Terri Windling's Blog, page 254

Re-enchantment

The "Re-enchantment" website has been launched this week. Created in Australia, the project is described as "an immersive journey into the hidden meanings of fairy tales." I was honored to have my art included in the gallery section alongside amazing artists such as Paula Rego, Kiki Smith, and Jeanie Tomanek. I haven't had the chance to explore the rest of the site yet, and I'll be curious to know what folks in the fairy tale literature & scholarship community think. There's a Facebook page for updates on the project here.

On Your Desk

Today we begin in the wilds of New England with a visit to Gary Lippincott's studio. Gary is an award-winning artist who specializes in fantasy paintings, book jacket art, and illustrations for such wonderful children's books as The Prince and the Pauper (with Marianna Mayer), On the Frontier with Mr. Audubon (with Barbara Brenner), The Bookstore Mouse (with Peggy Christian), Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (with Bruce Colville), and, my favorite, Come to the Fairies' Ball (with Jane Yolen). His work has been exhibited extensively, and is collected internationally. He's the author of The Fantasy Illustrator's Technique Book, an in-depth manual for art students and aspiring illustrators; and he has taught Fantasy Art and Imaginative Drawing at the Worcester Art Museum. When he's not painting, he can usually be found playing piano, practicing magic, or searching for gnomes and fairies in the woods.

About the workspace pictured here, he says: "I am located in the deep, dark woods of central Massachusetts. I am a bit of a hermit and find my location very suitable for my work. My studio is located over a two-car garage a mere fifty feet from my house. Sometimes I can go for days without having to drive a car. My backyard is at the edge of conservation land which is wooded and goes on forever. Whenever I have to leave home (the occasional appearance at conventions, lectures, or book-signings), I always feel great when it's time to return...."

Two of Gary's gorgeous book illustrations are below, titled "Faith and Fairies" and "Fairy Reel" respectively...

...and you'll find many more amazing paintings and drawings over on the Gary A. Lippincott website.

The next desktop belongs to Guy Veryzer, who lives and works in New York City. Guy is a ceramicist, collage artist, photographer, photo researcher, poet, playwright, actor, and probably twenty other things that I've forgotten about besides. He brings magic to everything he touches, creating wonders large and small in a wide variety of mediums.

The tidy, organized desk pictured above sits in Guy's apartment in mid-town Manhattan, where, like so many New Yorkers, he's skilled at making optimum use of a limited amount of space.  Below, in another view of the same desk, you can see some of his lovely collages on the wall, and a doll by Wendy Froud (one of his oldest friends) sitting in the corner.

"This is how the desk sometimes is," he says...

"...and this (below) is how it usually is."

"My desk is a Flying Dutchman desk; it moves about mysteriously, as does everything in my apartment in an effort to make space and storage for all my arts. At the moment, as I am in the midst of a vast wave of organizing, I have two desks one for tax prep and papers, one for collages, my plan is for them to merge as the tide of papers etc. subsides."

On the left: Guy at work in his ceramics studio, where he creates mythical plates, figures, vessels, candlesticks and lamps that are utterly captivating. "I am an archaeologist of the imagination," he says in describing the inspiration behind his work. "I excavate undiscovered objects in the hidden sites and tombs buried in my unconscious. These painted objects: plates, bowls and candle vessels, seem to be reminiscent of the ancient civilizations of the Greeks and Minoans, but, as Brian Froud once mused looking at the collection of work: 'Perhaps your civilization preceded the others and they were influenced by your civilization....'

"When one looks at the painted decoration and sculpted figures adorning the objects from this imaginary civilization, they seem to unlock the mystery of a narrative tale. The animals are joyful and innocent. Smiles on the faces of the beings are pure, but perhaps, a little too knowing. In this world, creatures live in a mystical harmony: angels exchange secrets with mermaids, geo-centric faced beings mingle with fear figures, and fear figures worry beside playful winged horses and dragons. This is a magical place that may still exist somewhere."

A few of these mythical beasties are below, and there are more on Guy's ceramics website.

Next, we travel to the workspace of Natalia Pierandrei, a talented young illustrator in Italy. "Starting with my earliest memories, I have always had a passion for drawing," she says. "Fed on a diet of cult TV, fairy tales, and comic books, I inexorably followed the path of imaginative art. Stories feed the soul; I am an avid reader and I strongly think the illustrator is a storyteller who can create images and worlds made of magic, mystery, love, romance, tragedy...possibilities are limitless. My working technique includes mainly markers, pencils and watercolours with a painting style that often mixes all these techniques together."

Above: "Here is a close-up of my desk."

Above: "I enjoy having things around that inspire and motivate me."

Above: "An old chest of drawers bought at a flea market. I use it to store drawing tools, papers, fabric, frames...anything!"

And here's one final photo, of Nati at her drawing board, followed by two examples of her charming and distinctive art:

To see more of Natalia's work, visit her website: A Forgotten Night Tale, and "Magic x Four" in The Journal of Mythic Arts.

Our last desk today belongs to Michelle, an artist in Kent, England. "I work in watercolours and inks," she says, "sometimes in acrylics and oils.  I also make cushions and bags sometimes, if I fancy a change from painting.  I love all things to do with magic, nature, and things that are a little bit odd and curious...."

"I've recently started working part time, after becoming chronically unwell over the last year; and on my days off, I work in our conservatory at home which has recently become my art room. I'm so thankful for it, since before that I was an 'art nomad' and moved around our kitchen table, packing everything away when meals and other things had to be done out there."

The handsome fellow pictured in the studio above is Toby, one of Michelle's three rescue dogs. "He was brought over from Ireland," she says, "and barely made it."

Michelle's gently magical painting "The Twisted Tree" is below, and you can visit the Little Wren blog to see more of her work. "I've just been asked by a local tea house to hang my pictures on their wall in a few weeks time," she says, "so I'm hoping this will be the beginnings of selling my work, perhaps eventually leaving my day job altogether. (One can dream!!!)"

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All readers of this blog are welcome to contribute to the "On Your Desk" series. You'll find more information (and the address where you should send your photo) in the first post of the series.

Mermaids and more:

* Jane Yolen discusses "Wrestling With Endings" in the "Writers at Work" section of James L. Harrison's Connecting the Dots. Writers and would-be-writers take note: there's some very good advice here.

* I discuss "The Mermaid Myth" over at Carolyn Turgeon's charming I am a Mermaid blog. You'll find interviews with Jane Yolen, Alice Hoffman, artist Michael Wm. Kaluta, and other good folk over there too, as well mermaid dancers in Iceland, a man who makes mermaid tales, and more. Carolyn's got a new mermaid novel of her own which has just been released (inspired by "The Little Mermaid" and traditional mermaid lore), and which has been eagerly awaited by many fairy tale ficion fans, including me.

* Katherine Langrish discusses "Nis folklore" and more on the whistle stops of her Blog Tour celebrating the publication of her book West of the Moon. (Three cheers for West of the Moon!) You can follow Katherine's adventures via her own blog, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles...and while you're there, catch up on any  of the excellent"Fairytale Reflections" that you might have missed.

* It's "March Madness" at the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which is when the wacky artists and scholars of the IAF (and I mean "wacky" in a good way) devote their blog to interviews of wildly unclassifiable artists in sundry fields -- starting with Colette Fu, who creates incredible pop-up books as a form of fine art. The month's interview series is curated by Erin Underwood and Mythic Delirium's Mike Allen, and it's bound to be blast.

Art above: "Alarmed Mermaid" by the amazing Taiwan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Fay Ku. You can see more of her work on her website, and read an old-but-still-interesting interview here, discussing her inspiration, influences, and Living the Artist's Life.

Searching for mermaids on the Cornish coast: a very wet dog and a very wet me, in my trusty Wellies.

Today's Recommended Reading:

* Jane Yolen discusses "Wrestling With Endings" over at the Writers at Work website. Writers and would-be-writers take note: there's some very good advice here.

* I discuss "The Mermaid Myth" over at Carolyn Turgeon's charming I am a Mermaid site. You'll find interviews with Jane Yolen, Alice Hoffman, and other good folk over there too.

* Katherine Langrish discusses "Nis folklore" and more on the whistle stops of her Blog Tour celebrating the publication of her book West of the Moon. (Three cheers for West of the Moon!) You can follow Katherine's adventures via her own blog, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles...and while you're there, catch up on any  of the excellent"Fairytale Reflections" that you might have missed.

* It's "March Madness" at the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which is when the wacky artists and scholars of the IAF (and I mean "wacky" in a good way) devote their blog to interviews of wildly unclassifiable artists in sundry fields. Curated by Erin Underwood and Mythic Delirium's Mike Allen, it's bound to be blast.

Art above: "Alarmed Mermaid" by the amazing Taiwan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Fay Ku. You can see more of her work on her website, and read an old-but-still-interesting interview here, discussing her inspiration, influences, and Living the Artist's Life.

Searching the beach for mermaids: a very wet dog and a very wet me, in my trusty Wellies.

Water Stories, 2

(Click on the image for a larger version. Water Stories 1 is here, and there are more to come.)

A Winter's Tale

Above and below: Victoria (my lovely stepdaughter), Howard, me, and Tilly on a misty winter's day on the north coast, near the Devon/Cornwall border. (Click on any of the photos for larger versions.)

Howard and Tilly at play...

...and I don't know which one is crazier.

Unless it's me.

A mad dash there and back again.

Father, daughter, and pup.

Husband, wife, & pup.

A little black dog trotting merrily along...

...on a big white beach.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today's first tune is a live performance of "Ever So Lonely" by the exquisite Sheila Chandra, whose influences range from Indian, Irish, and other traditional musics to the exploration of drone sounds from cultures around the world.

"I think this whole orchestral thing and this pop thing with chords and everything is just this maverick offshoot," she says in a fascinating interview with John Schaeffer that ranges from drones to mythic crones to celestial harmonics. "Its kind of an upstart movement, isn't it? That has nothing to do with what our biology dictates, because we drone. As long as we're alive we drone. We emit frequency, from the stapes bone in the middle ear, where apparently we emit the average of all the frequencies that we are, and also the blood rushing in our ears, and I think that stapes bone thing can be heard late at night when you can't sleep and there's this awful high pitched drone which seems really, really loud? I think that's the one it is. So, drones are present so long as we're present, so long as the listener is present. So, it's almost true to say that drones are at the essence of our aliveness."

Below, Chandra "performs a piece of vocalised taal — a kind of really-old-school beatboxing used by Indian classical music percussionists to practice their parts without an instrument."

A lovely way to start the week and the workday, centered in the "essense of aliveness," of blood and bone and balance and beauty.

Wind Stories, 2

(Click on the picture for a larger version.)

Today's Recommended Reading:

First, we have a new course served in The Moveable Feast: "Around the table with Rima Staines, Part II," over on John Barleycorn, where Rima, Rex, and Howard continue to explore the joys, challenges, and dangers of living the artist's life. Good stuff.  

Second, over on the Publisher's Weekly site there's a good interview with Franny Billingsley (author of the richly folkloric YA novels The Folk Keeper and Well Wished), discussing her new novel, Chimed, and her writing process.

And third, a reading recommendation from librarian and author Els Kushner, who says: "For the past week or two, I've been following a blog called Lion's Whiskers that's discussing the importance of raising kids to have courage. One of the blog authors is a children's book author, and the importance of story is a continuing theme."

The particular post Els recommends is "Stories Made Me" by Jennifer Armstrong. Here's snippit: 

"Stories make us who we are. I spent hours and hours of my childhood on two occupations: making up stories to act out outdoors, and reading stories indoors....What counts, I believe, is that I spent hour upon hour with undaunted characters who persevered, who vanquished evil, who faced natural and supernatural challenges, who made sacrifices to a greater good. They were my models for every kind of courage. "

Drawing above by Rima Staines.

The Moveable Feast (updated)

The conversation "on blogging as an art form" is spreading: from Rima Staines, Howard Gayton, and Rex Van Ryn on the John Barleycorn blog to:

* "Reflections on Blogging" here at The Drawing Board (Devon, England)

* "The Imagined Village" at  A Mermaid in the Attic (Perth, Australia)

* "The Moveable Feast in the Forest" at RavenWood Forest (western Massachusetts)

 * "On Blogging" by Theodora Goss (Boston, Massachusetts)

* "The Imagined Self" at A Mermaid in the Attic (Perth, Australia)

* "Magpie Blogging" by Midori Snyder (Tucson, Arizona)

* "To everything its time" by Erzebet YellowBoy Carr  (Papaveria Press, England)

* "Around the table with Rima Staines, Part II" at John Barleycorn (Devon, England) NEW

* "The Gate at the Edge of the Village" at The Hermitage (Devon, England) NEW

...If I've missed any other posts related to the Feast, please link to them in the Comments.