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Tag: Jeanne D’Angelo

Tales from the Crossroads #1: “Solid Objects” by Virginia Woolf

Copyright 2017 Jeanne D’Angelo

Introduction: Notes from the Artist 
By Jeanne D’Angelo

When I first started this illustration, I had no idea that the accompanying essay was going to be about Object Oriented Ontology, or even what that was. However, the opening passage struck me immediately because in it human forms are reduced to some unknowable mystifying shape in the distance. Having more of an understanding of the project now this actually seems like a perfect window into a philosophy that decenters humans and describes objects as having agency outside of our perception of them. 

The way I chose to compose this image is meant to echo just that.  The foreground/true subject of the painting is a beach littered with both objects specifically described in the story, and objects I could imagine I would feel compelled to pick up if I found them. A crowd scene as it were, with objects clustered, balanced, and woven through each other. To me, all the special objects should be conceivable and unremarkable in most ways, probably manmade refuse but which had taken on an unintended and improbable form. I think the way the story described the small patterned piece of pottery somehow broken into an almost perfect star shape was a perfect example of this type of object. We can deduce it was originally made by human hands, but what kinds of circumstances after its creation could have led to it being in this particular state?  This could be the hidden world of objects, with their own trajectories, histories and evolution, and as the story shows, their own ability to act upon human consciousness.

On a purely aesthetic level, this sort of illustration presents an interesting challenge. Often the objects we choose to depict in art are remarkable, ornate, or part of some world of symbolism. The subjects of this image and story are mysterious detritus. Something you might just kick along the sidewalk on your way to run errands. It’s interesting to consider the magical little world of street trash with as much attentive detail as you would a painting of a vase of beautiful flowers or a chest of glittering treasure.

Tales from the Crossroads #1
By Scott Nicolay

“Aboli bibelot d’inanité sonore.”
—Stéphane Mallarmé, “Sonnet en X”

I allot a significant portion of my time to thinking about The Weird; to considerations of the strange and the uncanny. To cosmic horror. Those who have read any of the essays I have written in collaboration with artist Michael Bukowski under the rubric Stories from the Borderland may have already noticed this predilection. This preoccupation. This fixation. This obsession. I make no pretense that it is healthy. Continue reading

Stories from the Borderland #17: “Hippie Hat Brain Parasite” by William Gibson

“I’d called my slab ‘science fiction,’ but the art I’d cultivate would be the art of interstice, burrowing from surface to previously unconnected surface, through the waiting wealth of weirdness I sensed between those surfaces.”
—William Gibson, blog post Jan. 8, 2003

With special thanks to Edward Austin Hall, Marc Laidlaw, and especially Lewis Shiner for their invaluable support and assistance…

By now it should be obvious to readers of this series that science fiction is a virtual cornucopia of only loosely camouflaged great Weird Fiction. Without its own literary ecosystem to occupy during the previous century, The Weird quietly, patiently extended its mycelia beneath the leaf-littered forest floors of science fiction, fantasy, and mainstream modes alike, infiltrating their various oΐkoi with utter disregard for critical taxonomy. Now that its fruiting bodies are bursting forth all around us in a Weird Renaissance, we can finally take some measure of its full expanse. Here at Stories from the Borderland we specialize in spotting and plotting those loci where weirdness has long since spread beneath the surface, and we work like tireless truffle pigs, snuffling up the treasures we deliver you on our finest silver serving ware. This week’s fungal entrée comes your way with a side of brains. Continue reading

Nick Gucker: Throwing a Stick at the Moon| The Outer Dark: Episode 13 — SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

KLAW Color cover 72dpiNick Gucker, AKA Nick the Hat, one of weird fiction’s most beloved artists and the designer of The Outer Dark’s logo, shares his secret superhero origin story growing up weird on the water and in the woods of rural Alaska, how he journeyed south to Seattle to study art and play in punk rock bands, his early love of Ambrose Bierce, an affection for the surreal naturalist horror of Algernon Blackwood, physicality and monsters in William Hope Hodgson’s work, strange fish and the deep abyss of the ocean in his art, peeling back and creasing the skin in anatomy class and beyond, an odd subliminal influence of Dr. Seuss fueled PaintedMonsters_cover_001_FC_smallperhaps by the more disturbing aspects of Yertle the Turtle and the sheer terror of the pants with nobody inside them, designing the logo for The Outer Dark, finding a home at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and NecronomiCon Providence, adventures in Bali and Asian influences on his art, his favorite punk rock outsider artists from Blinko to Walsby, complexity in his art as a way to entice observers to explore the image longer and more deeply, collaborating with authors/publishers/magazines/convention organizers throughout the Weird Renaissance, recent work including the cover for Orrin Grey’s Painted Monsters and Other Strange Beasts (Word Horde), his commitment not to indulge in the exploitative side of pulp art, what he’s working on now and next, and his recommended artists working in the Weird today including Mike Dubisch, Mike Bukowski, Jeanne D’Angelo, Dave Felton, Chris Mars, Skinner, Paul Komoda, Josh Yelle, Allen Williams, Robert H. Knox and Liv Rainey-Smith.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes  or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

MythofFallingJacobMore Links:

https://esoterx.com/2013/01/09/the-fearsome-alaskan-tlingit-kushtaka-if-its-not-one-thing-its-an-otter/

“What Was I Scared Of” By Dr. Seuss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxuhKur2IYo

https://www.blancomuseum.com/

https://www.outsiderart.co.uk/blinko.htm

https://www.pusfan.com/art.htm

https://dennisdread.blogspot.com/2007/06/legacy-of-mad-marc-rude.html

https://www.brianwalsby.net/BrianWalsby.net/Home.html

https://witchhouserocks.com/

Next week’s guest: Craig Laurance Gidney, author of Skin Deep Magic (Rebel Satori Press) and The Nectar of Nightmares (forthcoming from Dim Shores)

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