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.
But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
Track list:
Hungry Face by Mogwai | If I Had a Heart by Fever Ray | So Close (feat. Arnór Dan) by Ólafur Arnald | Peeling Off The Layers by Wildbirds & Peacedrums | Far From Any Road by The Handsome Family | St. James Infirmary by Mark Lanegan & Greg Dulli) | Into The Black by Chromatics | Civilian by Wye Oak | Burn It Down by Daughter | Fuel to Fire by Agnes Obel | Serpents by Sharon Van Etten | No Rest For The Wicked by Lykke Li | Born To Die by Lana Del Rey
Interested in learning more about the artist and her dark, haunted inspirations? I had the privilege of interviewing Sara last year–peek here for some spooky insights!
I’ll sum up November quickly: I fretted a lot, I feasted too much, and I miss my sisters desperately, having had them near me for one wonderful week, and now they gone. Other than that, I got, as they say, nothin‘.
Instead I’ll tell you about some of my favorite things this month!
Pumpkin Spice Snake Oil from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Halloween release. I received this one after I’d already written some Weenie reviews over at Haute Macabre, but this would have made top of my list, if I had sniffed it at the time! Snake Oil, a blend of “exotic Indonesian oils sugared with vanilla” is a gorgeous and intoxicating, but fiercely potent brew and– as much as I love it–I have to be careful wearing it around sensitive noses and sometimes it even gives me a fit of sneezes! This pumpkin spice version is tempered by some pumpkin spices that I can’t even really discern, but it definitely makes for a kinder, gentler Snake Oil. I have been wearing it every day for the last week. And…it’s still in stock! I would advise you to grab it while you can.
Graces elixir from Sister Spinster. I own several potions and elixirs from Sister Spinster; I love the concept of encouraging self-care and empowerment through wild blooms and floral abundance. Do they work? Well, I don’t rightly know. I like to think so? I can tell you that a dropperful of Graces, with its mixture of chamomile, skullcap, linden, lemon balm, lavender and violet leaf infused in brandy with local honey, and taken with intent when I am feeling anxious, nervous, stressed or in the dark….well, it makes me feel like I am taking a moment to collect myself. And sometimes I think that’s either all you need, or it’s the first in a series of steps needed to get you beyond your anxiousness.
Lip Balms from Pollux and Key: I have the Cocoa Mallow Balm and the Chamomile Hibiscus Balm. I ordered these on a whim because I loved the unique combination of ingredients they presented (and the fact that these are non-minty lip balms, although if that’s your thing, they have a peppermint one, too.) After using them though, I tell you what–these are utterly lovely. They are slippy and soothing, not at all chalky or waxy, and the fragrances is very, very subtle. I can catch a tiny whiff of it, and whatever it is, it’s pleasant, but it’s barely there at all. And they seem to be flavorless, which I also love. I only wish they they had a version packaged in a tube; the tins are very pretty, and I don’t mind using my fingers, but a tube would work better for travel and I’d really like to throw one of these in every single tote bag I own (and that’s a lot of tote bags.)
The Spellbound leggings from Black Milk, which I nabbed as soon as I saw my stunning friend Maika wearing them, and which have quickly become my favorite things ever. I had a pair of leggings that I’d gotten from Black Milk a few years back and never wore because I thought they were uncomfortable…it turns out I just needed to wear a larger sizer. Who knew!
Speaking of which, isn’t this some marvelous advice with regard to friendship? “…meet those that recognize the wound within the both of you.” Indeed, that is exactly what I try to do! This very excellent suggestion comes courtesy Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles by Taisia Kitaiskaia. I cannot recommend this strange little book full of wild, wise, and wonderful counsel highly enough.
In making up for the fact that our mattress is approx. 200 years old, I may have created a monster bed, one that drains my productivity and diminishes my number of waking hours. Between the Ghost and buckwheat pillows and the insanely high thread count sheets and the fluffiest, coziest duvet, I’m really just trapped in here, forever. The crowning glory? The eyeball-searing William Morris “seaweed” linen set. I had a tough time finding a website that would ship to the U.S. but if you are one of the people whose gaze has not yet fallen on this thing and you are interested in napping on it yourself, you can find it, and a few other William Morris patterned designs at Amara.
Lastly, if you like whiskey and you have a spare $70, I have stumbled upon a terrific one for you: Nikka Coffee Grain Whisky. I am definitely not an expert in such matters, but it is described as having “rich oak” and “marmalade” notes. Whatever that means? A lot of reviewers note that it’s a bit on the sweet side, and normally I am not a fan of dessert-y type drinks, but this is delicious.
What a treat it was to interview and get to know this wonderful, brilliant woman! Listening to her recount her marvelous experiences at Lily Dale while recording for this exciting project was truly one of the highlights of my year. I hope you’ll enjoy read her stories as much I did hearing them, and translating them for the page.
I gotta tell you, I supported the hell out of some small businesses last night, after vowing earlier in the day that I wasn’t actually going to do any shopping at all. Funny how that works after a glass or two of wine.
I usually do a little bit of Hexmas shopping for myself, it’s true. Receiving gifts is nice, but as I’ve said before, it’s pretty unlikely that (unless you’ve given someone a detailed list, which I think is kind of lame and I refuse to do it) no one is going to get you EXACTLY what you want, so you’d better just take care of it yourself!
We are traveling to DC for the winter holiday this year, which means that whatever shopping I am doing for anyone–including myself!–had better be done way ahead of time, and for me, a month ahead of time actually is pretty early. Now that I’ve got myself covered, I can start thinking about everyone else. Isn’t that what RuPaul says? Close enough.
See below for a list of some vendors that I love and who are running some really lovely sales and discounts right now*. As always, I would never promote anything that I would not spend my own money on, so all of these items are things that I have indeed purchased for myself. Just last night, actually.
I’m having this “In Memory Of” ring from Golden Grove engraved with my mother’s initials. It was not actually on sale, but I am including it anyway, because I bought it yesterday.
I’ve never really been one for being out and about on Black Friday, as I don’t love the crowds (and I’m not certain I can think of anything I’d actually want badly enough to leave the house for!) but I get that sometimes people make a whole day of it, and that it can be a lot of fun. And blah blah, consumerist culture whatever–I get why some people have a problem with the day and all it represents, too, but as I get older I try to be much more mindful of not shitting all over the things that people like to do, so I’m not making judgments one way or the other. For myself, I feel pretty good about supporting trustworthy, talented small businesses and artisans, and that’s never a bad thing to do, right?
Did you go out yesterday? Stay in? Shop all the things? Did you actually by gifts for people other than yourself? Feel free to share in the comments!
A few months ago, by way of an introduction to artist Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos, I mentioned a few pieces of art that my mother owned, when my sisters and I were children/pre-teens and which hung in our dining room area. At the time I only remembered one in particular, and described it thusly:
The poster in question, surrounded by Erté prints, and oversized posters of the major arcana from the Thoth deck (with a occasional B. Kliban thrown into the mix) was…well, I don’t exactly remember. There was a lady. There might have been a goblet, or a cat, or a long, winding strand of pearls. What I do distinctly remember was a scrawling signature at the bottom, utterly illegible except for a swooping “J”. Maybe a crooked “C” that trailed off to a distorted “W”. In my head, I began to refer to the creator of this fantastical art, as “JAW CRAZER” and I was astounded when, earlier today, I sent a text to my sister asking if the name meant anything to her…and she knew exactly which painting I was talking about. And I swear –I never, ever said that name aloud. Crazy. Or CRAZER, as the case may be.
Well. As it happens, I am not the only one who loses sleep over such things. My sisters were both in town for the Thanksgiving holiday and had retired to the guest bedroom area, which doubles as my office and houses a wildly uncomfortable captain’s bed (but it’s super cute). Unbeknownst to me at the time, in an unprecedented act of snoozelessness, Middle Sister lay awake perusing the results of internet queries, seeking out these mysterious works of art from our childhood. The funny thing is, I don’t even recall that we were discussing our memories of them earlier in the evening! But sometimes the sisterwave psychosphere just works that way.
I myself had crawled into bed maybe ten minutes prior, and just as I felt myself lightly slipping into slumber, my cell phone rang! It was my sister, calling me from across the house! How weird. Vaguely irritated, or I would have been if it wasn’t my own sister, I stumbled out of bed to see what the heck she wanted. I stood in the doorway and called into the darkened room to her. Though I could not see her face, her excited response frizzled my hair right to the tips and thrilled my heart to buoyant wakefulness: “I FOUND HER, SARAH! I FOUND JAW CRAZER!”
Dang! That’s some midnight detective work! I’d been looking for years to no avail.
Jane Whiting (J.M.W.) Chrzanoska was born in Germantown, Philadelphia in 1948 (the same year our mother was born!) An ambitious young woman, she painted her first mural, an 8’x12′ depiction of Napoleon at Waterloo on her bedroom wall, and later convinced what must have been a very understanding friend to offer his bedroom wall for her painting of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. At age 16 she was accepted into the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and also made her first important sale, a study of 50 orchestral musicians, to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. After a few months at the Academy, Jane unfortunately grew bored with the emphasis on abstract expressionism and she began skipping classes and spending more time at the University of Pennsylvania city campus. She convinced the head of the Archaeology department, to let her practice drawing various artifacts in the collection and as it turns out, this new interest in archaeology would significantly impact her later work.
In 1969 she moved to Ithaca, N.Y. and then to Woodstock where she lived in a cabin with no running water and no electricity but was afforded the opportunity to view a private and well guarded collection of the works of Fra Angelico, owned by the Archdiocese of New York. In 1970 she moved closer to Manhattan and married her first husband, Benjamin Chrzanoski, where she continued to paint for the next ten years, exhibited in the city, and amassed an impressive list of collectors, singer/actress Cher, and and Addams Family creator Charles Addams among the more notable. In 1980 she was approached by Impress Graphics, a fine arts publisher. Her work was sold worldwide and afforded her the opportunity to travel. Over the next several years she traveled extensively throughout Europe and Peru, where her first child was born; but returned to the states five months after her second child was born, when terrorist activities moved too close to her home in Lima. After 20 years as owner/operator of the Mill Street Art Center in Mays Landing, NJ, Jane relocated to Hammonton NJ where she teaches and works in her new studio.
This last painting is one we just found today, and whose moody elegance never graced our walls–however!– oddly enough when, on a whim my sister did an etsy search for art by J.M.W. Chrzanoska, she found a set of three prints, including “The Mask”, just listed yesterday! Yesterday! (Though you can find some prints on Amazon, too.)This was too much of a coincidence to ignore, right? So ignore it I did not. These beauties will soon be making their way to us, and our of cup mysteries, brimming with our mother’s countless secrets and ciphers and coded mementos and memories, will soon be closer to leveling out.
(originally published on the Coilhouse blog, September 22, 2010)
A young girl in a scarlet hoodied romper stares gravely up into the heavily furred, ferociously fanged face of a black wolf. A lesser creature might be shamed by the child’s frank gaze – her features set earnestly, courageously, eyes alight with curiosity, and perhaps, even compassion.
Is the wolf to be deterred by this sweet faced thing, obviously unafraid? Will it stray from it’s monstrously predictable fairytale course? No, it is not. Will not. Cannot — after all, that is what it wolves do, isn’t it?
And before you can blink it has swallowed the girl whole.
But, wait…
See our little heroine, pale and grim. Watch her crawling through the gaping, bloodied hole she has snipped with her flashing silver scissors and her small, clever hands right through the thing’s engorged belly, its tough hide. See her gaze in the last panel; her no longer-quite-innocent, yet still entirely cherubic countenance is now impatient, determined, pissed off: “Wolf, I will fuck your shit up”, it declares.
Beatriz Martin Vidal’s modern interpretation of the oft-told tale of The Little Red Riding Hood –with it’s evocative art and unexpected outcome– is a marvelous example of the slightly magical, mythical places she creates for the young people who populate them. Never cutesy or twee, her subjects instead reveal the beauty and bravery and curiosity of children, and their effortless interaction with the world.
Originally from Valladolid, “a medium size town in the middle-north of Spain” Ms. Martin Vidal chose a career after high school “which didn’t fit her at all” – Law – and though she stuck with it for some time, she eventually continued on to the University of Salamanca to study art, which is what she maintains that she had wanted to do from the beginning. Of her time at the University and influences found therein and elsewhere, she says:
“I think the five years in University gave me a very valuable knowledge about art history, among other things. A lot of my influences come from 19th century painting, I think. I keep going back to old masters when I’m trying to find my own path, to Viennese secession, Renaissance drawings, Golden Age illustrators. It’s not I’m not interested in contemporary art of illustration as spectator, but, when it comes to making images, that’s the path I feel attracted to. Anyway, inspiration comes from everywhere. Sometimes things so unrelated to my work that I feel I’m the only one who can see the relationship.”
For an artist, the pairing of children and fairytale themes would seem to go hand in hand. When asked what it is that draws her to these subjects, she remarked:
“…Of course, there’s a practical reason for it, as picture books, and most of the illustrated books belong to the children/young readers field. But, the truth is that I find children a very interesting subject for my work. Children live halfway between reality and dreams which inspires me a lot. They’re funny. If you observe children in a park, they’re doing a lot of things more than the adults. They’re living little stories, running, jumping, talking to themselves. I find their relationship with myths and tales is very natural, very essential… I think almost all my work talks about a flexible reality. A place where you can mold the world …which doesn’t mean it’s going to be a wonderful world, as humans have fears as well as bravery and sadness as well as happiness. ”
Ms. Martin Vidal is currently preparing a picture book, a story by Gustavo Martin Garzo, about children and wolves for El Jinete Azul. As for what’s next:
“…. I’m going to work in another picture book of my own about fairy tales. I love to do my own books, but it’s hard to find the time for it. For the beginning of next year I’ll do a story about a girl and a pixie for Oxford University Press, and a novel for El Jinete Azul. I think my Little Red Riding Hood is going to be published in Australia, so in some months there’ll be an English edition. Lately I’m trying to focus on my own picture books. That’s the thing that makes happy the most and I think that it deserves the risk [of making them first with no pressure or external limits and then trying to find the right publisher for them.]”
See below for for more wonderful examples of Beatriz Martin Vidal’s work, including selections from her Carmilla, Tarot, and Russian Tales series. Visit Beatriz for updates and to view her complete portfolio.
It is November and I feel myself curling inward. Wrapping up in several layers of blanket burrito. Cocooning myself from everything in the world while I’m feeling weary, heartsick, vulnerable and, well…Novemberish.
November has always been a tough time for my family. I have awful memories from when I was a teenager of a certain Thanksgiving meltdown involving my mother and a broken freezer. This in itself is probably nothing unusual for families, and I bet everyone has dreadful stories of Thanksgiving meltdown trauma, but hers was fueled by addiction, and after the holiday we were motherless for a month or so while she was in a rehab facility. At least, that’s the way I remember it. My recollection of many, if not all, of my teenage years are hazy because they were just so wretched, and I think I have purposefully forgotten most of the details.
At any rate, a few years after that, my uncle died, and Novembers became a very sad time for my grandmother. I suspect Uncle Fred was her favorite, and she never quite recovered. With the passing of the years, each November would bring a deeper and deeper funk, and I believe that may have cast a pall over the rest of us as well. Then, a few years after that, my Aunt Carla died in November. A few years after that, my mother passed. Not in a November, but an early December. But still.
So…November-December is traditionally rough on my family. Now that both of my grandparents have passed (my grandmother just earlier this year) it is just my sisters and I–and of course our one cousin who is very nice and we aren’t as close as we should be and that is no one’s fault but my own–and while my sisters and are not exactly “lost”, we’re just feeling a little out of our depth sometimes, I think. I mean, everyone’s dead. We’re the “adults” now. Never mind that we’re all in our late thirties/early forties and have been adults for several years…it’s just that now we are literally all that is left. We have no one else to turn to for help or advice, or anything at all any more. Though to be honest, I haven’t needed to do that in a very long time (and my mother never had a lot of help to give anyway) …it’s just…we don’t even have that option now. They are all gone. It’s just us.
So, I guess I have some pre-Thanksgiving jitters. For the past 10-12 years or so, I’ve been doing the majority of the preparations and cooking for Thanksgiving, but my grandfather was around to peel the potatoes, which he always did with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade blaring in the background, as both my grandparents were terribly hard of hearing and neither ever wore their hearing aid. My grandmother would emerge from her bedroom wearing one of those festively seasonal old lady sweaters and a spritz of Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door. She and my mother would hover around me and insist that the dressing/stuffing (Which do you call it? We’re a “dressing” family) needed more broth–no, more broth!–make it soupy!–it’ll dry out in the oven! And answer all of my questions about how much onion or celery or sage do I need, and so on. I’d been making it forever at that point, and I instinctively already knew the answer to these questions, but it was, I realize now, such a comfort and …ugh, I can’t believe I am typing this because I hate this phrase…but a blessing to have them both there with me, at the same time, in my adult life to guide me through the rigors and rituals of Thanksgiving dressing. With and without oysters.
Thanksgiving dinner has always been at my grandparent’s house, for as long as I can remember and no doubt even before that. This year it will be my kitchen that the food is being prepared in. It will be my dining room table (and spilling into the living room, because our dining room table is not actually all that big) that my guests will be sitting at. We can have wine with dinner if we want! We never really did that before, what with all the rampant alcoholism that some people brought to the table. It’s just going to be weird. And different. Growing up, I always thought to myself, “when Ido Thanksgiving dinner, it’ll be different!” I suppose I thought turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes seemed a little homespun, or common or something. I wanted fancy. Or maybe exotic. Like … curry or something? … tamales? Who knows what I wanted. I just wanted …different. And now that it’s all up to me, and I have all the control I could want over this holiday’s menu, I just can’t help but think how nice it would be if we kept it exactly the same. Because things are already different enough as it is.
My youngest sister is in town now, flown in from Indiana on an early morning flight to spend the next week with us. We are both in Orlando, staying at our other sister’s house, for the first part of her trip. She arrived exhausted, and is napping in the guest room, channeling my grandmother with her house-shaking snores.
I think we are all cocooning over this next week. Slowing down, resting quietly together. We are all processing how different this year has been, how different this holiday will be, and trying to get to a place where things feels okay again or figuring out if that place of normalcy even exists. And I know that all of us, in various ways, are currently trying to do the same thing. You get it, I know you do.
So from my blanket burrito to yours, I’m wishing you peace and quiet and a soft place to rest right now. If we don’t hear from each other for a while, we’ll know why. And it’s okay. We will see each other again when we emerge from our cocoons.
In the meantime if you post your Thanksgiving menus in the comments, you will have given me many delicious things to ruminate upon over the next week 💗
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Magical Objects: On The pleasure and longing associated with storied possessions
I gotta tell you, I supported the hell out of some small businesses last night, after vowing earlier in the day that I wasn’t actually going to do any shopping at all. Funny how that works after a glass or two of wine.
It is November and I feel myself curling inward. Wrapping up in several layers of blanket burrito. Cocooning myself from everything in the world while I’m feeling weary, heartsick, vulnerable and, well…Novemberish.
