back and forward

The Etsy shop of Builder's Studio cranks out some amazing things. From gorgeous retro-futuristic robot miniatures...



...to handmade Ray Guns, sized both for holding in the hand, or hanging on a chain around your neck. And what is even better? They're made of wood! The old, rustic patina-style finish on these pieces is wonderful, and though many of the shapes seem very "wood-like", the metallic sheen plays a trick on you and really makes you think you are looking at hammered, weathered metal.

Life In a Jar

Of all the strange and inspiring places I have visited , The Mütter Museum
in Philadelphia, by far tops the list as the most sobering.

A small museum by comparison to most institutions, The Mütter is a collection of Medical anomalies intended to educate present, and future medical professionals(as well as curious civilians).

Founded in 1858, the museum feels as old as it is. This place is not for the faint of heart, but will make most anyone who actually IS human feel very much so. You're reminded of the wonder and fragility of life and the biology of our species with every exhibit.

Photography is not permitted inside the collection, and rightfully so, as most of the items on exhibit ARE or WERE part of someone at some point in time.

Anyone going to the Mütter will leave the place quietly and with much to contemplate.

just my type

I am a fan and enthusiast of "regular, everyday" antiques. Tapestries, gaudy wall hangings, jewelry, and porcelain statuettes rarely engage my attention, but the trappings of every day life in eras gone by is absolutely fascinating.

At The Virtual Typewriter Museum, you will find an exhaustive and informative gallery of all kinds of amazing mechanical writing devices. From the upstroke-hammer models that we are all familiar with, to different, more experimental, or less widely known models:



Of course, most of them also fall into the glorious "polished wood and old metal" aesthetic that attracts me like bees to honey...

burning in the void

I am not going to say much in this post - Odd Nerdrum is well-known, and one of my favorite artists. I have never been able to render the human form well at all, and his absolute mastery of anatomy, texture, movement, and color impresses and fascinates me to no end. He is unwavering in his realism, the worlds he creates are tangible, visceral, dirty, real, alive, fleshy, and blemished.

And even if you've seen his work before, I think it is always worth a second look.

smash glass houses

With my blogging partner off for a week, relaxing in sunny paradise, I'm stuck here in thigh-deep snow, holding down the proverbial fort.

I had a lot of hermit crabs as a kid, most souveniers from beach vacations, and I was good to them, and they provided "entertainment" and "companionship" for years. I named them all after Greek deities, and fed them out of little clamshells. Whenever hermit crabs die, their muscles, obviously, relax, freeing them from their shells and letting you pick them up and observe the little wiggly legs along their soft sides, and the rest of their extremely odd and alien anatomy.

What they look like while inside the shell, however, I never really knew, until I found this wonderful photograph of a hermit crab pulled up inside a shell made of glass.

Home

Several weeks ago I innocently purchased what was meant to be "something to keep my brain occupied while I paint" , little did I know what I was in for. Heima, is a documentary following the epic Icelandic band Sigur Ros through a series of free, unannounced concerts performed in various scenic and quaint locations in their native homeland.

The cinematography alone is beautiful enough to watch the entire film without sound, but coupled with several powerful and moving live performances by the band, Heima is in my opinion no short of masterful.

I knew little about Sigur Ros before watching the film, but I can say that I'm now a fan because of it. Aside from being versatile and accomplished musicians, the members of the band are humble and honest. They seem to have this symbiosis when performing that makes them sound like a single entity rather than a group of individuals.

I really can't say enough good things about this documentary, so needless to say, I highly recommend that you view it ... immediately.

When two Hartes Collide

I recently completed this piece for an upcoming show in Rome in April. The Hartebeest is an odd looking creature, I studied the reference for hours , and I'm still not really sure where the eyes are.

the silence moves the hand

If antiquated metaphysical ephemera interests you (and realistically, how could it not?), you will want to visit The Museum of Talking Boards.

It's an online gallery with a fascinating history of spirit-writing, and many of the fascinating designs and gimmicks of talking boards through the first half of last century. The design alone on some of these boards is just marvelous, and they range from the simple and beautiful, to the utterly ridiculous.

You'll also find enough theories, stories, and superstitions here to keep you reading well into the night, though the page designer's choice of text-to-background color combinations isn't always forgiving to the eyeballs.

The Lives of Perfect Creatures

If you're a lucky person, you have made it to Culver City, California and raked up the courage to walk to a locked door on a busy city street, and ring the buzzer once, only to hear it swing open, and be ushered inside a blindingly dark and deafeningly quiet room.

The entrance to The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

When I tell people about this place, I always struggle for just the right descriptors - I'm sure people call it "weird" or "creepy", but it's not really those things, and every bit those things at the same time. Very few places strike me as "forbidden", and as I wandered around the windowless, curtained rooms of this modern museum, I couldn't help but feel like I was somehow given permission to see this place, it is so occult, so secretive.



Realistically, it is open to the public nearly every day, and for a modest admission fee you are free to roam the rooms and even have some Russian tea and cookies in an upstairs tearoom.

But if the daunting, quiet, dark atmosphere isn't enough to throw you, the exhibits probably will. It's a self-titled "educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge", but what that knowledge is, and the degree of its provability or scientific integrity is often debatable.



Topics from old folk remedies to humans growing horns, to tiny sculptures within the eyes of needles, to a very large and involved display about the (alleged) capture of the (alleged) Deprong Mori, a bat-like creature who can use its sonar to move through solid objects.

I can't say enough good, strange, or fanatical things about this place. If I lived in Southern California I would definitely be a regular patron, and go a few times a year.


There is a great book written about the museum, which I read a couple of years ago, and wrote a fairly lengthy journal entry about. If you've been to the museum, I highly recommend the book, and if you haven't been there, book a flight now.

Edited to add: here is a Wikipedia article on the MJT.

glass eye

It's not often you hear of photographers that construct their own cameras, let alone cameras that are made from skulls or contain infant human hearts or HIV positive blood. Wayne Martin Belger happens to do all of the above. It would be a gross misinterpretation to take his usage of controversial materials as shock art. Each pinhole camera is masterfully created with precision, purpose and profound respectful meaning.
Not only are the cameras themselves amazing works of art, but the photographs that are taken with them are stunning and haunting.
Each camera has a brief description of the meaning behind the concept as well as the materials used.

two worlds

The Sheep Child
by James Dickey, 1966

Farm boys wild to couple
With anything with soft-wooded trees
With mounds of earth mounds
Of pine straw will keep themselves off
Animals by legends of their own:
In the hay-tunnel dark
And dung of barns, they will
Say I have heard tell

That in a museum in Atlanta
Way back in a corner somewhere
There's this thing that's only half
Sheep like a woolly baby
Pickled in alcohol because
Those things can't live his eyes
Are open but you can't stand to look
I heard from somebody who ...

But this is now almost all
Gone. The boys have taken
Their own true wives in the city,
The sheep are safe in the west hill
Pasture but we who were born there
Still are not sure. Are we,
Because we remember, remembered
In the terrible dust of museums?

Merely with his eyes, the sheep-child may
Be saying saying

I am here, in my father's house.
I who am half of your world, came deeply
To my mother in the long grass
Of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight
Listening for foxes. It was something like love
From another world that seized her
From behind, and she gave, not Iifting her head
Out of dew, without ever looking, her best
Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her face
Farther into the chill of the earth, and in a sound
Of sobbing of something stumbling
Away, began, as she must do,
To carry me.  I woke, dying,

In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes
Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment
The great grassy world from both sides,
Man and beast in the round of their need,
And the hill wind stirred in my wool,
My hoof and my hand clasped each other,
I ate my one meal
Of milk, and died
Staring. From dark grass I came straight

To my father's house, whose dust
Whirls up in the halls for no reason
When no one comes piling deep in a hellish mild corner,
And, through my immortal waters,
I meet the sun's grains eye
To eye, and they fail at my closet of glass.
Dead, I am most surely living
In the minds of farm boys: I am he who drives
Them like wolves from the hound bitch and calf
And from the chaste ewe in the wind.
They go into woods into bean fields they go
Deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me,
They groan they wait they suffer
Themselves, they marry, they raise their kind.

--------

This is one of my very favorite poems.  You can read some writing about it here.  The mood Dickey sets is amazing, tangible, realistic, and unsettling.  I could almost believe that it were possible for human and animal to create some kind of doomed life this way.

leather-bound beasts

More Walton Ford goodness. Actually, this ,admittedly, makes me a little sad, mostly because I don't have the kind of ducats necessary to purchase his new book, Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra. There are two editions, but the prices are the likes of nothing I've ever seen in a newly printed book. The first "art" hardcover is going for a whopping $1800, and the "collector's edition is selling for a staggering $7000. More on the books at TASCHEN's website. I was lucky enough to snag his first book for the cover price a few years back, but I see it's going for over $300 on Amazon.

tiny legions

"Bulla's photograph of hundreds of children wearing gas masks was not meant to be ghoulish, a commentary on war or lost innocence, but rather exemplified a reason for pride--the country was blessed with well-trained, well-equipped and obviously courageous young fighters. "

-- excerpt from Propaganda and Dreams

are we still married?

I know that animation from the Brothers Quay isn't exactly news - but I thought I'd share one of my favorite shorts of theirs, a music video for His Name is Alive. I think the haunting, off-kilter music is just absolutely appropriate for the animation. Plus my love for battered old stuffed bunny toys will never subside.

still life

By now I'm sure that it's no secret that we here at Darkened Forest have an affinity for all things taxidermy, especially old, haggard, Victorian historical taxidermy. Perhaps this is a contradiction in interests being that we are both vegetarians and aren't particularly keen on the killing of animals. But maybe it's by sheer adoration of the animal form that draws us to their likeness, stuffed or otherwise.
All that said, I've found that THIS SITE is a very comprehensive resource on the the history of modern taxidermy, for institutional, scientific as well aesthetic interests.

flying firecracker flirtation

Fast, flashy, flighty little birds, and a woman whose job I envy.

(How could the females resist, with those moves, those crackly sounds, and those hot yellow pants?)

bugger

Igor Siwanowicz has amassed a staggeringly large portfolio of otherworldly creatures that live right under our feet. Capturing images of insects (among other critters) through a macro lens, Igor manages to show the real beauty of nature in all of it's chromatic and detailed glory.

What strikes me most about this collection is just how many variations of mantids there are in the world, all of which look like they should be carrying a laser-gun. Pew pew

unholy stench

If you tire of the popular bevy of home-scenting products which reek of vanilla, freesia, or raspberry, you may want to try a selection from the Douglas Little Company.

That being said, I will openly admit to being not only a hardened cynic, but a snobbish one, when it comes to fragrance. I am a dabbler/merchant in the fragrance arena myself, and feel that much of the soul of the perfumery industry lies in the poetry of perfume, the seduction of luxurious packaging, the romance of words woven together to create a mental tapestry before the consumer even smells the product.

Even so, I am intrigued by these lovely candles, I have smelled one or two before, and they are quite nice. I am interested in both the Winchester and the Ex Libris scents, given my near-obsessive penchant toward leather/wood/oakmoss scents, and may have to give one or both a try. The debossed boxes and overhanging labels, coupled with lovely typefaces and old ornaments look very nice, and I find it to be a very visually successful line of products.

Post-Script: not to diminish the experience of the smoldering woodsy tones and hand-through-the-fire etching on the glass of the "Salem" candle (above), but I wonder if Mr. Little realizes that no one was actually ever burned as a witch in Salem?

Post-Post-Script: They were actually hanged, for the most part, but I suppose there is little poetry in the earthy smell of wet leather gloves, rough-hewn wood, and the tenacious aroma of hand-wound flaxen rope. But I could be wrong.

a little bit noir

Spanish photographer Eugenio Recuenco creates dark, moody worlds inhabited by stoic, doll-like people.

His work shows up in fashion magazines, advertising campaigns, exhibitions, and even musicians get in on the action (see the Rammstein photo shoot on his website).

I love the tableau-style work that mimics old paintings and photos; the color is eye-squintingly dark and undefined, it's completely unapologetic in that regard, it's great. I find the "15th hour" series to be disturbingly humorous in a "what will she do next?" sort of way, and there is a wry smirk of kitsch in the voyeuristic/fetishism-tinged photos as well.

old is new

Continuing the theme of artificial artifacts and pickled cryptids, feast your peepers on the work of ALEX CF. He has quite a capable handle on creating authentic looking pieces that really seem to have history to them.
Before you go on your next vampire or werewolf hunt, I'd suggest consulting Alex for all your supply needs.