Phantasmaphile

Happy Holidays

Hello, Phantasmaphile friends:

I hope your holidays have been happy indeed.  I will be in New Orleans for a few days, so posts will be postponed for a bit.  Speak to you all next week.

Much love,
Pam

Glen Baxter

Glen Baxter 

The holiday season can be stressful, so why not enjoy a little levity, courtesy of Glen Baxter?  His work is surreal and strange and makes me giggle.

Amalia Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains  "The Curandera's Botanica"  2008

I wish I could find more images of Amalia Mesa-Bains' powerful work.  I discovered her yesterday at the tasty "NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith" exhibition at PS1.  She creates large scale altars and installations, heaped with statuettes, bottles, photographs, grains, herbs, and other lovingly applied details.  Upon entering the room where her piece is housed, one is awash with a sense of awe and honoring (the scent of sage and lavender in particular is a potent device).  She's the Mark Dion of the spirit world.

Aaron Storck

 
Aaron Storck  "Table Scene:  Witch Spirit Chase Crazy Feasters From Table"  2008

Aaron Storck is a mixed media artist who explores the relationships between magic and consumption, nature and trash.  I'm impressed by the tension in his work, and the visual mayhem he creates.  He also does multimedia art performances, which I'd love to see some day.

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Jon Rappleye

Jon Rappleye  "In Splendid Song Poised on Slender Stem and Crimson Bloom"  2008

White deer have profound personal significance for me, so you know I nearly levitated out of my chair when I came across the work of Jon Rappleye.  I don't know what else to say really, except "siiiiiiiiiiiigh." 

This reminds me, I truly need to figure out a way to visit the Seneca White Deer reservation in upstate NY.  They could really use donations, too!

Via

Alison Blickle

Alison Blickle  "Findhorn and the Garden of Eden"  2008

Alison Blickle's paintings are the perfect combination of naughtiness and unbridled mania.  There is a crackling energy to them that sets me abuzz.  This piece in particular makes me think of Pierre-Auguste Cot's "The Storm."

Kate O'Brien

Kate O'Brien  "Beth Incognito"

Kate O'Brien's photographs make me squeal with joy.  Her meticulous attention to detail and fine technical skills bring her wild imaginings into the real world.  Delirious and decadent.

Ai Kijima show

Ai Kijima  "Jet"  2008

Quilting queen Ai Kijima has a new show up at Franklin Parrasch Gallery through January 10th.  Don't miss the opportunity to view these found fabric collages in person, and try and resist the urge to wrap yourself up in her vivid, invented worlds.

Trinie Dalton signing - tonight!

The miraculous Trinie Dalton is signing copies of her new book, MYTHTYM, tonight at Den.  I don't think I'll be able to make it - darn.  But I will be reviewing the book here soon, so watch this space.

(Thanks, John and Will!)

Mike Cockrill

Mike Cockrill  "Heartland"  2005

Mike Cockrill's work rings my bell on several levels.  Stylistically, I love his loose brushwork: it's a bit Munch, a bit Van Gogh, a bit 60s fashion illustration.  Content-wise, I am crazy for anything that depicts adolescence as a mysterious, metamorphic time, and Cockrill does it marvelously.

Yu Jinyoung

Yu Jinyoung "A family in disguise"  2008

Images from Yu Jinyoung's recent show are circulating a great deal in the digital ether right now, and with good reason.  With their transparent bodies and sad, sweet faces, these sculptures look like flowery ghosts from a cartoon dream. 

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Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson  "Baphometh"  2005

You know, I really have a soft spot for Marilyn Manson.  Though best known as a musician, he has over the years become a true Renaissance man (or perhaps "Re-mort-ance" would be more appropriate, given his decidedly dark point of view).  His watercolor paintings are beautifully vivid and fantastically strange, and remind me a bit of Clemente.  Manson also has his own brand of absinthe, called Mansinthe, and is working on his own film about Lewis Carroll and Alice called Phantasmagoria.  He is also, for the record, wickedly funny.  I would love to see this man with his own talk show.  If Rollins and Costello can do it, so can he, and it would probably be way more entertaining.

Jon MacNair

Jon MacNair  "Harmless" 

Jon MacNair's pictures of monstrous beings have a certain joy to them which I find surprising and appealing.  They feel like the sort of creatures one might find doodled in a school notebook, but then enhanced via an adult eye. 

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Crossing Midnight

I just finished reading the comics series Crossing Midnight by Mike Carey, and I really, really dug it.  It starts off in modern day Japan, when twins Kai and Toshi discover that their bloodline is somehow involved with the kami, or spirits.  What follows is a powerful story about vengeance, filled to the brim with mythological characters, deadly swordplay, and loads of magic.  It has gorgeous visuals to boot, provided by Jim Fern and Eric Nguyen, and covers by art hero J.H. Williams III (illustrator of my beloved Promethea series).  Highly recommended.

Carlo Van de Roer

Carlo Van de Roer  "03" from the Aura Portrait Machine Project  2008

Have you ever had your aura photographed?  I have not, though I must admit I find the concept intriguing.  However, any time I've encountered a New Age shop that offers the service, I always balk at the price - $65 indeed!  Anyway, photographer Carlo Van de Roer takes aura photography and elevates it into the realm of art.  Whether or not you believe in the supernatural aspect of it, the vibrant colors and fine portraiture are stunning to behold.

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Four Yip

Four Yip

I am pining away for flowers, and it's not even winter yet.  Luckily Four Yip's nature lovin' work has given me a nice fix to get me through the day.  Beauteous.

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The Tempest

James Henry Nixon  "The Tempest"

Looking back on 2008, it seems I've had a bit of a Tempestuous year.

It all started in April with Yinka Shonibare MBE's show, "Prospero's Monsters" at James Cohan Gallery, which was a look at the famous Shakespearean characters through the lens of colonization and imperialism. 

Then in September, we saw a version of The Tempest at Classic Stage Company starring Mandy Patamkin, which was staggeringly good.  A minimalist square set, accented only by sand and twinkling stars provided a perfect foil for the impassioned performances of the cast.  It also contained one of the most moving wedding scenes I have ever witnessed.

A few weeks later, I watched the Greenaway film Prospero's Books for the first time.  To call this film sumptuous and visionary is to grossly understate the case.  The text is a deconstructed version of the play, with dialogue and plot points sort of collaged together against eye-boggling cinematography.  The whole thing takes places in a watery, Venetian styled palace, and is filled with ruffled costumes, fantastical dancers, and gorgeous, animated books.  Incidentally, you can buy a book about the art direction and behind the scenes details of the film, called Prospero's Books: A Film of the Shakespeare's The Tempest, which I highly recommend.  The actual film itself is much harder to come by, but you should have some luck on eBay or, as in my case, through a friend with great taste.  Hopefully Criterion or someone will release it again some day soon.

Lastly, the above inspired me to reread issue 75 of Sandman.  Which is really really good, but that's all I'll say about that, for those who have not read it.

I suppose I'll complete this post, appropriately enough with:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Cornelie Tollens

Cornelie Tollens

I know I should be in a turkey frame of mind, but swans are just irresistible to me.  This forest series by Cornelie Tollens is heavenly, isn't it?  Incidentally (and with apologies to my vegetarian readers), I once heard that the Queen of England eats a swan every year on her birthday.  Don't know if it's true, but I find the idea to be completely audacious and decadent and right out of Grimm's.

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