This article was originally published at Haute Macabre in March of 2017.
Each time I see fresh work from the hand of Nicomi Nix Turner, I feel I am plunged headlong into the lost and forgotten pages of an adventuring biologist’s or botanist’s journal, recovered from former expeditions into secret realms. Human and flora, fungi and bone, beetle and animal are examined in delicate, unflinching detail, and are at turns both lush and fiercely throbbing with life, and ripe and rank with death and decay.
Nicomi Nix Turner, Under The Pressures
In her body of work, what I’ve begun to think of as this imaginary diary, Turner captures a “…cacophony of silent movement and erratic soliloquies”, documenting the writhings and witherings of those that inhabit this realm, and which illustrates the sublime wonder and splendid terrors of such a place– and the irresistible desire, against all better judgement, to return, again and again.
Nicomi Nix Turner, The Slouching of GraceNicomi Nix Turner, The Hours of the Deluded
Sometimes, though, when I encounter Nicomi Nix Turner’s work I am struck by the unmistakable realization that what I am glimpsing is not an artist’s rendering of some mythological environment separate and apart from our own, but rather our world, exactly as it is, portrayed by an artist who observes and understands the underlying spirituality and divine connections that run through it all. Creation and destruction and renewal interpreted in exquisite strokes of graphite and charcoal, and elevating natural processes and biological phenomena to resemble a dreamy, otherworldly sort of magic…but which are in fact rooted in nature and occurring all around us, all of the time… and very much of the world we live in.
Nicomi Nix Turner, Heretics
Nicomi Nix Turner, How Hath Thou Fallen
Yipping, snarling hounds thrash and contort and snap at butterflies, serene of wing and seemingly suspended in midair. A wounded young man gazes raptly skyward, his expression both tortured and beatific, as tears trace a slow course down his waxen cheeks and blood droplets collect in the shadow of a collarbone. One thing I always come back to, when assessing my reactions to Turner’s various works, is that I’ve never before encountered an artist who encapsulates motion–and stillness– so richly, and so beautifully in their art.
Nicomi Nix Turner, The Division
Turner shared with Haute Macabre that a series of events in 2016 caused her to begin to explore themes of “depravity, isolation, division, defeat and betrayal” in her work, and is currently in the process of creating a new series incorporating these motifs for her upcoming show at Last Rites Gallery. She continues, referencing these subjects as it relates to her evolving artistic process and the recent rekindling of her passion for creating:
“Last year, I discovered something that reignited my excitement with creating – allowing spontaneity to take place in the works I so earnestly strove to attain purity in. An impulsive brushstroke of wax, erratic movements of charcoal, the possibility of damage- these unabashed moments of honesty are starting to evolve my process and works.”
Like many of my dear friends, I have been consoling myself with art lately, nearly drowning myself in it. Well, maybe just the opposite, really. Between the terror of our current administration and my own personal traumas and tragedies, art has been the life vessel that’s saved me from going under. I can always breathe easier and hope for better things when I look at something beautiful. It keeps me safe. And sane. Or at least the illusion of these things. And I’ll take that. Sometimes it’s the best we’ve got.
I don’t know precisely when it was that art became such a crucial part of my life; I’m certainly not an artist…although it does run in the family, somewhat. My grandmother on my father’s side was a concert violinist, my father is an artist, and one of my uncles is an architect. But all of that talent passed me by, I’m afraid. Except, perhaps, the enthusiasm for and appreciation of such things–I’ll confess to an overabundance of that! I wish, though, that I had at least gone to school for art history or criticism or theory or something like that, so that I could make intelligent appreciative comments and engage in discussions without looking like an idiot, but ah, well. Maybe in another life.
For right now, though, I’d love to share with you some of the illustrations and paintings and photography which has lately been relieving, reviving and rescuing me–and the incredible humans who have brought these visions to life. I am so grateful every day that there are dreamers and stargazers and worldmakers who create these marvelous things that make my existence just a tiny bit more bearable.
Tell me, what’s keeping you afloat right now, and propelling you forward?
This article was originally published at Haute Macabre in September of 2017.
One might experience a peculiar frisson of nostalgia while gazing at the wistful, winsome subjects of artist Amy Earle’s earlier works. Reminiscent of the illustrated plates in a mysterious storybook, dusty and hidden far back in grandmother’s closet and tucked the soft folds of a moth-eaten antique quilt; a discovery stumbled upon one rainy afternoon while the adults were occupied and a naughty grand-daughter was perhaps hiding from nap time. Little fingers gently pluck open the frayed cover and begin to flip through the fragile pages, brittle with age.
A wisp of a line begins a whimsical tale and soon the forgotten moppet is captivated by sketches of charming, doll-like subjects in seemingly innocent, frolicsome scenarios. Yet, in more closely studying the subtle nuances of their trembling expressions, the shadowy textures, and dreary shades of their environs, the small child may sense an atmosphere of foreboding and palpable sadness–and with a puzzled brow, softly let the book slip shut, and tuck it away. It will later haunt their dreams well into adulthood.
This is my story, and I still have that picture book these many years later. When I became aware of Amy Earle’s work in 2008 or so, I was struck by an immediate, adoring fascination, tinged with a quiet devastation–and, in later examining these observations, I made the connection to my beloved childhood book of strange origins, and wondered at this reaction of both giddy enchantment and vague unease as it related to the delicate young girls in her work.
Existing in the perpetual other world of autumn daydream, skirting the periphery of childhood, the young girls’ amusements are both “playful and sinister” and, I believe, presciently belie a murkier narrative hinting at life’s crueler nature (as some of the best childhood games are wont to do!) As a viewer, when I realized this, it became clear to me: my conclusion, for what it’s worth, is that the lurking menace is the looming threat of adulthood and all its dreadful trappings.
It is with this realization that I breathe a small sigh of relief in viewing Earles’ more recent work. The shadowy, mostly monochromatic palette is ever present, but the subjects themselves seem different to me. They are still slight, delicate creatures, but they’ve matured, bodily, from young girls to young women, and the atmosphere is charged with a different sort of tension now.
They carry broomsticks and wands, keys, mirrors, and satchels; they emit lightning from their fingertips, and divine with blindfolds, scissors, and string. I like to imagine their childhood games have prepared them, and now they’ve fortified and protected themselves with magics, charms, and totems. Forewarned is forearmed, and these are empowered young women with agency, autonomy, and an awareness that they are in control of their own fates.
We caught up with Amy recently, and regarding the evolution of her work, she has noted, “…my work is evolving in the sense that the shapes are not as constricted, the concepts are not as obscured. I’m finding it easier to express what I want to express. I’ve made a lot of monochromatic gouache paintings on paper which perfectly encapsulated my state of mind in recent years and I’m still interested in making those because they are still relevant. But I’m also interested in building structures, painting in color with oils. I’m finding shapes and textures in other mediums more enticing lately.”
“People should grow. My personal life has evolved in the past couple of years; my artwork had to follow.”
This expert daydreamer also shares that her current reveries are centered mostly on the vague land she has built for an upcoming show at Stranger Factory in early November. These realms are occupied by “sentient plants, people (how they change with time and their fragility) and inanimate objects that become inhabited by concepts/spirits.”
Earles remarks that most of her inspirations and influences are connected to older things; antique objects and various histories, stacks of vintage magazines. In addition she reveals that she is always enamored “by language (archaic words in particular); certain words or phrases can inspire whole universes. I’m inspired by hair, unusual toys and dolls, old photographs, historical documentaries, vintage celestial imagery, dreams and the unexplainable psychic phenomena that I have encountered all of my life.”
Amy Earles’ works are featured several upcoming shows in 2017: Winter Flock at The Convent Philly which opens February 10th; Moments in Monochrome at Nucleus Portland opening March 25th; and the previously mentioned show at Stranger Factory opening on November 3rd.
Who is Alastair”, mused J. Lewis May in 1936. “No one knows; not even – it is hinted – Alastair himself.”
An artist, composer, dancer, mime, poet, singer and translator, Alastair was a fascinating and elusive personality, and perhaps best known as a gifted illustrator of the fin-de-siecle period.
Bad Counsel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Officially born of German nobility in 1887 to the family of Von Voigt, and later mysteriously acquiring the title of Baron, Hans Henning Voigt was an enigma. He claimed to be a changeling…the spawn of an illegitimate union between a hot headed Bavarian prince and a pretty Irish lass (and many of his relations later accepted this explanation of his origins). To his delight, “he was referred to as German by English writers, as English by German writers, and as Hungarian by French writers.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A collector of characters, Alastair had a great gift for friendship despite his bizarre and capricious persona, theatrical behaviors, and perpetual unhappiness. Among those in his inner circle were Harry and Caresse Crosby; Harry, having heard of Alastair, believed him to be “the embodiment of all his fantasies, a creator of the most outrageous fancies”, and hastened to meet with him. Many years later Caresse recalled of the first visit, “He lived in a sort of Fall of usher House, you know, with bleak, hideous trees drooping around the doors and the windows…” They were ushered into a room where there was a black piano with a single candle lit, and “…soon Alastair himself appeared in the doorway in a white satin suit; he bowed, did a flying split and slid across the polished floor to stop at my feet, where he looked up and said, ‘Ah, Mrs. Crosby!’”
Campaspe from the Blind Bow-Boy
Although clearly influenced by the sinister, serpentine style of Aubrey Beardsley, with echoes of the deliciously unhinged work of Harry Clarke, and a bit of the occult grotesquery of Austin Osman Spare’s art – Alastair’s perversely decadent illustrations are wholly, unmistakably, his own. His strangely attractive beings, with alternately tortured, anguished or menacing countenances, ornately and elegantly attired, skulked and cavorted amongst all manner of plays, novels and short stories. Oscar Wilde’s Salome, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1928 edition), and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Chloderlos de Laclos are just a few examples of works that contained examples of Alastair’s menagerie of fever dream fantasies.
Alastair retired in relative obscurity, and there were few to mourn his death in Munich in 1969. A dazzling, melancholy character of his own creation, he was a man of rare and unique tastes, and perhaps a mystery right to the end; but mostly, one would surmise – a man, who, “was as he was because he could not be otherwise.”
The Artist At Home
Herodias
Night, pencil drawing, The City of Night
Usher and Madeline, pencil illustration, The Fall of the House of Usher
This article was originally posted at Haute Macabre on January 31, 2017.
Whilst traversing the dense, darkened thickets of Tin Can Forest‘s midnight woodlands, one may become disoriented by the bizarre, bestial, visions they encounter: shadowy, hircine cabals solemnly roaming about in ornate, traditional dress; nocturnal gatherings wherein witches, demons, and villagers skulk and cavort with all manner of talking beasts; families taking tea with raccoons and suffering the philosophical ramblings of an oddly articulate house cat.
The vivid imagery of these tangled tales and illustrated texts tugs at the memory, recalling vague, dreamy bedtime stories read to a younger you, still too green to understand the metaphors and allegories, yet on the verge of glimmering a deeper truth– for these darker narratives trigger memories more ancestral and arcane, reviving fears and beliefs borne in the blood, not learned during a child’s storytime.
In Tin Can Forest’s We Are Going To Be Musicians In Bremen, a cock-sure rooster declares, “I am prepared to accept that what you are telling me is true,” and by the time one is thoroughly ensconced in the shifting, ectoplasmic threads of these stories, one has learned that there is no other choice but to make that acceptance as well. These are truths– fantastical, terrifying–that we have forgotten, but which have always lurked in the corners of our subconscious, awaiting a revelatory awakening once more. Tin Can Forest’s lovingly crafted illuminated manuscripts are a stunning (though, on many levels, utterly mystifying) vehicle for these fluid truths and lost mythologies.
Tackling “ancient narratives from the perspective of the shadows,” Tin Can Forest is the collaborative duo comprised of Pat Shewchuk and Marek Colek, Canadian artists based in Toronto Ontario who create sequential art, film and books.
Illustrated with moody, fog-saturated colors in Tin Can Forest’s distinctive style, and drawing inspiration from the forests of Canada, Slavic art, and occult folklore, each of their offerings is presented in a beautifully lush, full-color beautiful comics format, every page interwoven with secretive symbolism, esoteric emblems, and magical motifs.
Like poetry, or half-remembered dreams, or writing poems about half-remembered dreams while under the influence of something strong and strange, these fables meander and twist, a miscellany of deep folklore and nonsensical cautionary tales, and populated by an nightmarish menagerie of creatures, spirits, and familiars.
Amongst Tin Can Forest’s offerings you will find a number of surreal and enigmatic tales :
Cabbage in A Nutshell, “…the first installment of an anthropological mystery set in a bygone future as told from the vantage point of an occulttastically informed super-future.”
Wax Cross which debuted at the 2012 Toronto Comic Arts Festival, is “an alchemical folk-tale set in the twilight of the modern age, when the moon has devoured the sun, the mechanical ocean has evaporated into silence, and the decaying corpse of electric current sleeps eternally in a casket of orange lichen.”
We Are Going To Bremen To Be Musicians, a collaboration with accordionist and novelist Geoff Berner, is of a” dark, strange German folk tale about four animals running away from their masters to become town musicians in the city of Bremen.”
Baba Yaga and the Wolf is, in true representation of oral tradition, a story told to a young woman by her great mother, who “…lived in a time when the wilderness was everywhere, vampires roamed the treetops, and devils traded opium and vodka for human souls by the roadside.” Baba Yaga and the Wolf tells the story of Katerina and the journey she takes to the edge of the Underworld and its gatekeeper, Baba Yaga, in order to save her husband Ivan from a terrible fate.
What Is A Witch, written in collaboration with Pam Grossman, is parts storybook, grimoire, and comic book, and is “an illuminated incantation, a crystalline invocation, a lovingly-crafted celebration of the world’s most magical icon.” The book’s lyrical language of night-song and half-rhymes, when given voice (and it absolutely must be read aloud), becomes a wild, witty, wondrous invocation, threaded throughout with fanciful visions, whimsical allegory, and magical truths.
I first became aware of Sara Deck’s artwork via her arresting and unsettling cover art imagery for Rue Morgue magazine’s Shirley Jackson tribute, and since then, I’ll admit, I haven’t been able to get her out of my head (please pardon the pun).
The more I pore through her work, heavily featuring iconic dark genre sirens and scream queens galore, the more I am cursing my lack of wall space and frantically scrabbling through my grimoires in an attempt to conjure forth extra rooms through the use of black arts. Are her depictions of your favorite spooky ladies worth selling your soul for, in order to have their haunting visages hanging in that shadowed parlour corner that appeared in a mysterious puff of smoke two minutes ago? I’d wager for fans of powerfully female-centric horror-related art, the answer is an unequivocal “OMG WHAT YES”.
Sara Deck is a visual artist residing in Ontario, Canada and who describes herself as a “Landscape aficionado, portraitist, Illustrator, dollmaker and painter of meats*” She also sculpts the most peculiar little dolls, which she notes in her bio on her site, “may or may not come to life at night while you are asleep.”
Delving into the arts was natural for Deck, as her father was a painter, and often would bring her along when he would do watercolor studies for later paintings. As a teen, she began working in acrylic and painting everything that she could get her hands on; when she ran out of canvas, she notes, her backpack, jean jacket and bicycle did not escape her brush! She also shares that she was very solitary and “into finding secluded places to read, sketch and paint,” and that it was around this time that her artistic passions became firmly rooted into her personality. Her art education continued at Sheridan College, where she majored in Editorial Illustration.
Sara Deck has always found dark imagery, literature and films extremely inspiring, and has a huge collection of horror films ranging from some the first ever made to many current creepy movies and television shows. “I think that the horror genre offers so much room for creativity,” Deck suggests, “I mean it’s not just ghosts and slasher films. Pretty much anything goes, from evil fairies to the cold stark abyss of space. It’s really a wide open platform of expression with only your imagination as its limit.”
It is within this expansive, imaginative genre where powerful female characters truly resonated with her. A huge fan of all of the ladies featured in classic horror films, Deck shares that she loves the glamour of the time mixed with the heart wrenching horror of their stories. A few of her all-time favorites? “…Val Lewton’s pictures,” Deck enthuses. “If you have not seen his work, and are interested in checking out some stellar leading ladies, I would highly recommend Cat People with Simone Simon and I Walked With a Zombie, featuring Francis Dee. I loved Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls–her character’s vacant, numb demeanor while trying to re-assimilate into society after having survived a horrifying car crash that killed all of her friends–I won’t spoil the ending on that one! Also, The Legend of Hell House, with Pamela Franklin staring as the physical medium battling the dominant evil spirit of the Belasco House. This film has a scene where during a seance she manifests ectoplasm out of her fingers, much like you would see in a vintage Victorian spiritualist photo. There is also a particularly hilarious scene with a possessed cat (badly stuffed I’m afraid) that will make you laugh.”
Deck adds, as an afterthought, “I am also a big nerd for some of the more modern ladies in the genre. In the last few years I’ve been in love with Penny Dreadful‘s Vanessa Ives. I have forced so many friends to watch that show with me!”
Also a sculptor who draws sinister inspiration from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe to Spike and Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deck notes that she loves making dolls and coming up with new characters to create. Though, she reflects, “I think I am more of a painter at heart. I’m always doing sketches and filling books with ideas for new pieces.”
*With regard to painting, and hearkening back to the bit in her bio where Deck mentions she is a “painter of meats”–if you were curious about that, and whether that is “meat” in the sense of humans, in their fleshly meat-suits? Or maybe still lifes with t-bones and lamb chops and fat-marbled filets? According to Deck, the answer “Both actually! I once did a whole series of still life paintings featuring raw bloody meat. I have since focused on painting people, which is another form of painting meat – so, it’s a bit of a cheeky bio description!”
And, OK, let’s say that your mystical wall-space petition to the dark ones didn’t quite pan out, but you are still longing for a piece of Sara Deck’s fantastical, haunting art. What to do? She must be part witch or part seer herself, and foresaw this dilemma, for she has created tiny, wearable pieces in the form of beautifully macabre lapel pins for which to adorn yourself! Surely you can make space for a Nevermore or Mystifying Oracle pin on your jacket? Miniature art magics! Problem solved.
This article originally appeared in Haute Macabre on December 6, 2016.
To trace with the eye the sumptuous swells and ornate, swirling shadows of Jas Helena’s art is to be drawn into an evocative world of potent feminine mysticism. Appearing both demonic and divine (or, perhaps neither) against inky Byzantine backdrops, these saints and sirens, shamans and sorceresses beckon and beguile from the canvas; a tilt of an eyebrow or lift of a lip hinting at knowledge and portents beyond your mortal understanding…or maybe just admonishing one, with an intense and commanding glare, to STFU with their mansplaining nonsense. You don’t know what these women are thinking, and perhaps that is precisely the point.
“I love the concept of a strong, powerful, mysterious woman as a constant focal point in my work,” the artist shares, while also noting visually over-the-top baroque art and dark Goya-esque works as inspirations: “..finding a happy medium…that can both be feminine and soft, yet have a subtle, darker aesthetic is pretty much what I seek to do, and without a doubt Goya and artist of the Baroque-era figured out how to do that so flawlessly.”
Fascinated by the arts at a young age, Jas Helena obsessed over drawings and illustrations by the Old Masters without fully understanding what drew her to them, but, inspired by the excitement that these classic works sparked in her, she instinctively attempted to recreate what it was that so captured her fancy. Encouraged by positive feedback from friends and teachers, she practiced her art and nurtured her abilities through school and community college. In continually learning and honing her craft, it eventually coalesced into the haunting, highly ornamental style for which she is recognized today-a style that she feels finally reflects who she is and what she wants to put out into the world.
With a portfolio that also boasts work created for such occult rock and doom-laden metal acts as Funerary, Deaf Heaven, and Ides of Gemini, one gets the sense that Jas Helena has evolved into an artist who has glimpsed beyond the veil and become a conduit for the arcane visions and revelatory dreams she has witnessed. Her penchant for the dark and obscure and all its symbolism, she asserts, makes her art and this unearthly music a perfect match.
Regarding both the powerful priestesses she painstakingly composes on the page, as well as those who may be inspired as her work: in Sabat Magazine’s Spring/Summer 2016 Maiden issue, Jas Helena observes an increased interest in occult aesthetics in young women today, and that through Instagram and other social media, the aesthetic becomes more accessible. “I see a community of bold women growing from it,” she concludes, mentioning artists Annie Stegg and Nona Limmen in this spirit, “that becomes even more important in the art world where this dark aesthetic is still an uneven playing field, dominated by men.”
The Creeping Museum is the nonprofit creative vision and labor of love conceived between two friends and a grilled cheese sandwich in a North Portland laundromat in the spring of 2016. Their remarkable mission? To help artists and independent creators give back to their communities by turning their strange and unusual work into tiny pieces of affordable art in the form of collectible enamel pins– for which to support wonderfully worthy causes.
The Creeping Museum continues their mission of making the world a better place through kind hearts and spooky arts with the release of their most ambitious and highly anticipated collection to date: Beautiful Monsters. Inspired by the night creatures of Penny Dreadful, in support of the marginalized and forgotten, Beautiful Monsters is now available. Read more at Haute Macabre today.
Bonus! I was honored to have made a small contribution to The Creeping Museum’s Eviscerate The Patriarchy auction (proceeds to benefit the Joyful Heart Foundation); believe it or not, I actually knit these mitts up in about 6-7 hours!
Photo credit: B. Brandt / Styling: Maika Keuben
Bonus! Should you like to wish to swan about in a spookily elegant ensemble inspired by The Creeping Museum, Beautiful Monsters, and Penny Dreadful, see below. As always, click on the image to see a listing of items used.
Like many of my dear friends, I have been consoling myself with art lately, nearly drowning myself in it. Well, maybe just the opposite, really. Between the terror of our current administration and my own personal traumas and tragedies, art has been the life vessel that’s saved me from going under. I can always breathe easier and hope for better things when I look at something beautiful. It keeps me safe. And sane. Or at least the illusion of these things. And I’ll take that. Sometimes it’s the best we’ve got.
Currently all a-swoon over this 
The Creeping Museum continues their mission of making the world a better place through kind hearts and spooky arts with the release of their most ambitious and highly anticipated collection to date: Beautiful Monsters. Inspired by the night creatures of Penny Dreadful, in support of the marginalized and forgotten, Beautiful Monsters is now available.
