I love it that you’re enthusiastic about your babbies and your doggos, and I live for seeing all of your beautiful selfies. Your political talk doesn’t bother me one iota! Sometimes, though, I got a lot of problems with you people. And now you’re gonna hear about it.
A List Of Reasons For Which I Have Unfollowed People On Facebook, Ranked
10. Too many photos of your boring food (delicious looking food is okay).
9. Vaguebooking. Jesus. Either say whatever, or don’t. Quit dicking around.
8. Run-on sentences with no punctuation. Your poorly constructed shit gives me vertigo.
7. Your stupid drama. Work that out privately. You’re causing me the fremdschämen willies.
6. Animal abuse. WTF is wrong with you, you fucking psycho?
5. Your themed engagement photoshoot.
4. Folks who are purportedly #soblessed. You are the literal worst.
3. That friend from long ago who I thought might still be decent, but you posted a Ted Nugent photo.
2. You shared a video of that woman on instagram who is always eating exotic fruit & smiling vacuously
1. You tagged me in something really dumb, in a very public way. You’re dead to me.
This article was originally posted at Haute Macabre in April of 2017.
As a child, and even today, I am utterly transfixed when confronted by ornate wallpaper patterns. I often find myself stopping mid-sentence, entranced, when tracing the intricate imagery with my eye, delighted by surprising things which begin to emerge from the whorls and swirls of the repeating motifs. I always thought it would be a hoot to try and sketch the things I saw contained within those marbled, mottled microcosms, but in the end I never do. Though, artists, I do wish you would steal that idea and make a collaborative coffee table book with your results. I’d be your first customer!
The wallpapered visions of my childhood, in the late 70s through early 80s, were pretty trippy, and sometimes gave me nightmares (I was a weird, impressionable kid, and I suspect I experience pareidolia), but you know what? For all of my histrionics and delayed bedtimes, at least I can say that they never poisoned me.
Unfortunate souls purportedly poisoned by arsenical wallpapers in the mid-to-late 1800s, however, would no doubt beg to differ.
Long regarded as a waste product from mining and commonly known as a poisonous substance, arsenic nonetheless had myriad uses in the Victorian household: in food and food colorings with which one ate and entertained, in lady’s soaps and cosmetics applied to one’s person; in the dresses, hats, and stockings that one wore on a daily basis and special occasions; in the painted toys one’s children delightedly played with (and probably put in their mouths, because, children); and not to mention the handy powder used to rid one’s home of vermin…or to rid one’s self of a few pesky relative or two– hence the nickname “inheritance powder”.
And, of course, for interior design.
In 1775 Swedish chemist Carl Scheele developed the vivid green pigment known as Scheele’s green, made from the compound copper arsenite; the depth of color and superb pigmentation made it highly sought after for clothing and interior manufacturers–perfect for domestic décor and to color the florid opulence of the paper hangings that were so desired during this period.
Floral motifs, arabesque designs, and trompe l’oeil illusions, as well as panoramic landscapes, were the distinctive style of the French designers, whom the British admired for their air of elegance and luxury. The tide was to shift, however, in favor of the British, whose skilled block-printing and imaginative and innovative designs were considered so fashionable that the French employed spies to discover the secrets of the papiers d’Angleterre. Who knew the world of wallpaper manufacture and design was so thrilling? I can almost imagine these creators as contestants on a reality television show…except…there is of course, a deadly twist.
During this time, England and many European countries produced wallpaper laced with arsenic. And while several of them were relatively quick to recognize the problem and ban such products—this was not the case for England. Even as the products’ hazards started to become a hot-button topic in drawing rooms and gentleman’s clubs, many people actually pooh-poohed these warnings as fear-mongering, as they still believed that these design items somehow differed from purposely toxic arsenic items. It would be several years and many campaigning committees, committed lobbyists, shocking headlines, satirical cartoons, and even a sensationalist novel before opinions were to change.
Over in the US, chemist Robert Kedzie included examples of wallpaper poisoning in his “Poisonous Papers” essay for the Michigan State Board of Health, and as part of a campaign to alert the public to the dangers of arsenical wallpapers, Kedzie collected wallpaper samples from stores in Detroit, Lansing, and Jackson, and hand them trimmed into 100 books, which he distributed to libraries throughout Michigan. Titled Shadows From The Walls Of Death, the books were remarkably effective means of publicizing the dangers of arsenic in wallpaper.
William Morris, an artist and designer associated with both the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement, designed some of the most iconic wallpapers of the era (and, incidentally, was the son of the man whose company was the largest arsenic producer in the country).
Like many of his contemporaries, most of Morris’s well-known early designs contained arsenic-based colors and like most Victorians he seems to have experienced a disconnect as it relates to the poisonous arsenic that made the headlines and that which he used in his design pigments for the beautification of people’s homes. Morris summarily dismissed health concerns about arsenic-based pigments in wallpapers. A letter written by Morris to his dye manufacturer in 1885 states, “a greater folly is hardly possible to imagine: the doctors were bitten by witch fever.”
No problem here, Morris assures us, nothing to see, carry on! A strange and rather blasé attitude from someone thought to be an environmentalist and champion of worker rights and safety provisions.
Nonetheless, Morris & Co. bowed to pressure and removed arsenic from its wallpapers voluntarily in 1880. While in other countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Italy, it was the development of regulatory measures and legislation prohibiting the use of poisons and other harmful substances, the wallpapers in Britain began to be marketed as arsenic-free “entirely as a result of British demand, rather than by any action of the British government.” As general opinion turned against the companies that used arsenic in their wallpaper colors, “the people of Britain used the power of their pocketbooks to make the presence of arsenic in wallpapers obsolete, and as a result, their homes no longer held a fatal secret.”
I’ve been ruminating on the captivating and dangerously beautiful Victorian wallpaper facsimiles in Lucinda Hawksley’s Bitten By Witch Fever for a few months now, and wouldn’t you know– as soon as I sat down to start writing something about it in the last few weeks, not one, but two articles about the very same thing appeared on my radar. It would seem that this toxic topic holds a macabre fascination for us, even today.
And as usual, such interests are cyclical; back in 2003 Andy Meharg of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland published a piece regarding a chemical analysis performed on an early example of the ‘Trellis’ pattern wallpaper. The Trellis pattern is believed to be Morris’s first wallpaper and was produced from 1864 onwards. In damp rooms, it is believed, fungi living on the wallpaper paste turned the arsenic salts into highly toxic trimethylarsine and sickened people. Reports Meharg: “I analysed the green pigment by energy-dispersive analysis and showed unequivocally that the coloration was caused by a copper arsenic salt.” Interestingly, enough, two years later in 2005, a Royal Society of Chemistry published an article titled “The toxicity of trimethylarsine: an urban myth” and in attempting to read it, I’ll admit, it’s a bit over my head, but my point is that it would seem to be an enduring obsession.
Let us for now then, gaze at these exquisite plates and wallpaper tiles from the relative safety of our computer screens, or from the pages of Hawksley’s stunning compilation, without fear of “internal irritations”, paralysis, and other mysterious illnesses.
And OF COURSE, we also need to fixate on How To Wear Arsenical Wallpapers! How might a contemporary quaintrelle incorporate the look of this luxuriously poisonous pigment into one’s wardrobe? Inspired by the elegant floral motifs and arabesque patterns of William Morris’ toxic wallpaper designs, I have assembled an assortment of ensembles for which to conjure couture fatale feels.
It has been forever (or at least a year?) since I’ve written about Stitch Fix, and the reason for that, to be perfectly honest, is because I thought I was done with them.
To sum up, if you’ve never heard of them, or you’d blocked from your mind my blathering about them: Stitch Fix is a subscription box service. You sign up on the site, fill out some preferences, and once a month or so they send you a box of five things. You keep what you want and send the rest back. You pay a $20 fee per box, which is credited toward whatever you keep. If you don’t keep anything, you lose your “styling fee”. That’s basically it. I got about 10 boxes from them last year, which you can read all about under the Stitch Fix tag if you so desire.
Why did I even sign up for it? Well, mainly because my wardrobe consisted of jeans and tee shirts. And even though that’s perfectly fine most of the time because I work from home and never go anywhere, in the past few years I’ve had to start attending more out of state conferences and conventions, etc., for work, and every once in a while I have a social function with people outside my usual sphere, folks for whom I’d prefer to dress a little more “normal” in front of. You know what I mean, I know you do.
After a year or so I, one: pretty much had everything I needed, wardrobe-wise, and two: they kept switching out my stylist and with every new person styling my box, the items they would choose for me became increasingly more off-the-mark and ridiculous. So I just put the service on hold for a while.
However! When someone uses your referral link (which, by the way, is peppered liberally throughout this post), and signs up and gets their first box, I get $25 credit. And apparently a few people did this over the past 12 months, and I had some credit to play with. So…I thought I would give it another try! Let’s see how badly they fucked it up this time, shall we? Spoiler: they kind of did fuck it up. Spoiler no. 2: I did not actually try any of it on, Meaghan. You’re not the boss of me.
Moselle Cardigan from The Korner. The first thing I unwrapped was this insane sweater thing. It seriously weighed a million pounds, which was the first red flag because in April, in FL, it’s already sweltering, so no one is going to want to wear your ugly crocheted cardigan made from 50 albino Fraggle pelts. Just no. This absurdity costs $128. Also, they spelled corner with a “K”. JUST NO. I sent it back, after I broke both my arms trying to lift it back into the box.
Deitz ruffle blouse from Alice Blue. Well, she got the “moody florals” part right. I’m a sucker for anything that looks like Aunt Maude’s curtains or that sofa you remember from your grandmother’s house in 1975. However, I do not, under any circumstances, wear spaghetti straps, and also the length looks like it would probably hit me just above my belly button, and those bits are no one’s business but my own. This costs $48 but you could probably get the same thing from a sale rack at The Wet Seal for $7.99. Sent back!
Mollee dress from Kut From The Kloth. Now this…this was interesting. But dammit, how many black dresses do I need? And I’ll confess, I was so offended by everything else in the box that I snubbed it out of spite. Also, I’ve not been feeling so great about the old bod recently, and this looked like it was going to be clingy, and you know, I really just didn’t want to make myself cry. Returned. But if you are interested, it was $88.
Cameryn skinny pant by Liverpool. UUUUGGGGHHHH. Why, god, why?! I really, really despise colored pants. Pants should be some form of denim colored or black. That’s it. There are no exceptions. I am not interested in your shamrock trousers, Stitch Fix! And I know you know that, because I’ve marked it in my preferences! Get it out of my face. $88
Odelle knit dress by Papermoon. This one isn’t exactly terrible, either. I like the color, and the print (I’m wild about florals and paisleys) but what I don’t like are wrap dresses. I don’t like the thought that on a whim, my dress might open up and spill all my goods for all the world to see. And I don’t care if it doesn’t work that way, my point is that I am anxious about enough in life as it is; I don’t need to add “frock betrayal” to the list. Away it goes! $74.
Well, I gave it another shot. I tried! And yet I kept nothing. But you know what? I am doing it again next month! I have one more credit left, and it covers the cost of the styling fee, so I’m kind of getting the box for free and even if I hate everything, it’s …fun to see what they’ll pick out for me. So I will report back next month, and I may even try some things on.
Until then…am I nuts? Is this all ugly? Or am a being bitchy and hasty? What would you have kept? Feel free to weigh in!
SO, yeah. Wow. Man. This past month. I was knocked out for about 2.5 weeks with bronchitis, and so it’s mostly a blur of coughing and hacking and more tea drinking than I have ever done in my life. I put a serious dent in our supplies (which is good, because we had a surplus anyway, and it wasn’t moving very quickly.)
Before I took ill I did manage to finish this beauty. Behold, the Blue Dahlia from the book New Vintage Lace: Knits Inspired By The Past by Andrea Jurgrau (details on my Ravelry page). Once I got the hang of the pattern, it was actually a lot of fun to knit on, and even though at one point I ran into a snag, it seems after seven years of practicing this hobby, I finally have enough confidence in my abilities to say “hey…you know…I don’t think this is actually my fault…let’s check for errata!” And sure enough, there was an error that was fixed in an update, and it was related to the exact issue I was having! The lesson to be learned here is that sometimes other people are actually to blame. It’s not always me!
In an interesting turn of events, I was present at a Death Cafe…as an actual attendee! Up until this point I had only organized and facilitated the events (which I have written about before), and I have to say…it was much easier to be an attendee. So much less pressure! Hardly any stress at all! Although the day I go into something completely anxiety free is a day of miracles. But It helped that it was held at a lovely friend’s home, and that I had more than a passing familiarity with the charismatic facilitator. So many interesting things were discussed, and innovative ideas and concepts were bandied about–I cannot say it often and loudly enough: if you have the opportunity to attend a Death Cafe, either locally, or perhaps in a city that you are visiting, you absolutely must. Every single time, I walk away from one invigorated and enlightened, and despite what might be perceived as a morbid subject matter, it is a truly life affirming experience.
Sooooo…turns out four years of caring for close family members who keep dying one right after the other is not good for one’s well-being, neither mental nor physical. You’re shocked, right? Well, I was shocked when, a week before my grandmother passed, I stepped on the scale and discovered that not only had I gained back any weight I’d lost three years ago, there were many, many extra stowaway pounds as well. Caring for people you love, putting their needs above your own, and then watching them die one by one, tends to be a disheartening, depressing, and demoralizing process. Not cool, grief and depression (and laziness and apathy). Not cool at all.
As someone who is an emotional eater even in the best of times, well, I’m here to tell you that ever since December 2012 when I discovered my mother had cancer, and going forward from there to care for her, and then both of my elderly grandparents, it’s been taking a severe toll emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. What I’m saying is basically I ate my way through the past four years, and I’m fairly certain that with each death, my give-a-fucks for my own well-being dwindled significantly.. I stepped on the scale in early February, a week before my grandmother died, and was utterly horrified. Ten weeks later, I have lost 17 pounds, but I have got quite a while to go and a long journey full of hard work ahead of me. This “creature of the night” tee is one of my favorites. When I bought it, several years ago, it was pretty boxy and very loose. In 2016 I noticed that it had become uncomfortably tight, and I resembled a creature of the night stuffed sausage. It’s getting loose again, and I can tell it fits differently, more like it did when I first bought it. That’s where I’m at right now, friends. Hopefully there’s many more loose tee shirts where I am headed. And so, you know what that means. There’s going to be a lot more Weight Loss For Weirdos posts around here
Currently binging on: Steven Universe. These past two weeks of bronchitis have laid me pretty low, but this sweet, kind, beautiful show has cheered me immeasurably. I’ve been slowly catching up on it since December, but we took in half of season two just this past weekend! I woke up the next morning feeling better than I have in a long time, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The week before the Steven Universe marathon, I mainlined all of Taboo, and while I loved Tom Hardy’s grim, grimy, bleak British drama and was over the moon to find out it was renewed for a second season, Steven Universe was a welcome palate cleanser afterward. I’ve also been watching Supergirl. Don’t laugh! I really enjoy its dorky optimism.
And of course, my one-word movie reviews. Because brevity is the soul of…the really lazy person.
* I had really been looking forward to The Void, but somehow Amazon tricked me into watching the wrong one, and because the time between reading the synopsis six months ago and watching the film a few days ago was long enough to forget what it was supposed to be about…I didn’t even realize until the end I’d been duped. I was doing a lot of head scratching throughout, but I was determined to see it through. Even though it was a disappointment. And when I figured out my mistake and watched the one I meant to watch in the first place? That was kind of a disappointment, too. Though I think the popular opinion was that it was a really incredible film, a friend of mine summed it up best: “…it collapsed under the weight of its influences. It checked a bunch of boxes but didn’t have a voice of its own.”
I have been stricken by a sudden sickness; a miserable spring cold that arrived out of nowhere and has rendered me scratchy-throated, fuzzy-brained, and with a wretched, wracking cough. All I want to do is put on some fuzzy socks, curl up under the covers and prop myself up on a fluffy pillow, sip a lemony hot toddy, and lose myself in the restorative properties of good book. And if I’m not cured by the last page, well, at the very least, I’d like to think that from these beloved books and treasured tales, I will have been inspired in some small way.
Sometimes my mind wanders as I am reading, and I find myself wondering all kinds of ridiculous things. But things which certainly require answers, I am sure you will agree! What sorts of clothes were the tenants from the grotty apartment building wearing, in that thoroughly unsettling tale? What sort of fabulous frocks might the witches from that mystical manifesto caper and cavort in? Did that invisible wind-based demon who tormented lonely travelers wear a sweater to keep warm?
See below for the culmination of these feverish thoughts involving sartorial suggestions for selected sick-bed stories. Some of them, because my nonsense cannot be contained, even have accompanying soundtracks!
As, always, click the image for a detailed listing of the items used, and links to books and texts and music have been provided as well.
(Originally published on the Coilhouse Magazine blog, May 5, 2011. If Carisa’s name sounds familiar to you ’round these parts, then you have an excellent memory, friend! I have previously written about Carisa and her Wormwood & Rue creations here and here. )
Carisa Swenson of Goblinfruit Studio creates curious critters who seem to have wandered quietly out of a child’s fable of forest creatures, gleaming-eyed and grinning from beneath be-fanged overbites. Yet for all their grimacing, there is no sense of malice, no reason to fear this peculiar lot; look closer and you will find something profoundly endearing, familiar, and gentle about this oddball cast of creatures. Though they are semi-feral fairytale beasties from a dark wood, one gets the feeling from their earnest, even kindly expressions that they, just like anyone, are yearning for a happily ever after.
From the artist’s site:
Carisa Swenson’s passion for creating curious creatures springs from many sources—a love of Greek mythology and Ray Harryhausen’s creations when she was a child, an appreciative eye for Henson Workshop in her teens, to the weird and wonderful films of Jan Svankmajer and The Brothers Quay in her twenties. But when Carisa studied with world-renowned doll artist Wendy Froud, the final die was cast: posable dolls would forever own her soul and trouble her nights, stirring her with a fervor that could only be quelled by stitching and sculpting her dreams into reality.
“Since 2006 Carisa’s work has been featured in several exhibitions and publications, including the Melbourne Fringe Festival, NYU’s acclaimed annual “Small Works Show”, Art Doll Quarterly, and Spectrum 17.
We recently caught up with Carisa for a bit of a Q&A; see below the cut for more concerning the Curious Creatures and Aberrant Animals of Goblinfruit Studio.
In your bio, you mention that you’ve been creating dolls since 2006, after taking a stop motion animation class – had you always been interested in dolls and posable creatures, and this led you to taking that fateful class, or was this a fortunate fluke from which a consuming passion was born? Further, I understand that you’ve studied with artist Wendy Froud, which sounds amazing… can you tell us about that?
My fascination with stop-motion, automatons, and fantastical creatures took root when I first set eyes upon Ray Harryhausen’s work in Clash of the Titans, and even more importantly, the Sinbad series (the statue of Kali awakening and wielding six swords will forever stay with me). Action figures had always been a huge part of my playtime as a child, but I had little interest in dolls (with the exception of a much-loved Holly Hobbie rag doll) and a tendency to gravitate towards stuffed animals. Oddly enough, my desire to learn more about stop-motion ended up sparking a desire to create dolls. Before then, I concentrated on illustrating, mostly for fantasy card games and children’s books, but sculpted tiny creatures on the side as a hobby.
Several years ago, when I finally decided to take a stop-motion class, I had that “aha!” moment while working on a model for class. Sculpting and creating a posable model enchanted me and I found it much more engaging than my past experience with illustration. The idea of being able to hold a piece of art in your hands and essentially breathe life in it through touch and interaction appealed to me. Once of the best reactions I witnessed to one of my dolls was at a gallery show—when a young child and her mother went to leave, the girl insisted on saying goodbye to it.
Studying with Wendy Froud was truly wonderful. One of the movies she worked on, The Dark Crystal, was a substantial influence on my work so I was fortunate enough to not only meet her, but learn from her as well. Passionate about her art, Wendy’s desire to teach others is an inspiration in itself.
Your creations not only have an uncanny whimsy to them, a grotesque charm, but when viewing these creations, one gets a sense that they each have a fantastical story, a unique tale to tell. How do you go about imbuing these moppets with such life and character? Is there any particular story about any one of them that you can share?
Like many children, I was fascinated by animals, and spent many hours scribbling out both creatures natural and fantastical. Our four-legged and feathered brethren inspire me in ways sculpting or drawing humans cannot, and allow me to effortlessly imbue my dolls with depth and feelings. My process of sculpting starts with a vague notion of what a doll will look like, or sometimes what their personality will be. However, the dolls often suggest to me what they want to be as I sculpt— often switching gender, species or disposition halfway through their creation. As somewhat of an introvert, my attraction to the trickster mythos seeps into many of my characters.
Generally, my dolls have snippets of a back-story…the rest is up to the viewer. For instance, there’s George…who is somewhat temperamental and destructive, ripping the heads off his playthings; or Edgar, whose peculiar shape was the result of his rabbit mother having a sordid one-night affair with a bonobo. Tara carries around her semi-absorbed twin brother on the back of her head, and Alphonse and Otto Snerk are part of the troupe of pernicious goblins who sought to entrance the sisters of Christina Rossetti’s poem with their tempting goblin fruit.
Much of my inspiration comes directly from nature itself. My fascination with the natural world and its beauty provides a constant source of wonder and solace. Birds and creatures of the forest all work their way into my creations, in addition to the influence of fairytales and classical mythology. Empty, decaying buildings, rooms and houses stir my imagination with their dusty pasts or potential futures.
Beyond the natural world, other influences for my art stem from the likes of independent video games, which, besides the initial desired interactivity, are a rich source of art and music. (Some of my favorites include Machinarium by Amanita Design, The Path by Tale of Tales, and more recently, Superbrothers’ Sword and Sorcery.)
Some other sources that provide continual inspiration for me are horror movies of the sixties and seventies, stop-motion masters The Brothers Quay, Kihachiro Kawamoto and contemporary doll artists such as Virginie Ropars and Anita Collins. Movies like Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, The Cell (Eiko Ishioka’s breathtaking costumes are truly awe-inspiring), Fantastic Planet (which I discovered through The Cell), and Jeunet and Caro’s The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen have also served as artistic inspiration in the past.
Of course, music plays an important role while I’m working in my studio, helping me conjure that space in which to begin creating. Movie and video game soundtracks, ambient and pagan/spook folk albums have been getting quite a bit of airtime as of late, but I have my moments when I need to listen to some Prodigy, Ministry or Metallica.
Tell us about ARS SOMNIUM, your project with King Unicorn (Eric Steiner). I understand this is a collaboration built upon a concept dredged from the “most fertile playground for artists” – dreams and nightmares. Sharing dreams for artistic translation sounds like an intimate endeavor in which comfort zones are bound to be breached! [Edit: EC Steiner now creates under the moniker Casketglass]
When Eric approached me last year about a possible collaboration, I agreed without hesitation— our style couldn’t be more different, and it would be a compelling experiment to see where this would take our unique artistic vision. Concepts were passed back and forth until we hit upon the idea of sharing descriptions of the numerous denizens that wander, shuffle and glide through our dreamscapes. Once we pass off descriptions, we then actualize each other’s dream inhabitants in our own individual style. Given the subject matter, it could potentially be discomforting…but this has not proven to be the case. Seeing one’s dream (or nightmare) being through another person’s eyes is fascinating and unexpected. The energy within this project is fantastic, and I’m looking forward to working with Eric on more dolls in the near future.
Ars Somnium is an ongoing collaboration, so you can expect to see another creation for the project this year, with the next piece straying far from what usually emerges from my studio.
Currently I’m creating several dolls for upcoming gallery shows, but the one self-indulgent project in the works, which I’ve just begun, is a 52-card deck featuring my rabbit dolls. Eighteen new dolls will be created with the suits reflecting the various personalities within my creations. This will most likely take up a good part of my time throughout the rest of 2011 and early 2012.
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.”
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.
I don’t know how spooky I was as a small child. Not very, I guess. My cousin’s KISS posters scared me so badly that she would have to shut her bedroom door so that I couldn’t see her walls when I was in the house; the monsters of the week on Scooby Doo gave me nightmares (even though they were usually, like, old man McGillicuddy under a mask or something), and I had actually a fit of hysterics after a particularly upsetting episode of Benson with a dream sequence murder. Scary things and monsters were not my bag until all of a sudden they were. And then, hoo boy. It was vampires and werewolves and zombies and elder gods and Lovecraftian horrors 24/7. And I still haven’t grown out of it.
Russel Nohelty, publisher of Wannabe Press (a small press that makes “weird books for weird people”) has a similar fierce love for the monster in all of its myriad forms. You might even say he’s a bit obsessed with them — psychological monsters, horrific monsters, religious monsters, mythological monsters, fantastical monsters, and everything in between. He’s never met a monster he didn’t like.”What if,” he thought, “I went to my favorite creators, ones that I knew loved monsters as much as me, and put together an amazing monster anthology where all of us could tell our favorite monster stories? It would be a love letter to monsters.”
Created by monster-lovers for monster-lovers, Monsters and Other Scary Shit celebrates everything awesome about monsters. And when else to present to the world your glorious ode to the things you love best in life?Valentines Day, of course! Monsters and Other Scary Shit was launched via Kickstarter on February 14th, Valentine’s Day 2017. (The campaign has reached its goal, but runs until April 7th–so there’s still time to grab a copy for yourself, and to fill that monster-shaped hole in your own heart.)
The 224-page monster anthology is organized and edited by Russell himself, is printed on high quality, glossy art paper and bound in beautiful hardcover, with cover art by Aaron Alexovich, indie comic creator and artist for Invader Zim. The comics are “…written and illustrated by one of the thirty different professional teams who have credits ranging from Marvel, DC, Vertigo, Oni, and Image, to brands like Star Wars, The Simpsons, Transformers, Invader Zim, and more. ” As well as an entry from UnquietThings favorite, Christie Shinn!
Even though monsters are in every form of storytelling on the planet, they are often lumped into the horror genre. But monsters are so much more than horror. They are sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, drama, and everything in between. Notes Russell, “I love monsters because they can represent ANYTHING. They can represent people, places, things, or ideas. You can use them to tell a deep story or a fun one. I love Monsters Inc as much as I love Hellraiser, and I wanted to curate and anthology that showed my love of all types of monsters.”
The monstrosities that stalk these pages range from over the hill Sesame Street type monsters to demonic robot overlords to world-swallowing beasts; humorous and unsettling and sometimes creepy as hell, there is literally something in here for everyone. In reading through the tales, there are quite a few that I would have liked to continue reading, there was a definitely feel that there was more story to be explored; some that felt just exactly right, and of course, as in all anthologies, there’s always a few that left me scratching my head, or simply ambivalent. On the whole, though, I am reminded of two other somewhat monstrous anthologies that I’ve read in the past few years and found myself enjoying–The Sleep of Reason and The Other Side: An Anthology of Queer Romance …so, if either of those titles appealed to you, you’ll probably dig Monsters And Other Scary Shit, as well!
See below for a handful of images from the book, and get on over to the Kickstarter page for more details and a closer look!
I don’t know how spooky I was as a small child. Not very, I guess. My cousin’s KISS posters scared me so badly that she would have to shut her bedroom door so that I couldn’t see her walls when I was in the house; the monsters of the week on Scooby Doo gave me nightmares (even though they were usually, like, old man McGillicuddy under a mask or something), and I had actually a fit of hysterics after a particularly upsetting episode of Benson with a dream sequence murder. Scary things and monsters were not my bag until all of a sudden they were. And then, hoo boy. It was vampires and werewolves and zombies and elder gods and Lovecraftian horrors 24/7. And I still haven’t grown out of it.
