Greetings from Florida, where I'll be keeping warm this week. Posting will be suspended while I'm away, but I wanted to poke my head in quickly to recommend the Ringling Museum and grounds, if you ever find yourself in Sarasota. John and Mable Ringling's mansion, Ca d'Zan, is a splendid neo-Venetian marvel, both Circus Museums are fascinating, and the Ringling Museum of Art is filled with an impressive collection, from antiquity to the modern age. The property alone is worth the trip, filled with banyan trees, flowers, and my personal favorite, the Dwarf Garden. Would love to come back here again.
I was invited to do a Valentine's Day guest post on the Etsy blog, and it's up now. It was so much fun to write, and a thrill to get to give some more much-deserved attention to some of my favorite artists - many of whom have been featured here before. Thanks so much to Alison, and welcome Etsy readers!
Plenty more where that came from. Full gallery here. If you are interested in purchasing any of the work, do drop me a line at phantasmaphile [at] gmail . com
Also, be sure to save the evening of Saturday, February 18th for Observatory's Lunar-themed 3rd Anniversary Fundraiser Party. More info to come, so watch this space...
The exquisite Bloodmilk posted about Charmaine Olivia's solo show, Ritual, recently, and I was so taken with it I thought it merited another mention. Olivia's been making pictures of witchy women for a while now, and these new dark beauties are a welcome addition to her painted family. I'm especially in love with her artifacts series: tiny magic windows in occult shapes. The show is up now through Feb 4th at SF's Shooting Gallery.
The Pornographic Arcades Project: Adaptation, Automation, and the Evolution of Times Square (1965-1975) Amy Herzog Date: Sunday, January 29 Time: 6:00 PM Admission: $10
Herzog's talk challenges our notion of what makes a city (sex)—and who constitutes a voyeur: Motion picture “peeping” machines have existed since the birth of cinema, and were often stocked with salacious titles. Public arcades devoted to pornographic peep booths only began to appear in the late 1960s, however, although once established, they proliferated wildly, becoming ubiquitous features in urban landscapes... The Pornographic Arcades Project is a work-in-progress, asking what a study of pornographic peep show arcades might reveal about the cultural imaginary of the late twentieth century.
Amy Herzog is associate professor of media studies and coordinator of the film studies program at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film. She recently curated "Peeps," an exhibition at The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, on the dialogue between pornographic peep loops and contemporary art practices. (qc-cuny.academia.edu/AmyHerzog)
Parasites: A User's Guide Sharon Shattuck Date: Sunday, February 26 Time: 6:00 PM Admission: $10
Parasites challenges the notions of body, friend, inside, and out—and it’s funny! (Not to mention a tad horrific...) The word “parasite” comes with loads of vile connotations, but in nature, nothing is purely good or evil. In the 27-minute experimental documentary Parasites: A User’s Guide, Shattuck embarks on a journey to decode some of the most misunderstood creatures on earth. The dramatic rise in autoimmune diseases, asthma, and allergies since the turn of the last century has confounded scientists, but some researchers think they have uncovered the key to controlling the skyrocketing rates: tiny parasitic worms called helminths... Through the seeming oxymoron of the “helpful parasite,” Sharon questions the nature of our relationship with parasites—and suggests a new paradigm for the future.
Sharon Shattuck is a producer/director/animator with Sweet Fern Productions, the production company she founded. Her previous experience includes work with the Smithsonian Institute, the Field Museum, NPR’s On The Media, and internships with WNYC’s Radiolab, and the BBC World Service/Stakeholder Forum. She has an undergraduate degree in forest ecology and a graduate degree in documentary and broadcast journalism. Her first film, the short Parasites: A User’s Guide (2010), was an official selection of the Traverse City Film Festival, the Camden International Film Festival, the Michigan Film Festival, and the International Science Film Festival. In addition to her work with Sweet Fern, she is a member of the creative team at Wicked Delicate Films.(sweetfernproductions.com / wickedelicate.com)
The Pathological Sublime and The Anatomical Unconscious Mark Dery Date: Sunday, April 29 Time: 6:00 PM Admission: $10
Celebrating the publication of his essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (University of Minnesota Press), cultural critic and cult author Mark Dery will lecture— with unforgettable slides—on the hallucinatory Crypt of the Cappuchin monks in Rome, the uncanny wax mannequins at La Specola in Florence, and the 19th-century Chinese artist Lam Qua's paintings of patients with eye-poppingly bizarre tumors, which so fascinated Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. that he wrote an article exhorting all “worshipers of morbid anatomy” to see the paintings, a textbook example of what Holmes called “the pathological sublime.” Join Mark for a dark ride through the Pathological Sublime and the Anatomical Unconscious, and pick up a copy of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, the book Boing Boing called “an intellectual journey through our darkest desires and strangest inclinations.”
Mark Dery is a cultural critic. He is best known for his writings on the politics of popular culture in books such as The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, Flame Wars, and Culture Jamming. He has been a professor of journalism at New York University, a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, and a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. His latest book, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, is “a head-spinning intellectual ride through American dreams and American nightmares” and will be available at his Cornelia Street Observatory engagement. (thoughtcatalog.com/author/mark-dery)
If you love Radio Lab, Cabinet magazine, the Surreal, the quirky, and the macabre, you'll definitely dig Cornelia Street Observatory.
All shows are Sunday at 6 PM, tickets are $10. Please RSVP to 212.989.9319. For more, click here.
Lynne Naylor's work is like Mary Blair on hallucinogens. Like Blair, Naylor is an animator who's worked on such canonical shows as Ren & Stimpy (as co-creator), Powerpuff Girls, and Clone Wars. But I love that in her more personal pieces, she really lets her fabulist flag fly. Her paintings of witches, goddesses, and their kin would be equally at home in fairyland or Haight-Ashbury. Her show, "Eros" opens alongside Nicoletta Ceccoli's "Girls Don't Cry" at Roq la Rue this Saturday the 14th.
I've written about Museum of Lost Wonder creator, Jeff Hoke, before and was lucky enough to have him come present at Observatory a while back. Glory of glories, Hoke has decided to bring his vision into the material world and build an actual institution. That's right, a real Museum of Lost Wonder for all of us to visit. If you click through the virtual tour on his site, you'll see that actualizing this incredible alchemical-emporium-meets-Wonka-Factory-with-a-nod-to-the-MJT-by-way-of-the-Met will be an incredible feat to pull off. But if anyone can do it, it's Jeff Hoke.
To raise money for this hall of marvels, he now offers some pretty sweet membership packages on his site. Have a look, and then join, why don't you? There are 7 levels of membership, as detailed below:
All museum members will receive a Membership Folio that includes:
*Personalized membership certificate, hand illuminated with your name and membership grade
*Exclusive enameled Brass member's badge.
*Official membership card entitling the bearer to lifetime free admission to the museum when opened.
*A colorful, 16-page monograph showing detailed plans of how the Museum of Lost Wonder would translate into a physical museum. It explains in depth how the museum would be laid out and what experiences visitors could expect.
*Additional Ideal Building Plan monograph, showing the Museum of Lost Wonder in its ideal form.
*Regular notification of special events and museum milestones as they occur.
I've waxed lyrical about my love for Trinie Dalton's writing before. Her new book of short stories, Baby Geisha, was just released, and you should be reading it, too. It's a bit more, ermmm adult, than her previous books, but still with her signature dose of mystic dust and uncanny details. And, it must be said, the book itself is a beautiful object to hold and behold. Small, deckle edged, with a satiny, prismatic cover. Bravo to Two Dollar Radio for the lovely production.
Mikalojus Povilas Vilutis Illustration from the book "The White-Necked Rabbit" 2005
The ever-mazing A Journey Round My Skull just featured the work of Mikalojus Povilas Vilutis, and it's so spectacular I thought it merited an echo post. A master silkscreener and digital artist from Lithuania, Vilutis illustrates children's books with a decidedly mature point of view. As he puts it,
I create for myself. Not for children and not for adults. When an artist draws what he himself finds beautiful, he tells the truth. You can’t lie to children.
Reminds me of Maurice Sendak's numerous quotes about how fierce and emotionally charged childhood is. I love the idea of creating storybook images that are sophisticated and challenging.
Collage done well makes me weak in the knees. John Clowder's work is lush and wonderfully peculiar. Using elements from "obsolete adverts, morbid medical texts, bone atlases, and zoographic curios," as he puts it, he recreates mythic beasts and fairy tales - and sometimes invents his own. I love the suspended logic he has the viewer play with. Why is there an anatomical head buried in this mermaid grotto, for example? I don't know, and I'm having too much fun looking at it to care.
Madeline von Foerster "Felled Forest Reliquary" 2011
I've been meaning to post about this for weeks. John Zorn, ingenious composer and all around musical mage, has gathered an impressive group of his favorite contemporary artists together for his show, "The Obsessions Collective: Works By Artists of Extreme Interest" up now through Jan 21st at Cavan-Morris. The show includes work by Phantasmaphile pals David Chaim Smith and Madeline von Foerster, amongst many other talents:
John Zorn presents The Obsessions Collective: Works by Artists of Extreme Interest
“Since the beginning of time, special individuals have been compelled to create objects that seemingly have no function or purpose. Whether channeling the spirits, communicating with higher forces, wrestling with demons, defining themselves, appeasing the Gods or working through their own inner thoughts and passions, creation has been their only motivation, the work their only reward.
From this concept, the Obsessions Collective was founded and curated by New York composer John Zorn, himself an eclectic art collector. Zorn has made a second career of befriending and encouraging many young up-and-coming artists around the world. Created in 2010, Obsessions Collective functions as a support system for artists who, with some exceptions, have not yet found gallery representation but who are dedicated to making art, and who are compelled to do what they do. Honest, passionate, imaginative and technically proficient, these artists work independently and around the established art scene, without the support or assistance from patrons or grants. “ - Paraphrased from ObsessionsCollective.com
Cavin-Morris Gallery is pleased to work with John Zorn on exposing the Obsessions Collective… work that goes from introspective to hard-core in range. In reality, it is a collective of individual visions and paths united by the keen interest and eye of John Zorn himself.
Artists represented will be Heung-Heung Chin, Valeria Ghezzi, Beatrice Glow, Scott Irvine, Patrick Jacobs, Kyung Jeon, Bea Kwan Lim, Michael Macioce, Kate Manheim, John McVicker, Zaria Forman, Zena Pesta, Raha Raissnia, David Chaim Smith, Yamataka Eye, and Madeline von Foerster from the Collective and Emery Blagdon, Shane Keena, Lubos Plny, Sandra Sheehy, Avital Sheffer, and Tim Wehrle chosen by John Zorn from Cavin-Morris Gallery.
For further information please contact Shari Cavin, Mimi Kano, or Randall Morris at 212 226 3768, e: info@cavinmorris.com.
I've been a bit of a lunatic lately, in the etymological sense of the word. We've got our moon show, LUNATION: Art on the Moon, opening at Observatory this Saturday, from 7-10pm. Please join us! There will be wine and special lunar cocktails for sale, courtesy of Julianne Zaleta from Herbal Alchemy.
Julianne also created a special, limited edition, moon perfume for the show, called Moonrise:
The Greek goddess, Artemis, who represents the new moon, is portrayed in this fragrance by the addition of wormwood (an artemesia) in the top note, supported by bergamot and petitgrain. Luminous jasmine forms the basis of the heart along with honey and rose, and sandalwood and frankincense form the base chord.
There will be some bottles for sale for the duration of the show. I've already reserved mine. *Swoon*
I'll be selling a magickal ritual tea I created called LUNA VISION, which comes with a huge piece of selenite. Pictures to come, but here's a little taste:
I'm also going to be teaching a class on Moon Magick at Observatory on Sunday, Jan 22nd from 3-5pm. Drop me an email if you'd like to attend:
Moon Magick Ritual Workshop with Pam Grossman
Remedios Varo "To Be Reborn: 1960
Date: Sunday, January 22nd Time: 3-5pm Admission: $20 Presented by Phantasmaphile
***You must RSVP to phantasmaphile [at] gmail.com if you’d like to attend, as space is limited
Ancient cultures from around the world have looked to the moon as a source of deep and potent power. By working with her phases and honoring her myths, one can learn how to manifest personal transformation and glean profound wisdom.
Tonight we’ll ready ourselves for the first new moon of the year with an evening of lunar ritual and contemplation. We’ll explore the spirit of the moon through story, symbol, and spell work, with special focus on Hecate, the goddess of darkness and magick. The evening will include ritual, meditation, and discussion, as well as teachings regarding how to start your own moon magick practice. You’ll learn how to work with the specific energies of each lunar phase, thereby effecting meaningful change in your life.
Please bring a candle and holder, as well as any altar objects you like. Please also bring a cushion, pillow, or fabric, as we will be sitting on the floor (chairs will be available for those who need). Note-taking is welcome. This workshop is open to men and women, novices and advanced practitioners alike.
Pam Grossman is an independent curator and lifelong student of magical practice and history. An initiate in the wise woman tradition, she is currently apprenticing with green witch Robin Rose Bennett. She is the creator of Phantasmaphile, a blog which specializes in art and culture with an esoteric or fantastical bent. Her group art shows, Fata Morgana: The New Female Fantasists, VISION QUEST, and Alchemically Yours have been featured by such outlets as Boing Boing, CREATIVE TIME, Time Out New York, Juxtapoz, Arthur, 20×200, UrbanOutfitters.com, and Neil Gaiman’s Twitter. She is a co-founder of Observatory, where her programming aims to explore mysticism via a scholarly yet accessible approach.
Lastly, I leave you with a moon mix to get you in the moon mood:
Remedios Varo "Portrait of Doctor Ignacio Chavez" 1957
This month we have much to celebrate, for there will be two - count 'em TWO - shows opening featuring the work of my patron (matron?) saint, Remedios Varo. Sadly for me, they are both in California, but I'm thrilled nonetheless that this long overlooked phenom is going to be getting more love. The first one opens this weekend at Frey Norris:
The first exhibition of Remedios Varo to ever take place in the western United States, Indelible Fables illuminates the ever-imaginative and prescient world of this surrealist artist. Spanish born Varo certainly died prematurely, by heart-attack in 1963, but in a short career she had acquired a cult-like following among friends in Mexico City, her adopted home. Many of these friends were involved in an informal investigation into esoteric religion and the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff and his student Peter Ouspensky. As part of this soteriological pursuit, with close friend, the celebrated English artist Leonora Carrington, Varo created some of the most inventive painted scenarios of any of the artists associated with surrealism. Varo would remain something of a marginalized, but popular figure in Latin American art right through the 1990's, when a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC elevated global awareness of her work and in part catalyzed an ever accelerating level of scholarship and market demand. In 2008, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City hosted a comprehensive retrospective exhibition, timed to coincide with an international symposium, with papers delivered by scholars from throughout Latin America, the United States and Europe. A monograph, "The Five Keys to the Secret World of Remedios Varo", was published at this time, with essays by six contributing authors. The Frey Norris exhibition will include a variety of rare oil paintings, drawings, objects and ephemera.
The next show is actually a retrospective on female surrealists in Mexico and the US opening at LACMA, called In Wonderland. Read it and drool:
In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States
Resnick Pavilion
January 29, 2012–May 6, 2012
North America represented a place free from European traditions for women Surrealists from the United States and Mexico, and émigrés fleeing war-torn Europe. While their male counterparts usually cast women as objects for their delectation and imagination, female Surrealists delved into their own subconscious and dreams. The knowledge they derived from such exploration empowered them to create extraordinary visual images, both personal and universal. Their art was primarily about identity: portraits, double portraits, couple portraits, self-portraits, self-referential images, and masquerades that demonstrate in deceptively straightforward as well as ambiguously abstract terms their trials and pleasures.
Arranged thematically, approximately 175 works in a variety of media date from 1931 to 1968. A handful of slightly later examples demonstrate Surrealism's historical overlap and influence on the feminist movement. Iconic figures such as Louise Bourgeois, Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Lee Miller, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning, and Remedios Varo are represented, along with lesser known or newly discovered practitioners, including Maya Deren, Helen Lundeberg, María Izquierdo, Jacqueline Lamba, and Janet Sobel.
Happy New Year, Phantasmaphiles! As you may have noticed, I took the holidays off, and tried my best to unplug and recharge. I'm excited to be back, and have some great news and fabulous artists to share with you over the coming days.
First up is Agnes Pelton, an early 20th century artist and founder of the Transcendental Painting Group. Her work is primarily abstract, though stars, flowers, and the occasional swan make appearences. A spiritual painter, her work seems to blend mystic imagery from different traditions alongside her own personal symbols. It feels new age in the best sense - and was created far before that term gained mass acceptance. I love the way it feels celestial, yet grounded in the body, and universal yet distinctly feminine.
creator, 
, was just released, and you should be reading it, too. It's a bit more, ermmm adult, than her previous books, but still with her signature dose of mystic dust and uncanny details. And, it must be said, the book itself is a beautiful object to hold and behold. Small, deckle edged, with a satiny, prismatic cover. Bravo to 
. It's a gorgeous book of essays and color plates which compare and explore the work of these four visionary painters. Highly recommended.
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