert."

Other projects include an invented history of flight and the mapping of a circular river. In addition to the new Kahn-Selesnick website, and the older Kahn-Selesnick homepage, you can see their work on the Carl Hammer Gallery and Pepper Gallery websites.

The Fantasy of Food

It's late and I'll admit, it's been a long day so I find myself wandering over to some of my favorite food blogs to admire plates of exotic food, every bit as fantastical as a feast from say the Arabian Nights or the exquisitely terrifying underworld of del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.

My father would have loved these blogs...with their glossy photos and the alchemical promise of the list of ingredients. Years ago, even after heart disease had made such foods as forbidden as pomegranates in Hades, he would visually devour elaborate and sensual photographs in the many food magazines to which he subscribed. So here's a nod to two of my favorite blogs...visit them, dream of flavors, textures, and maybe even become heroic and create one of these fantastical beauties:

Chez Pim: Hands down one of the best food blogs. (That's one of her fabulous photos at the top of this post.) Pim started her love affair with food in a  blog that quickly became hugely popular and wildly successful, leading to a career in food writing. Here's  her brief biography : "Pim grew up in Bangkok, was shipped off the study in other places, and somehow found herself living and loving it in the San Francisco Bay Area. She quit her Silicon Valley job in 2005 to pursue a career in food: the writing, reporting, and basically anything interesting thereof that comes her way. Her recipes, writings, and photographs have since appeared in the New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine, Bon Appétit magazine, Men's Vogue, and others." Pim's photos of food are glorious. She has guest cooks (like wizards they are with spoons, pots, and secret ingredients) and fairy tale meals.

My Husband Cooks:
Ah! The perfect marriage -- a man who cooks brilliantly, a wife who eats with gusto and can write intelligently. They describe themselves as "A happy pair of foodies from Cincinnati who have settled in the Washington, D.C., area. He cooks. I eat. We have fun." The photos (such as the one below) are inspiring.

In an article I wrote on the great mythic and fairy tale cooks, I did  do some research on the contemporary field of molecular gastronomy -- a strange new form of cooking that pairs foods based on their similar molecular structures which can lead to some pretty startling combinations -- such as cod with white chocolate, or, from the restaurant The Fat Duck: "Mango and Douglas fir puree." You can see photos of their prepared dishes here.  But, as fascinating as it is, I had to laugh at the new comic strip from Achewood -- poking terrible fun at these postmodern cooks.

Fairy Tales and Dreams

Caz Love is an interstitial artist whose work falls in the borderland between several disciplines -- including fiber arts, sculpture, drawing, dressmaking, installation art, and storytelling. Born in Boston, Love studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Cal Arts in Venice, California. She was on the art faculty of The Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual in Greece (1999); and she currently lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and group shows, and in Endicott's Journal of Mythic Arts.

Love often draws on myth, fairy tales, and dream imagery for inspiration. The piece on the left was inspired by the Handless Maiden fairy tale (also known as The Girl Without Hands, The Girl With Silver Hands, and The Armless Maiden). The art installation pictured above is based on Sleeping Beauty. The artist describes the piece as "an homage to the thorns and raptures, the innocence of first kisses and schoolgirl crushes, the beauty and magnitude of true love, and the wounds of love's endings. This installation is about bidding farewell to the ghosts of the past, cutting through the thorns that surround a broken heart. It is about a return to feeling after a long stay in love's winter."

Nocturnal Love Songs (to the right and below) is an installation about the mysterious power of dreams. "I used vintage wedding dresses," says Love, "and an assemblage of sheet music, dream libretto, alchemical imagery, text and other found ephemera to create a goth/femme environment that seeks to penetrate the mystical, secret and enigmatic nature of the dream world."

Visit Caz Love's website to see more of her work.

Memory Maps

The Radio Ballads project that we discussed yesterday reminded me of another ground-breaking interstitial arts project examining historical and contemporary life in Britain: Memory Maps. Created in collaboration by cultural historian (and fairy tale scholar) Marina Warner, the University of Essex, and the V&A Museum, Memory Maps is an internet-based project focused on the relationship between people and place. 

In her introductory essay, Marina Warner writes: "A new genre of literature has been emerging strongly in recent years. It doesn't belong automatically on any particular shelf in a bookshop, or to a particular category in a library catalogue. Writers working in this vein are exploring people and places and the relations between them, and in order to do so they combine fiction, history, traveller's tales, autobiography, anecdote, aesthetics, antiquarianism, conversation, and memoir. Mapping memories involves listening in to other people's ghosts as well as your own....Memory Maps is a website designed to inspire and foster work which will continue this approach to writing by providing focal points of interest - catalysts of thought - in the form of paintings and artifacts, alongside databases about people and places."

The Memory Maps project begins in Essex, England, one of the oldest inhabited parts of the British Isles. The project organizers began by collecting images of Essex and asking a wide range of writers for their responses -- including poet & film-maker Ian Sinclair, ecological activist Ken Worpole, musician Billy Bragg, poet Angela Livingstone, novelists Michele Roberts and Lisa Appignanesi, and numerous others (with A.S. Byatt still to come). The project then invites you, the reader, to "respond and contribute, stitching new thoughts, dreams, history, and stories into the map."

The form of writing they are chiefly seeking, Warner explains, comes from an old, very English tradition "of the personal, even eccentric essay, the wide-ranging, meditation, and the anecdotal almanac.The precursors of Memory Maps include Robert Burton and The Anatomy of Melancholy; John Aubrey and Brief Lives; Sir Thomas Browne who investigated local beliefs and rituals, ancient and modern; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most aleatory of English conversationalists on paper and in person; Thomas De Quincey, who forged a new kind of impassioned personal testamentary essay; and others: this is another zone of exploration.

"These earlier writers in the genre contributed to a definition of belonging, and an idea of Englishness in their time by inquiring into local customs and opinions, and eavesdropping on local anecdotes. Likewise in the Scottish Highlands, at the end of the seventeenth century, the minister Robert Kirk was equally keen to convey the special character of his parishioners' beliefs in 'the secret common-wealth of fairies', as he called his book of collected lore. Today, in a country braided from different peoples, cultures, and systems of thought, inquiry of this kind can draw out even more richly coloured and densely tangled strands...

"As the Memory Maps grow," Warner concludes, "they will go on connecting different people and places across time and in the present. Such an exchange between images and writings, past and present, memory and imagination, releases energy: the energy of stories."

   

Click here to learn more about Memory Maps, and how to contribute to the project yourself. And click here to listen to Billy Bragg's contribution, the song "A13, Trunk Road to the Sea".

Celebrating the Chinese New Year in Good Taste

The Chinese government has issued a particularly "tasty" stamp for the Chinese New Year. This year's "Year of the Pig" features a charming little stamp that when scratched smells like the aroma of sweet-and-sour pork, and if that's not enough flavoring for you, then go ahead and lick the back of the stamp for a burst of sweet-and-sour flavor too. Chinese New Year begins February 18th, and I am thinking of purchasing these stamps just to send out as decorations to my foodie friends. (The photo down below is from Chinadaily.com.)

Doing a little research on these New Year stamps, I discovered there is a whole world out there of scratch-and-sniff and lick stamps. New Zealand produced a stamp that smelled of magnolias, while the romantic Australian postal service produced a Valentine's Day stamp with a rose scented scratch-and-sniff. The Swiss have given the world chocolate scented stamps, while Hong Kong produced green tea flavored stamps.

Here's a "tart" quip from Canada's Globe and Mail in 2001 responding to the British developing a eucalyptus scented stamp to commemorate the 2001 Nobel Prizes in Medicine:  "Inhalation is the sincerest form of philately. Scratching the new British postage stamp honoring the Nobel Prize for medicine will release the scent of eucalyptus, which may be particularly thrilling for those koalas on your Christmas-card list."

 

Book Arts

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. is running an exhibition now on "The Book as Art," featuring 108 handmade artists' books by women from 12 different countries. "Defined as art objects in the form of books, artists' books combine content and form to create something that is more than a simple container for information....The aim of book art is to involve the reader actively in the viewing process, not only to see the words on the page but also to think about how the words, pictures, and physical form of the object all contribute to the meaning." The books in the exhibition address a variety of subjects: politics, poetry, autobiography, and fantasy. The show runs until February 4, 2007. More information can be found here.

Book art fans should also be sure to keep up with the latest offerings from Papaveria Press in Philadelphia. Run by artist and writer Erzebet Barthold-Yellowboy, Papaveria specializes in fairy tales and fabulism, producing beautiful, magical handmade books in limited editions. Past offerings have included works by Catherynne M. Valente, Veronica Schanoes, Hal Duncan, Lord Dunsany, Aria Nadii and other writers and artists, in addition to work by Erzebet herself. Coming up is The Duke in His Castle, an original fairy tale by Vera Nazarian, and Descent, a series of seven long poems by Catherynne M. Valente looking at descents into mythic underworlds -- from the tale of Inanna to Tam Lin.

Papaveria Press is part of the Wild Muse Network, a collaborative effort by visionary artists dedicated to creating work informed by a strong sense of the living mythic. "We find inspiration in shamanistic world views," they explain, "alchemy, root magic, deep ecology, sophianic gnosticism, animism, and many other dynamic, adaptive spiritualities. We do not pine for the long ago and far away, nor do we adopt the trappings of fantasy archaism. Our interest is in the eternal present, and in our potential as human beings faced with the marvels of spirit and nature."

Check out the Wild Muse Network's website for links to inspiring projects in visual, literary, sound and other arts, such as the gorgeous "chimerical constructions" of Aria Nadii and the "acoustical mysteries" of Djinnestan. To learn more about Erzebet Barthold-Yellowboy's work, visit her Sticks & Stones, Blood & Bones website and Of Books and Bones blog.

For more information on artists' books, visit the website of The Center for Book Arts, located in New York City. Their next exhibition, opening January 19th, focuses on contemporary book art from Iraq.

The Church of Old Mermaids

Last winter, during a month-long stay at the Endicott West writers' retreat in Tucson, Arizona, Kim Antieau sat down and wrote a mythic novel titled The Church of Old Mermaids. "I had no intention of writing," she says, "but I reread The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I wanted to write a simple story like that, full of compassion and passion, from a woman's viewpoint. I was going to write The Woman and the Old Sea. I imagined a woman walking through the wash and picking up trash to sell at a table she sets up on 4th Avenue in Tucson. I thought she should call it a church. But what kind of church? That's when the Old Mermaids came my way...." Kim's novel hasn't yet been published, but you can read the first chapter on-line here. (And find a list of her other books here.)

Since then, Kim has set up her own Old Mermaid Sanctuary, and is encouraging others around the world to do the same: to create sacred spaces large and small that are personal, magical, and unique. "The Old Mermaids lived in the Old Sea," she explains, "until it dried up [turning into the Arizona desert]...then they had to make their way in a world that was new and alien to them — and they did it with love and beauty....Many of us feel as though we have washed up on alien shores because we no longer live in our places of birth, or because we feel out of sync in our communities, or because we are not living in a place where we can discern beauty. The word ‘sanctuary’ comes from the Latin ‘sanctus’ which means holy. ‘Holy’ comes from the word ‘whole.’ A sanctuary is a place where we are whole and holy, it is where we mend ourselves and the world until all is whole and holy.

"Creating an Old Mermaid Sanctuary is not about consumption or knowing about fine art. It's certainly not about what our mainstream culture has declared beautiful or popular...The Old Mermaids created beauty and saw beauty all around. Their home was a work of art, cobbled together from what they found in the desert. Isn’t that how most of us create our lives, cobbled from what we can find?...I want to see Old Mermaid Sanctuaries everywhere — and I would like to create a gorgeous Old Mermaid Sanctuaries book, complete with photos and stories of your Old Mermaid Sanctuary places — be it a dresser top, a room, a yard, a spot in the forest, a workplace, a home. I hope you'll want to participate in this project."

To learn more about the Old Mermaid Sanctuaries project (and how to participate yourself), visit Kim's Church of Old Mermaid blog -- where you'll find stories (including one, I'm honored to say, inspired by a drawing of mine), musings, and information on The Old Mermaid School of Telling Tales & Finding Art and the newly created Old Mermaid Journal (from Lulu Publishing).      

For more information on the folklore of mermaids, you'll find a good article on the subject by Heinz Insu Fenkl in the Journal of Mythic Arts archives. There's also an extensive mermaids website devoted to mermaid lore, links, and imagery.

Storytellers

   

Midori has reminded me that this is Native American Indian Heritage Month. One way to honor the occasion is to seek out books by the many fine Native American writers who publish mythic fiction, nonfiction, and poetry today: Paula Gunn Allen, Carolyn Dunn, Anita Endrezze, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Thomas King, N. Scott Momaday, nila northSun, Louis Owens, Susan Power, Eden Robinson, Gayle Ross, Leslie Silko, Albertine Strong, Luci Tapahonso, Alfredo Vea Jr., Gerald Vizenor, Ofelia Zepeda, and so many others. Visit the Storytellers: Native American Authors Online website for lists of authors, books, reviews, book excerpts, storytelling links, and more. And you'll find a gorgeous new story from Carolyn Dunn (rooted in traditional Cherokee lore) posted online in the latest issue of Endicott's Journal of Mythic Arts.

Magic Realism and the New World Baroque

Lois Parkinson Zamora of the University of Houston explores the relationship between the visual arts movements of the twentieth century and the Latin American literary arts movement of magic realism. Her lecture, Sword and Silver Rings: Objects and Expression in Magic Realism and the New World Baroque, breaks into three fascinating essays (with accompanying art).

The first, Franz Roh's Magical Objects, is a study of Franz Roh, the art critic who coined the term "magic realism" in a 1925 essay to describe Post Expressionist art, and later discarded it in 1958 as "one of those retardations which history likes to throw in as a breathing spell when we have experienced too many innovations."

The second lecture, Borges Poetic Objects, examines Jorge Borges' participation in the early Argentine avant garde movement and his reinterpretation of Roh's term. Zamora argues that magic realism raised questions about the nature of represented objects which would come to represent "not only themselves but also the potential for some kind of alternative reality, some kind of "magic" (from the Introduction). For Borges the term described a particular kind of magic idealism, locating magic in a "secondary" Platonic "poetic objects."

The final lecture, Garcia Marquez's Baroque Objects, explores Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work -- as a contrasting choice, since Borges and Marquez seem to be at the opposite ends of the magic realist spectrum. While Borges expresses a magic idealism, Marquez offers a visible world of palpable magic. (Great quote from Marquez here: "Household objects, in the fullness of their poetry, flew with their own wings through the kitchen sky.")

These are wonderful lectures, and the accompanying art is really illustrative. (I am particularly fond of the Xul Solar paintings used in conjunction with the Borges lecture.) The site as a whole also contains additional galleries of art -- including a very fine selection of 30 works by Remedios Varo.

Art as Myth, Myth as Art

Gregory Colbert is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, installation artist, educator, and myth-maker who is traveling the world with an on-going multimedia exhibition, "Ashes and Snow" (housed in the Nomadic Museum created by architect Shigeru Ban). Consisting of luminous, dreamlike photographs, an epistolary novel, a bestiary, 35 mm films, and much more, "Ashes and Snow" creates a world as magical as any found in the pages of a fantasy book, yet rooted in all that's most simple, sacred, and natural in our own. About his work, the artist says: "In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towar