Johann Jacob Haid 

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

This time last year: {October 2018} | {October 2017}| {Ocotober 2016}

💀 Rapid Cycling Through the Stages of Grief on Amazon

💀 Being told to get over it is not one of the stages of grief.

💀 ‘The Third Day’ Makes Grief Feel Like the End of the World

💀 Funeral homes offer Kansas City elderly free limo rides to the polls

💀 ‘I worked in horror films. Now I’m an undertaker’: arts workers who had to find new jobs

💀 Don’t Grieve Alone. Reach Out: Find emotional support with long-established networks already built for distance.

💀 The Dead Parents Club – 5 tips for dealing with awkward social situations when you’ve lost a parent

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This interview was originally posted at Haute Macabre on October 29, 2020

The Most Macabre Of Distinctions: An Interview With Megan Rosenbloom, A Librarian Investigating the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin.

I’ve been spending the past week thinking about what sort of introduction to pen for the following interview with Megan Rosenbloom about her debut nonfiction book, Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin. Intros are always the hardest part, aren’t they? How do you sum up a brilliant writer, an intensely unique and intriguing subject matter, and one of the coolest, most thrillingly-researched books you’ve ever read… in a way that isn’t massively hyperbolic or, conversely, somehow doesn’t do any of it enough justice?

I considered beginning with some imaginary scenarios in the style of some of my own favorite tales, and which might pave the way for what you can expect to find in these pages detailing the history of books bound in human skin (Yes! that’s what this book is about! Like me, have you been waiting for this for your entire freaking life??) Perhaps a scholarly account of gentleman doctors in their mahogany-shelved libraries, flaunting strange collections; following the gruesome and clandestine theatrics of midnight corpse-thieving grave robbers, assisting midwives to royalty, bearing witness to 19th-century highwaymen in their final hours, poets and paupers, murderers and scientists–as in the book itself, all of these characters would have a role to play in my opening words here, but none, I think, so engrossing and engaging as the author of this book, herself.

Medical historian and biblio-adventurer Megan Rosenbloom’s chronicles of books bound in human skin (or Anthropodermic Bibliopegy) doesn’t just detail these books, or the collectors, or the people who created them; she passionately and humanely explores the people they used to be, and this is an emotional examination that renders these pages, and I am quoting from The LA Times here, “…surprisingly intersectional, touching on gender, race, socioeconomics, and the Western medical establishment’s colonialist mindset.” Come for the weird books facts, stay for the unexpected and powerful human questions.

As it happens, I did have some questions for the human who wrote what I believe is the most impassioned and exhilarating book of 2020! See below for our chat with Megan Rosenbloom, and yes, I asked the tacky question you would all expect me to ask. But, as she asserts in the book, “corpse desecration is ultimately in the eye of the beholder,” well, then, so too is tackiness.

SE: Not being much of a history buff myself…which is know is rather shameful… I learned a great many surprising things from this book, a book where I thought I was just going to get my macabre/weird-factoid itches scratched, albeit in a well-researched and highly thoughtful way! I should have known better! What was the most shocking or surprising thing you learned in your research and analysis of anthropodermic books? And so much of this book is about separating fact from fiction, myth from reality. So your most shocking thing…was it a true thing? Or a historical supposition that you debunked?

MR: The emergence of some French private collectors that reached out to us really surprised me, because once I realized there was probably an underground world of French human skin books that I’d never be able to access, some of them just came and found me and that was really thrilling. The Poe book in particular, the look of it but also its incredible provenance just kind of blew my mind. People will have to read the book to get that tale. I have a feeling that I am not nearly done with the French underground market…

I realize that this is a ridiculous question, bordering on gauche, but if you strip away the unsavory bits about many of these books, mainly (if I understand correctly) that their binding materials were obtained by unethical and non-consensual means, and if we pretend that it’s not at all a morbid practice (which…I don’t think that is a stretch for us, really) what would you deem an appropriate type of book to be bound in human skin? And maybe the best way to answer this is from a personal perspective… If you mandated that after death that this what you’d like done with your skinsuit…what sort of book would you like it wrapped around?

If I had to use my skin to cover a book, I think I’d have to somewhat follow the route of some of the folks in my book and bind Dark Archives in my skin. I worked on the book for so long and it really put me through the wringer, but I’m also quite proud of it (and of having published a book at all, a truly lifelong dream), so it seems fitting enough for me. But do note: I do not want my skin bound in a book. I do not consent! Here it is in writing. My friend Anna Dhody, the curator at the Mütter Museum, is gunning for my tattoo for the collection after I die. I got it as a book-finishing present to myself and it’s a mix of an image found on a bookplate in their collection and their library’s logo. I haven’t decided yet whether I like the idea or not, but knowing Anna, she will lie in wait patiently until I decide. She may be delightfully creepy, but she cares deeply about consent too.

“Why is the law so murky about what one can and cannot do with a human corpse?” you muse within the pages of the book, and YEAH, WHY? I am still unclear on, say, if in my earlier question, you did request in your last will and testament to have your personal diary or whatever bound in your skin–would your relatives have a legal problem fulfilling that final wish of yours?

It is a very 21st century American notion that as long as you consent to doing something with your body, that it should be legal. Laws have not really caught up with us here. Its potential legality greatly depends on where you are, not just the country, but in the U.S. the individual state, and there’s no U.S. law that expressly forbids making a human skin book per se, but there are a number of state laws that could be invoked to file a claim of, say, “desecration of a corpse,” which is often judged by a very vague bar of “community standards.”

At other points in history, some body disposition methods like cremation could have been viewed as desecration of a corpse by a community. That’s the reason why some of the folks in the Order of the Good Death have been working to make certain newer disposition methods like aquamation (using water instead of fire to get a similar ash-like product that’s much more eco-friendly) and recomposition (basically human composting that can act like natural burial but in an urban setting) expressly legal in multiple states so they don’t have to wait and see whether someone wants to challenge the methods legally as desecration. That’s a great way to go about innovating in the deathsphere I think, because otherwise professionals would be putting themselves on the line by agreeing to carry out your wishes, not knowing if someone will file a complaint. But I suspect the demand for post-mortem human skin bookbinding is pretty niche and unlikely to have people pushing for getting a law on the books one way or the other.

Dark Archives connects so much of your work and the lessons you’ve learned as a librarian, a writer, and a Death Positive activist, an intersection of roles I find utterly fascinating. But it’s the death positive aspect I find that I keep coming back to as it relates to books bound in human skin and the lives–and deaths– of the individuals who most likely did not consent to have their mortal remains exploited in such a way. Can you speak to the findings in this book in terms of what it means to have A Good Death, and the lessons we can take away from it?

I would say death positivity runs throughout the book, whether it’s me going through my journey to decide what I want done with my corpse when I die, or thinking through all of the implications about the ways bodies have been used and abused throughout history, or indulging morbid curiosity without shame. From our current vantage point, I would say the person closest to having a good death in my book is George Walton because he wanted to be made into a book. The others likely had no idea this fate would befall them. But again, this is all from our perspective today where we have bodily consent as a concept and hold the idea very dear.

One death positive takeaway from the book is when we dig into death practices from different time periods and cultures, it reflects back to us how culturally relative our own ideas of what is a good or bad death is.

And on the very opposite end of the spectrum, that of the vibrant and the living! I know that you have a toddler in the house and I am so curious as to what she thinks of all of this business! You and I were no doubt, inquisitive children, with an interest in weird things…and I realize human skin books aren’t the topic for kiddie convos in every household…but I bet we would have appreciated knowing about them when we were young! And so I can’t help but imagine your wee one has an interest in your book and what you’re writing about, so I am curious about how you might talk to a child about this sort of thing. And of course, I am dying to know your kid’s reaction.

My kid is 3 going on 4 and precocious in the way that she talks, so it’s pretty funny to see what her concept of what I do is. One time she used a wall calendar as a “laptop” and pretended to bang on the keys saying, “Oh! There’s a good information right there.” One of her Mo Willems books has a drawing with a monster doing research with papers and stack of books, and even as a 2-year-old she’d say, “That’s you.” No lies detected!

She’s not really into creepy stuff but she has stuffed grim reapers (yes multiple), a plague doctor, and a human skin stuffie, because she lives in my home and it comes with the territory. She knows I wrote a book, but I don’t think she knows about the books bound in human skin. She generally digs that I’m a librarian, but I think that is mostly because Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony is also a librarian. So, twinsies.

Finally, after reading the words on the final pages of Dark Archives, closing the book, and reflecting back on all that they’ve learned regarding the history and legacy of anthropodermic books, what is the one thing that you hope readers take away from everything you’ve shared here?

I hope readers get that there’s a lot more to these books than just being spooky, creepy things. They are that, and if you want creepy stuff you’ll get plenty in the book, but they are also vessels for a lot of really important conversations. Thus far I’ve been really gratified that readers get what I was going for; they see the humanity and respect I bring to the topic while still being able to enjoy the sillier parts of my journey alongside the deeper issues.

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18 Oct
2020

Hello, weirdos! Last month I polled you to see if there was anything you might like to ask me if I did a Q&A for YouTube. At least I think it was last month. Who knows anymore! Anyway, I appreciate your indulgence in what felt like an awfully fun way to connect with you all (and not at all an exercise in narcissism, nope, nope!)

I wanted to make sure I got to everyone’s questions, so this is a lengthy one–over 30 minutes long! Also, the audio is all over the place. I don’t know what I’m doing! But if you make it to the end though, there are some details for another giveaway I’m doing. If you’ve ever thought “wow, what does Sarah do with all of those perfume samples, or what happens if she ever buys an accidental second copy of a book, or does she have too many little pieces of art lying around and what becomes of it?” Well! I have not one BUT THREE boxes of such things, so I will be choosing three giveaway winners! Be sure to leave a comment on the video to be eligible to win.

P.S. I am doing a YouTube giveaway because I reached 10K Instagram followers. Yes! I know! That makes all the sense in the world is I bet what you’re thinking 😛

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Offerings, 2017

I’ll admit I was already intrigued by the fanciful enchantments of Susan Jamison’s work after seeing it shared by several friends on social medial over the last few years. My fascination with the artist bloomed wildly after peeking at her website’s bio, describing her lush, luminous imagery:

Susan Jamison’s feminine iconography spans several media, including painting, drawing, textile based sculpture, and installation, all steeped in ritualistic and mythological associations. She is best known for her intricate egg tempera paintings, which present a mystery cult of florid women who foray into the wild and commune with animal spirit guides or familiars.

But in the end, what endeared this artist and human to me was her warm, generous personality, her gentle humor. Her heartfelt and sometimes funny mentions of her mother on Facebook! Seriously, I’d love to spend an afternoon with both of these women. It was our connection that deepened my appreciation of her work, I think, and deepened my awareness of the beauty and power in her paintings, each time I gaze upon them, anew.

Susan was the very first artist to grant permission for me to include her artwork in The Art of the Occult! And as you can imagine, that binds both the artist and the selected work even more closely to my heart, resulting in an even more rare and special connection.

Naturally then, I am quite pleased that Susan agreed to an interview with me for Unquiet Things! This will kick off a series of interviews with a handful of the contemporary artists featured in The Art of the Occult, so you can look forward to more insight and commentary from these visionary creatives over the next few months. For now then, let’s chat about connections, creativity, and crystals with Susan Jamison.

Under the Rose, 2017
Love, Life, Light, 2019
Power Bear, 2014

What do you see as the creative mission of your work?

Connection, connection, connection! Ultimately, I hope viewers see themselves in my paintings and identify with a shared story. I want people to feel our sacred connection with animals and the natural world through my images. The animals create tangible entry points to my work, even for children. I’ve seen little ones walk up to my paintings, point and say “bear.” To me that’s enough, for them to indicate they relate to and delight in that animal. Adults might associate more complex stories or myths, both personal and cultural with that same bear adding another layer of meaning and association. A man was looking at my painting, “Power Bear” which is an image of a woman curled up in fetal position inside a goofy bear. He told me he saw the bear as himself and the woman was his feminine side hidden within. I love that interpretation. Perhaps folks will somehow be activated or at least made curious when viewing images of sacred geometry like in my painting “Under the Rose” that you included in your book The Art of the Occult. This painting depicts the flower of life along with roses and stones being artfully and intentionally arranged by a woman’s hand in a crystal grid. Sacred geometry reveals the reoccurring patterns in nature, in life, it is the geometry of connective energy.

Upon seeing my paintings of Divine Feminine figures I hope viewers can imagine, for example, being showered with love and rose petals. Maybe imagining this feeling can help us open up to these feminine energies within ourselves. People always want to hear my stories about my work but I also love hearing theirs. It’s all about honoring our connections.

She Came First, 2018

Can you recall some of your earliest memories of when you began to identify as an artist?

I was born knowing I am a visual artist. I draw, I paint, I make things. I learned the words for it later but I always knew. My mother still has a little book I made when I was in the first grade, “A Book About Me.” In it I drew myself painting on the page pre-labeled “How I grow” and I wrote about being an artist. I’ve often thought I came into the world knowing I’m an artist because this is such a challenging path to follow. I might not have pursued it if I wasn’t so sure I was supposed to. I know this is part of my sacred contract.

See Me, 2016
Note to Self, 2015

My first introduction to your work was with your Spiderweb series, with messages/directives revealed in the lacy webwork, such as “see me,” “touch me,” and “note to self”. Can you share what inspired these beautiful pieces with their stylistic missives? And as part of that, if you’ll indulge me, I’d love to hear more about your relationship to nature’s mythic little weaver.

The spiderweb paintings were inspired by my favorite childhood book Charlotte’s Web. I loved the manner in which the animals are anthropomorphized in order for us to relate to and spy into their world. Wilber the pig bonds with Charlotte the spider after being rejected by the other animals. She weaves messages into her webs that save Wilber from being sent to slaughter. Although Wilber is spared, Charlotte, having a short natural lifespan, does not escape death, but she leaves behind her egg sack showing us that the cycle of life continues. The spiderwebs are a veil between the world of the living and the afterlife although I’m sure I didn’t see this as a child.

My spiderweb paintings are imaginings of what the spider Charlotte might want to message to an adult Fern, or to you and me really. My favorite of this series repeats the pleading words “Believe in me, please believe in me,” in a bit of a twist, the title of that painting is “Note to Self.” I have long used lace as a motif in my work as an homage to needlecraft or “women’s work” so I continued that in this series.

Garden spiders, specifically the yellow and black orb weaver, Argiope aurantia also appear in many of my works. I see these spiders as symbolic of feminine creation as they weave their delicate lacy webs. My love of garden spiders goes back to my childhood when I would take nature walks with my mother. We would search for wildflowers, plants, animals, birds, insects, and crawling things, and identify them in nature guides. We would discuss the mythical significance or symbolism of their appearance in our path. I remember coming across huge orb webs soaked and heavy with morning dew. They looked so magical. Surely this must be a sign of something special. I learned from a young age to respect nature and associate the viewing of it with deeper sacred and allegorical meaning. The influence of those nature walks, the guidebooks, and nature illustration is quite evident in my paintings.

Sugar Me Bouquet
You’re My Everything, 2018

Your art appears deeply rooted in the sacred feminine, the divine mother/s. Can you trace back to a source for your fascination with imagery of the feminine divine?

As a child I spent an enormous time in nature. I was born in Connecticut on the night of a blackout on the northeast coast. My family moved to Indiana where I lived until age 11. My father purchased 40 acres of heavily wooded land in the southern part of Indiana where we would go and live without electricity or running water like crazy wilderness people over weekends and summers. The woods, banks of moss, streams, and a small lake were my playground. I grew up feeling very connected to nature. I understood myself as a part of it really.

Being Catholic, my mother would always make sure we went to church on Sunday and I felt uncomfortable and confined in an orderly church space. The newer church buildings where we attended mass in didn’t have any of the cool, often grotesque statues, paintings, or stained glass windows that older Catholic churches have. There was nothing I could relate to or look at so I would just go inside myself. My connection to source was in the in the forest among the trees, animals, and wildflowers. Here I found my entry into a spirituality rooted in female power. Even children know the Earth is a mother. My artwork has long had this subject at its foundation, over the years I’ve painted so many naked ladies alongside animals, pointing to our sacred union with Mother Nature, the Earth.

Scent of Serenity, 2017
I Will Always Love You, 2019
Fearless She Is, 2019

How do you experience the connection between spirituality and creativity?

My spiritual life and my creative life are intricately woven together. I’ll tell you a secret, my images come to me in visions. I see a very clear picture in my head and then I paint what I see in egg tempera, a kind of paint I make from egg yolk and dry pigment. I’ve had these clear visions for about 15 years. It seems like the visions are both from me and from outside of me at the same time even though that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Do they come from my higher self, a spirit guide, source, is all that the same thing? I have committed to just accept them as a gift and do the work. Someone with an academic background like mine feels uncomfortable discussing these things. People with fancy degrees like to feel like we are all scholarly and in control. I had to give that up. Very often I do not know what a painting is really telling me until it’s finished and I look at it or maybe even until time passes.

In 2017 I saw images of the crystal grids and the sacred geometry. This seemed odd at the time because I didn’t really know much about crystals but I did some research and I made the paintings anyway. While I was working on that series at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a residency center, I went into town with another artist and we stopped a a liquor store. The lady on duty looked at the necklace I was wearing, a silver hand on a chain and she said in a distinctly Southern but someone cryptic way “Honey, you need to go to Stones N’ Bones…STONES N’ BONES!” I told her I certainly would. When we got back I looked it up on the webs. It’s a rock and crystal shop. I had been painting the crystals from photos but the next day I went over and I bought some, maybe even a lot of…Stones N’ Bones, well the shiny stones anyway. A few days later the curator of a big corporate collection came to visit the residency center. I told her I was working on some weird crystal grid paintings and I started trying to explain them. She knew exactly what the grids were and later purchased two of them for a meditation room she was putting together for her workplace. None of this is earth shaking, it’s just a little string of odd synchronicities.

In 2018 I started actually hearing a message, “Depict the Divine Feminine. It’s time for her return.” Um, what? I had to do some searches online to see what this might mean. Who exactly was returning? As I mentioned, I was raised in the Catholic church and although this religious practice is not for me I looked for her there anyway. Of course, the Goddess is hidden for safe keeping as The mother Mary, as Mary Magdalene the partner and most beloved follower, and within the symbolism and structure of the rosary. The patriarchy can try to eradicate her but her people never let go of her even if she is diminished, hidden or has purposefully laid dormant. Ultimately we must have balance between masculine and feminine energies. Coming soon to a heart near you, it’s the Divine Feminine.

I had visions of two horses in 2019. The first was of a black horse running at night with red roses around its neck. I titled this painting “Fearless She Is.” This was closely followed by a white horse on a white background with a garland of pink roses running under a rainbow. This horse’s feet are tied with red strings that she is breaking loose from. The second painting is titled “I Will Always Love You” and it’s hanging above my couch helping me get through the pandemic. I think these paintings are about moving through this time of radical change and restructuring. Oddly enough, the white horse painting is the only piece of art my cat Sophie has ever really spent time looking at. She looks at it quite a lot. I wonder if she knows what a horse is?

Honestly, life is much weirder than I thought it would be.

We Are Beautiful
In Wolf’s Clothing

Do you have a particular process you use when entering into your work? What gets you in the mood to create? Any rituals or practices?

I have to clean first.

I have to be in a positive, peaceful mindset to work because I believe that my energy transfers to the physical object I am making. This can mean meditation, walks in the woods, diffusing essential oils, burning frankincense, or a combination of those things.

I always listen to music when I work. 

The physical process of making my paintings is for the most part, a very controlled ritual. I start by making what is called a cartoon, a full size drawing of the image on tracing paper, then I transfer the drawing to a pristine white panel. I make my own egg tempera paint. Cracking the egg and separating the yolk from the white always feels solemn as I’m handling the stuff that life can be made from. I use free range chicken eggs, not for the darker yolks as these are less desirable for my purpose, but for the greater chance of decent life for the chicken. I mix the yolk with water and a small amount of dry pigment to make the egg tempera. It seems like an almost alchemical process. The first layers of paint that I put down are fairly loose. I look at this stage of the painting and I’m pretty convinced that it’s complete crap and I have no idea what I’m doing. After that first layer cures for a day or so, I use mostly small brushes and tiny hatching strokes to refine the painting, layering and layering. The painting starts to match my vision and I become reassured that somehow I’ve remembered how to create an image. It’s like a mini miracle every time I make a new painting and realize I can do it again. The action of laying down all these tiny brushstrokes is very meditative so that in itself is part of the energy infusing ritual.

Avian Couture
Suture Me Bat
On Pins and Needles
Miss Carolina Lily, 2016

There is much in the way of visions of an enchanted world in your art, inspired in part, I believe by the fauna and flora native to your region in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’d love to hear more about some of your favorite local places and spaces in that vein, and how aspects of those spots find their way on to your canvas.

This is the place where most of the chapters of my hero’s journey have taken place so far. I first moved to southwest Virginia after finishing my MFA at Rhode Island School of Design. I had no plan other than staying with my parents at their lake house for a while to regroup. I felt really lonely and depressed. Late one night I heard a scratching noise at the screen door. In homage to all horror movies, I went to the door to see what it was. A gorgeous Luna Moth had come to visit me. This was the first one I had ever seen in person. It’s a symbol of renewal. The next morning I looked outside and saw a huge prehistoric bird on the dock. It was a Great Blue Heron, symbolic of self-reliance. It was time to get out of the basement and start my life up again. In fact my father did say something like get a job and move the hell out of here. So I did that.

In another chapter of my life here I was married and we owned a home on the side of the little mountain here in my city. The house was on three city lots. I had a huge garden, beehives, and all kinds of wild animals visited me there. At one point I said I felt like Snow White surrounded by all those animals. On other fronts I felt alienated and I was literally beaten down. Even after that chapter ended the joyful feeling of being in the company of my faithful animal friends remained and that started to fuel my artwork. It took me a very long time to feel at home in this region, a place where not many people come or go and locals stick with each other and are suspicious of outsiders. Aside from all that it was difficult to make a strategy to be a serious artist in a non-art center. Again, nature was my entry point to creating a feeling of belonging for myself. The Blue Ridge Mountains are among the oldest mountains in the world, estimated to be around one billion years old. The energy of these mountains is very grounding for me. It’s almost like they whisper to me “You are safe here. No matter what happens, we will guard you.” I believe them.

The Appalachian Trail, affectionally known at the AT runs very close to the city I live in. I often hike on sections of it. My very favorite spot to hike however is about an hour away. It’s a trail that leads to a waterfall simply called The Cascades. It runs just to the side of a river and I’ve been there in all seasons and all kinds of weather including rain and snow. This energy of this place feels intensely magical to me. If fairies and hobbits live anywhere, it is here. I think what transfers to my work about this place is less the specific images of it, and more the spirit of it. When I’m there, I feel giddy like a little child, or maybe even like the double rainbow guy (may he rest in rainbow power.)

The place I walk most frequently lately is a woodsy trail in my neighborhood close to my apartment. It’s not particularly long or strenuous, it’s just a close by place to touch a lot of trees or maybe sit on a big rock. I’ve been working on a commission for someone who wanted a large painting with a woman, a tree, and a white deer. It took me quite a while to receive a vision for this request. I was walking on this trail and I ventured off to check out a stream bed. I looked up and I saw an old tree that had a huge opening in the trunk that looked very much like a vulva. The vision for my painting was right there, the woman was stepping out of the vulva tree and laying her hands on the head of a white deer.

Of course no accounting of local places would be complete without mentioning the switchback trail that transverses our own Mill Mountain which I can see right out my back windows. This trail leads up to an 88.5 foot tall neon star near the top of the mountain. I have walked up this trail to the star countless times. There is an observation deck of sorts in front of the star with a photo identifying all the mountain peaks surrounding our valley which you can see from that spot. The other thing up on the mountain is our local zoo, home to three red wolves that are in a conservation program for critically endangered animals. I will probably never paint the star but I have painted the wolves.

Third Eye Crying Collar, 2014
Tea With Mother, 2013
Extra Sensory, 2013

I’m delighted to see that you create in other mediums as well!  Aside from painting and illustration, you have a series of 3D installations/mixed media pieces incorporating various textiles, bone china cups, leather gloves, etc. Among my favorites are “crying collar” and “tea with mother.” What can you share about these works?

… and I’m curious as to where, among the mediums that you work within, do you find your true heart?

I’ve always enjoyed making weird little things and I seem to have the dexterity to do it well enough. When I was a kid I would draw and paint, but I would also sew doll clothing, build dollhouse furniture, and make odd miniature dioramas. For me the playful making of weird things never stopped but I didn’t really think about these objects as artworks.

In 2012 while I was preparing for a solo exhibition of paintings, I received a rare studio visit from a Parisienne artist, Anne Ferrer, who noticed the three dimensional objects around my space. With her petite frame and playful French accent, Anne excitedly moved through my studio picking things up and declaring “This is a piece, this is a piece!” She affirmed for me that the object making I had been engaging in was valid and it had potential to develop into a rich and complex body of work than could complement my paintings. Her encouraging words made me realize that in my desire to build a cohesive body of work, I had put myself in a box labeled “painter” and had become too specific in my focus not allowing myself to fully reach my potential. Because of her encouragement I began making sculptural work and creating installation projects using crafting techniques such as sewing and embroidery. As in my paintings, women’s bodies, references to the body, and our connection to nature are prominent themes. This sculptural work feeds my painting practice in positive and unexpected ways and I have been able to exhibit this work alongside my paintings. I now consider myself to be a multidisciplinary artist, with my feminine iconography spanning work in painting, drawing, textile based sculpture, and installation, all steeped in ritualistic and mythological associations.

I have a couple paintings to finish but after that, I am going to get back to a sculptural project that I’ve been working on titled “The Mother.” There are some images of her in progress on my Instagram. She is a life scale figure made of wool felt. Her belly is hollow and lined in red velvet. There will be cords coming out of the opening with various plants and animals attached. This project strongly weaves the thematic threads of my two and three-dimensional work together. She is a Mother Earth figure birthing all kinds of life. I’m hoping “The Mother” will be finished in early 2021. I kind of need her here. Although I’m more known for my paintings, if you ask my true heart, it is called to make whatever my visions present, however I am able. I hope these things I make form connections between us and move us to love and connect with our Mother Earth.

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Hello friends! It is my little book goblin’s birthday! The Art of the Occult is officially summoned into our realm today, October 13th, 2020, published by Quarto Knows. I never dreamed I’d see a stack of my own books on my own sofa, so I thought I’d commemorate the occasion with a capture of it cozied up next to some of my favorite gremlins and gargoyles.

Speaking of wee goblins and gremlins: Megan Rosenbloom was sharing with us last night that her toddler is obsessed with flipping through the pages of The Art of the Occult, marveling at all the pretty pictures “in a grown-up book.” This gave my heart such a rare and beautiful thrill. Do you remember how old you were when you first became aware of magic and beauty? I reckon it was very young. You may have seen something so thrillingly gorgeous that it haunted your dreams and has guided every twist and turn in your life’s path ever since. I hope The Art of the Occult can serve as that initial portal, that gateway to mystery and inspiration and a lifelong curiosity, never quenched.

Many of you are awaiting copies and I truly hope you like it! Please tag me in your photos and reviews, and speaking of reviews, It would be great if you could leave a few words about the book on Amazon or Goodreads or both!

If you would like a signed copy of The Art of the Occult, please message me, and I’d be happy to work that out with you. Please keep in mind, though, I ship things out once a week, so you might have to wait a little bit longer for your copy then you would if you had ordered it through a major bookseller. Just an FYI!

I currently have a giveaway for a signed copy of The Art of the Occult, and today is the last day to enter! Check out the Haute Macabre blog for details.

In super-extra-exciting news, the beloved aroma artists at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab have created a series of scents celebrating and inspired by some of the esoteric works in The Art of the Occult, and you can learn more here!

Lastly, thank you for reading my writing here, my blog, where ever else you might have found me. Thank you for your support and encouragement over the years. And thank you for purchasing a copy of my little book of magic and art and wonder. It’s HERE!

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The above photo? That is concrete evidence that even if it takes you forever, you may eventually become better at something. I’ve been attempting to bake bread for decades and this is the year that I finally got it, if not “right”, well, it’s definitely not wrong, either. Don’t ever give up on your dreams! Especially if they involve pillowy loaves of delicious sandwich bread.

This loaf makes wonderful toast, and there’s no snack so enchanting as a thick-sliced, crunchy piece of homemade bread, toasted and slathered with butter. A drizzle of honey is nice too! Buttered toast calls to mind keeping warm and safe on blustery nights in cozy pajamas with milky tea and nursery rhymes and Mother Goose and it’s just…simple-gentle, magical nourishment for your inner child, as silly as that might sound.

When we were very young, our mother would prepare a supper of scrambled eggs and toast for my sisters and I when we were having a rotten day (or maybe she was having a bad day?) Even now, these many years later, the comforting fragrance of slightly carmelized and charred bread, the soothing hum of the heating filaments, and even the mechanical whir of the toaster gears springing up the now toasted bread is enough to lower my blood pressure and slow my breath when I’m feeling off-kilter and panicked. Buttered toast forever, please.

https://www.buzzbybakes.com/post/don-t-discard-the-discard…And for kindred spirit kitchen witches who are interested, this wonderful recipe is courtesy Buzzby Bakes.

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Late this past summer, I was directed by a friend* to a post in a folk horror Facebook group that featured some utterly delightful illustrations for Ukrainian Witch. Studies in Ukrainian demonology by Vasyl’ Myloradovych.

According to original poster, Maryna Moynihan, this classic 1901 text was beautifully illustrated by Ihor Vyshynski and published by children’s book publisher Veselka in 1993. Many thanks to Maryna for allowing me to repost these beautiful images here at Unquiet Things. If you’re interested in further details about the images, be sure to check out the original Facebook post, wherein Maryna provides some context and explanations.

*Shout out to Jennifer W.–not hateful 8th grade Jennifer W., but instead lovely Jennifer W. from the book of faces, and who I wish could go back in time and swap places with shitty-Jennifer, so that we could be friends!

Maryna also shared some imagery from The Flower Lady by Valeriy Shevchuk (1990) and illustrated by Olha Rubina. Of Shevchuk, she notes,
“[this] writer is very unique – I’ve called him a magic realist, but actually there’s a wholly original genre called “Ukrainian chimerical literature”, and it’s probably closer to French/Belgian “fantastique. ” She observes that, “this book of fairytales is different: Shevchuk has written it with his little daughters’ help. It turned out surprisingly creepy, but it also became quite ubiquitous in the 90s. I had a copy, my school library had a bunch of them, and probably most of my friends did, too.”

I heartily wish I had these amazing books on my shelf when I was a little girl, that’s for sure!

Maryna also mentioned that there is a stunning film based on his novel about a young witch/healer, Voices of Grass, and she is currently working on English subtitles for it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLWOLuZxj4

https://youtu.be/NpLWOLuZxj4
 

If you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?

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Autumn Tint of Gold, Cindy Wright, 2018

A gathering of death-related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From heart-rending to gut-splitting (sometimes you gotta laugh, you know?) from informative to insightful to sometimes just downright weird and creepy, here’s a snippet of recent items that have been reported on or journaled about with regard to death, dying, and matters of mortality.

This time last year: {September 2019} | {September 2018} | {September 2017}| {September 2016}

💀 Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

💀 “The World’s First Living Coffin

💀 Interview with Claudia Crobatia of A Course In Dying

💀 Death Rituals, Ceremonies & Traditions Around the World

💀 “I am held together by water and ritual and grief.

💀 Why people have sex in graveyards: The seductive powers of sacred places

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23 Sep
2020

I received my author copy of The Art of The Occult this week, and I’m so excited that this beautiful book (can I call my own book beautiful? I think I can, because it *is* a thing of beauty) will be making its way to the rest of the world in mid-October.

I’m so excited, in fact, that I may puke! Is this normal? Maybe, right? It’s a big piece of my heart and maybe a little morsel of my soul as well, bound up in these pages, and I hope that my passion for magic and mystery and beauty comes through in the words I’ve written, at least a little.

I’ve dedicated this book to the seekers, the dreamers, and the magic-makers, and I hope you all find inspiration, delight, and a breathless rekindling of curiosity each and every time you flip through these pages.

If I could have told little Sarah that she would have a published book on the shelf one day, she would probably murmur a spacey “yeah, I know,” and then disappear into whatever daydream world she was lost in.

As a child, I wrote little books and magazine articles all the time. I recall one provocative headline I wrote about how the earrings that Tina Turner wore in Mad Max made her head fall off!

As an adult, I am never not writing. It’s not always smart or beautiful or meaningful stuff, but I can’t imagine not taking moments every day to sort out on the page the things whirling around in my head. Did adult me ever know this might lead to a book on a shelf? I’m not sure. So I’ve got to thank little Sarah, that dreamy scribbling weirdo, for believing in me.

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