A gathering of death related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have been reported on or journaled about in or related to the Death Industry recently.
Our neighbors originally hail from the Narnia province, deep in the glowing heart of Rivendell. They retired to FL in their twilight years but they still dream of the old country.
But lest you think it’s all glimmering midnight fairyland and unicorn disco folktales round these parts, allow me to present the other end of the street, where the rapidly shifting terroir gives rise to a distinctly divergent environs.
{cue up Monster Truck Housewives Of Unincorporated nameless Florida town}
At Haute Macabre today we give a glimpse beyond the veil and share a few secrets regarding the hauntingly beautiful fragrances from Seance Perfumes–as well as the collection’s creator, Lacey Walker.
A few mini reviews as well! Did I finally find a rose to love, and which will love me back? Am I late to the love of creamy white florals? Read more to find out, and avail yourself of a discount code to pick up a few of these otherworldly scents for yourself!
Sunday breakfast: Rye sourdough, lightly toasted, dotted with butter, drizzled with honey. I used the rye sourdough starter recipe from Ravenous zine that I posted earlier this week. It has been a long time since I have made fresh bread, and I never had a magic touch with the stuff to begin with…and this time was no different. It didn’t rise very well, and so it’s rather a dense brick doorstop of a loaf. But allow me to offer this: warm, freshly baked bread is a wonder, no matter how perfect (or not) it may be. And I’m enjoying the fruits of my labor, anyhow.
Last weekend, my friend Flannery Grace Good was talking about the idea of a fool’s errand, doing the thing you pretty much know you’re going to fail at. And bread baking has never and probably will never give me passing marks. But you know what? I immensely enjoy the process, the ritual gathering of ingredients, the tactile magics of the sticky dough in your hands, becoming a smooth, elastic orb, the alchemical creation of the crust as it bakes in a steamy oven— all of these things are a special part of the experience to me. So what if I’ve got a doorstop when I’m done? Bread’s a lovely thing even when it’s kind of a dud and I’m pretty sure I’ve never encountered a loaf that didn’t sing with a little bit of toasting, and some creamy, salted butter. Anyway, that’s what I think. *nods sagely, munches loudly*
The above starter is pictured with a pitcher of purple drank that I whipped up last week, and it was pretty good! Iced butterfly pea flower and hibiscus tea, with a swirl of lemon and agave nectar.
Also, you may notice there is a book next to my breakfast plate. Later in life it has come to my attention that some folks frown at reading at the table while you are reading. I cannot imagine this. One of my favorite things to do is to lunch with a book! Or breakfast or supper with a book, too. A book is, in my humble opinion, the perfect date. I can’t imagine anyone thinking otherwise. What about you?
During a conversation with my baby sister sometime this past week, I confessed that when this business with my late grandparents’ estate is over, my grand plan was to fake my own death and run away forever. I was only half kidding.
I want to be done with these responsibilities. With obligations. With meetings and phone calls and relaying information back and forth and second-guessing my every decision and feeling like a failure because I’m not doing it right, not doing it timely enough, not doing it the way someone else might have done it. I want to walk away and never look back and never ever have to think about this again. Faking my own death and running away to be a hermit in the mountains, without another human being (or a telephone) for hundreds of miles around, sounds super appealing to me right now. I want to disappear so that they’ll never find me. And maybe then I will finally have a chance to properly mourn.
Rosie Anne Prosser, A sunless world
It was with a head heavy and churning with these sorts of thoughts that I discovered the photography of Rosie Anne Prosser via her flickr account late last night. A photographer and storyteller who describes herself as a “Mountain Goat raised in The Black Mountains”, her melancholic landscapes of lonely cliffs, secluded thickets, and remote paths, the focal point a lone figure, cloaked in mists and shadows with her back to both the camera and the viewer, enigmatically, introspectively, and perhaps even a bit defiantly gazing off to somewhere else, entirely…
Well, I’m having difficulty articulating how it made me feel. It was just one of those serendipitous moments when you find something you needed to see, just when you needed to see it. Each and every image tugged at my heart and seemed to echo back to me everything that I am feeling right now, and my soul whispered to me in a language tinged with both misery and hope, “I want to go to there.” I don’t know that I can say more than that.
For now, though, you can tell them I was last seen climbing into these photos. I will immerse myself in solitude, silence, and still, sunless days. Please don’t try to find me.
My How To Wear sets are mostly wishlist type yearnings–often people say to me, “wow, everything is so expensive! I wish you’d do a budget friendly one!” Well, tough titties, folks. I don’t spend my time wishing away for budget friendly items! Make your own thrift store friendly lists or whatever–that’s not my thing. I like dreaming about posh, luxury items!
HOWEVER, I have included one set (above) that is full of things* I already own, or wear, or are very similar to things I own, or wear. And since I can’t afford those 5K frocks, this is the one concession I will make. So there!
*though all of the things in the above image are listed over at Haute Macabre today, I will tell you the moth necklace from Flannery Grace Good, the bag from Baba Studio, and the scarf from scarf shop are my very favorites!
A playlist for sleepwalking into the midnight wood, a forest dream in the dark forever.
Track List: Silhouettes by Lucy Claire | YouTube | In The Dark Woods by Shadow | Fluttering by Zinovia Arvanitidi | Some Limited And Waning Memory by christina vantzou | The Creek by Rhian Sheehan | Black Salt by Alder & Ash | Never return home by Strië | Stems by Poppy Ackroyd Depth of a Glance by Aaron Martin | Breathe by Erik K Skodvin and Rauelsson | My Friend the Forest by Nils Frahm | Dawn by Fabrizio Paterlini | home by nights by hecq
Have you ever looked at something I’ve rambled on about here on the blog, and thought, “dang, I need a Japanese ear rake to scrape out my glunky ears, too!” Or, “man oh man, I want to give that gnarly foot peel a try!” Or “boy howdy, I want to read that book/watch that movie/hear that album/wear that stinky perfume, too!”
Well, thanks to me frittering away the better part of an afternoon making a little Amazon shop, you can find all of these delightful things collected for you in one place!
Pictured up top:
Interstellar, a gorgeous, galactic shimmery shade from INLP
I only learned about the Pirelli Calendar just this year, so I hesitate to refer to it as something along the lines of “a hoary old institution” ….but when researching a small feature for Haute Macabre this week about their current 2018 all-star, all-black cast, I saw several decades worth of white faces and white bodies gracing the publication over previous years. I then realize that the last time the calendar had an all-black ensemble was in 1987. That’s 30+ years ago. Yikes.
Photographer Tim Walker and stylist Edward Enninful (British Vogue’s first black editor in chief) envisioned for 2018 a new and different take on Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, Through The Looking Glass, and they have given it a vibrant, powerful new treatment entirely populated by beautiful black models, musicians, and activists who cavort and contort through the story’s madcap, marvelous world.
(This interview was originally published on Dirge in 2015. The site is no longer active or updating.)
Think back upon your last nightmare. Not those maddening dreams where your mother is still alive and making you crazy or the ones where your bank account is inexplicably in the single digits and you are three months behind in rental payments. No, the real nightmares. The harrowing nocturnal visions that wrench you awake with a gasp and a shudder, render you terror-stricken, with your heart pounding, and desperately praying that the creature you’ve just encountered whilst slumbering is not, in fact, in the very room with you.
You lie under the blankets, paralyzed. Powerless and sleepless, nerves jangled and at the edge of your skin, until the sky lightens with morning, the room’s dim shadows scatter, and you finally see that you are alone. Or, at least – you are alone now.
EC Steiner is an Atlanta-based sculptor, designer, and sometime storyteller who crafts dark and dangerous visions inspired by “the sensuous, the grotesque, and things as foul as they are fair.” He conjures forth those phantom filaments from the darker pathways of our disturbed slumbers and coaxes them to life in the form of horror and dark-fantasy inspired artwork.
In a recent interview, I spoke with Steiner about his love of the dark and of nights, and how this fascination inspires and informs the nightmarish hordes of strange and evocative grotesqueries that he creates and unleashes his audience.
Perhaps you should leave a light on tonight.
When I first became aware of your work, you were using the King Unicorn moniker. Why the shift, and can you tell us about the significance of the Casket Glass name you are now using for your endeavors?
EC Steiner: Like many artists, I have a day job to support my art and reduce some of the uncertainties that come along with working in a creative field. Unlike many artists, I was working on projects for a group of state and government agencies. I chose what I believed to be a fairly ridiculous pseudonym in order to save my employer from having to explain why “some gorehound” was the acting team lead. And that ruse held up for a long while.
King Unicorn reflects a past life of taking on commissions, work-for-hire assignments, and the highly competitive opportunities created by the projects of others. Every year, there are thousands of artists graduating into creative fields ready to chase and grab up the opportunities others provide. Casket Glass reflects my desire to move away from that realm – to create my own opportunities and focus almost entirely on my own projects. In this way, the work is wholly mine and fully expresses what I want to leave behind in the world. Casket Glass is not a new identity as much as a reminder of what inspires and motivates me.
You describe yourself as an “Alchemical Artist, Errant Decadent & Purveyor of Lygophilous Dreams.” It would seem that, to quote Rainer Maria Rilke, you “have faith in nights” – or at least in nightmares. Tell us about this fascination with the dark, this faith in nights, if you will – where it stems from, what drives it, how it translates into the work that you do.
I have a love of mystery and the unknown, and there’s an undeniable excitement that comes from wandering into the shadows outside the reach of the firelight. I keep ranging further into the darkness–into the nightmares–because I want to find the point where my sense of wonder becomes a sense of terror and to learn how can I draw on that knowledge to elevate what I’m trying to create.
To quote Devendra Varma, “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.” If through a visual medium, I’m presenting the corpse, then I also need to find some way to invoke some presence of “the smell of death” that will linger and follow my audience home. Evoking that experience is something I will spend the rest of my life working to achieve.
What is your earliest “Lygophilous Dream”, realized, so to speak? And how has your work evolved since that time?
One day, I posted an image of a clay bust: a skull-headed, equestrian beast-man, dressed in cloak and mail, with a twisted length of cancerous growths spiraling out of the top of the head. It was entitled “King Unicorn Self-Portrait Bust,” which was a humorous play on the fact that no one knew who I was when I first started slipping artwork out of my studio; I kept my identity offline and signed off on posts and communications with simply “~KU.” It was dark and grotesque, and the response it received set the stage for everything else that followed.
The core evolution in my work is related to developing confidence with materials and with processes. For me, it just took putting in the time and giving myself the time to collect the experiences that evolved the work.
Being primarily a self-taught sculptor, so much of my growth was inspired and supported by the creative community. I owe a great deal to those artists who were willing to take time away from their own work to offer suggestions, share techniques, and encourage pushing everything as far as I could take it.
Though your illustrative work is fiendishly well-honed, it’s clear that your first love is sculpting – can you tell us about your background in the medium, and how this love came to be?
I was first exposed to sculpting when I was very young as part of a wonderful arts program offered by the public school system where I lived. As I grew older and was moved around, those opportunities didn’t appear as often, and I ended up taking art classes that kept repeating the same entry-level techniques. That continued into higher education, where formal art instruction and I parted ways.
It wasn’t until around 2000, when I picked up an old issue of Amazing Figure Modeler Magazine (#18, with the beautiful “Alien Pile” sculpture by Takayuki Takeya on the cover) that I was truly inspired to do more with sculpting than just create costumes and Halloween props. I ordered a five-pound block of oil-based clay and went to work. From that moment, I never stopped trying new techniques, experimenting with new materials, and being open to failing in new and spectacular ways to gain experience.
There has to be something compelling about an opportunity for me to want to take time away from my own work to contribute to its outcome. Most of these projects were helmed by friends and designed to launch new personal endeavors. My contributions were a way to do more than just act as a cheerleader for their ideas; I was able to lend my time and my creativity to help them find a sense of success and momentum early on.
For gallery events, I want what I present to contribute to the narrative of the exhibition, not work against it. All of my gallery pieces were developed specifically to match the themes of each event. I recognize that sculpture is, at times, underrepresented in galleries, so I appreciate having the opportunity to lend an extra dimension to the narrative the curators are after.
Due to ongoing commitments and a backlog of projects, I discontinued contributing to gallery exhibitions for 2015, but samples of my work are available on my website, and I regularly post under the Casket Glass name on Twitter and Instagram, which funnels my work to Facebook and Tumblrfor those who prefer those networks.
What can you share with us regarding your work space where these dark dreams incubate and are brought to life? What rituals do you use to put yourself in the mood to work?
I live in a kind of hermitage near the mountains. While I’m far from the more enticing elements of Atlanta, the distance from distractions affords me more time to work and a space that’s conducive to my needs. I’m able to keep a designated indoor studio and a separate manufacturing workshop for louder, messier activities.
Because my day is divided between two very different worlds, I need to take the time to peel off the skin I wear during the day to prepare for the evening’s work. When I don’t take that time, it creates a channel through which the frustrations and conflicts from my work day can creep into my sacred space. I use a sort of meditative practice involving music and transmutative visualization, so my daylight toils can’t cross over and poison the joy the evening brings.
I don’t like to look at other artists’ work after I’ve begun a project. I will gather up my references and complete some preliminary sketches before the focused activity begins, but I prefer to avoid outside influences once I’m under way. I don’t want to recreate the thing that inspires me by going back to it repeatedly. I let the inspiration act as a catalyst, then step away from it. I would rather the work I attach my name to have my own voice and not feel borrowed from something or someone else.
Nearly all of my spare time is devoted to being in the studio. It’s the drawback of dividing the hours available each day between the thing I love and the thing that supports it. Fortunately, I’m not forced to pass the time in a silent cell. I use my nightly and weekend sessions to explore the films and music that both help develop my projects and keep me entertained.
In that vein, is there anything you can share regarding future projects and collaborations?
On the sculpting table, I’m currently finishing a trio of busts to release in an extremely limited, one-off format and then will begin a new line of occult-themed models for collectors and painters. I’m also working on the last design for my “Carthage” series of three acrylic and graphite paintings. That series will be available individually and as a single triptych print. And because no hour should be left unspent, I’m in the midst of writing and planning the illustrations for a novella to offer those who enjoy more than a few words with their art.
