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.
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Released appropriately on February 3, in the heart of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Moon Duo’s fourth album Occult Architecture Vol. 1 offers a cosmic glimpse into the hidden pattern embedded in everything, and is, I am told, “an intricately woven hymn to the invisible structures found in the cycle of seasons and the journey of day into night, dark into light.” Hm!
Written and recorded in their hometown of Portland, Oregon, the two-part epic reflects the hidden energies of rainclouds and sunshine and the deep creep of Northwest forests along with their effect on the psyche, and was inspired by the occult and esoteric literature of Mary Anne Atwood, Aleister Crowley, Colin Wilson, and Manly P. Hall.
According to guitarist Ripley Johnson, “the concept of the dark/light, two-part album came as we were recording and mixing the songs, beginning in the dead of winter and continuing into the rebirth and blossoming of the spring. There’s something really powerful about the changing of the seasons in the Northwest, the physical and psychic impact it has on you, especially after we spent so many years in the seasonal void of California. I became interested in gnostic and hermetic literature around that time, especially the relationship between music and occult qualities and that fed into the whole vibe.”
Okay, that’s all terribly fascinating, poetic, even, but what does all of that mean? Moon Duo’s last album didn’t immediately grab me, but I’m willing to give things another go, and admit if I have been hasty to judge, and to be honest, I often find that what I don’t care for one day will become my absolute very favorite thing the very next week.
And I am here to tell you that the psychedelic krautrock space jams found on Occult Architecture Vol. 1 are indeed my current Favorite Things. A hazy, hypnotic ride, buzzing with repetitive grooves, long, droning synth-laden refrains, and drowsy vocals, this is the background music I imagine playing if William Hope Hodgson’s reclusive narrator in The House On The Borderland were to describe his time spent astral-traveling to all those freaky, terrifying places that he mentions in his manuscript, but through, you know, the filter of rose-tinted glasses, and with an “…ahahaha, so THAT happened” kind of attitude.
Like, if he were traversing the vast desolation of space and time, not alone and afraid, but instead accompanied by his rad cousin (the one who shares all of his acid and shrooms) and just exploring the cosmos and visiting dying stars and dead planets in his dope ass El Camino, high as balls.
Which is not to say it’s all woozy sonic delirium and a miasma of languorous psychedelia. To my (admittedly untrained ear) I hear fuzzy, feisty post-punk garage band and 80s new wave influences, and the pulsating, throbbing beat of something one might even be compelled to dance to –if you’re at some far-flung space rave, I guess, at the outer edge of the galaxy. The cold, machine-like yet passionate beat of the album’s second to last track, “The Will of the Devil” even has a goth pop/cold wave vibe to it, that I especially dig.
On the whole, this is an unexpectedly catchy album (I am literally tapping my feet to it even at this moment, while at the same time bemoaning all of the drugs I never did, because man, hallucinogenics and space travel sounds like good times) and if this is Moon Duo’s dark side, I cannot wait to see what they deliver when they step into the light with Occult Architecture Vol. 2
Over at @munichartstudio’s instagram today are two auctions in collaboration with @thecreepingmuseum! Both auctions are in the spirit of LOVE TRUMPS HATE for Valentines Day– with proceeds to benefit The International Rescue Committee (helping refugees and others in desperate need) and The Creeping Museum (to help fund the next nonprofit release).
The auctions will run from today until until Sunday evening, 2/12 (6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern). Be sure to bid and support these excellent artists and some very worthy causes.
This first auction is for a mystical seer, magically rendered in graphite and colored pencil (above) , and auction number two is an occult art bundle which includes the following:
• 9×7 Framed drawing of “Escapees from Pandora’s Box”
• 3×3.5 Framed drawing of “The Witch’s Eye”
• 6×6 Unframed print of “Do Not Summon Up That Which You Cannot Put Down” by artist EC Steiner
• One copy of The Occult Activity Book Volume 2 (super rare!!)
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.
My week in fragrances, week two. (Which is more like a week and a half’s worth and I am now on week three if you’re being really picky about it, but I’m not, so you shouldn’t be, either!) I am almost to the end of January and so far I have not purchased any new fragrances, not even tiny samples! Let’s see if I can keep this up for another month.
Morocco (formerly “Old Morocco” from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab). This is one of the first BPAL samples that I ever received, and one of their first scents that I fell in love with, but it took me a while to commit to a full size bottle. When I did, it was no longer “Old Morocco”, but instead, just plain “Morocco”. This is a scent of tender comforts, of being swaddled in plush saffron robes after a long, dusty day of travels, and sipping a honeyed, milky draught of something unfamiliar and yet strangely comforting before slipping into bed. Your pillow is filled with carnations and sandalwood shavings, lending a gentle spice and dry warmth to round out the sweetness. You dream for days.
Courtesan by Worth. I purchased this many years ago, and sometimes I seriously question what I was thinking. It’s a frou-frou, one-two punch of pineapple pixy stix and a feathery poof of some sort of vanilla jasmine laundry powder that manages to be creamy, cloying, and yet very sheer. It’s like being smothered in a veil of phantom custard.
Niki de Saint Phalle, a light, grassy chypre interwoven with dry, autumn floral accents. It conjures imagery of late summer afternoon daydreaming on a mossy hill and brushing dried blooms and other herbaceous detritus off your sun-warmed skirts when you’ve finally roused yourself to head home.
At Haute Macabe this week you’ll find towers of tomes, piles of paperbacks, and all the pages that my fellow HM writers–Sam, Erin, Maiki, Soyna–and I, are perusing at present.
Whether you prefer fiction or non-fiction, feminism, fantasy, ghosts, or zombies, no doubt you will find several additions to your ever growing to-read list.
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.
Courtesan by Worth
Niki de Saint Phalle
