The Fiction Project

So, as I’ve said previously, I’m participating in “The Fiction Project” which is described as

“Share a story.

Calling all authors, ‘zine makers, comic-book writers, diarists, poets and storytellers: Our library needs your words!

The Fiction Project is an opportunity to tell stories in a different way by fusing text and visual art. Add your voice to this year’s coast-to-coast tour and create new work grounded in the act of writing. After traveling across the country, the Fiction Project will enter into the Brooklyn Art Library’s narrative collection, archiving your stories to share them with the public.

Anyone – from anywhere in the world – can be a part of the project. To participate and receive a journal that will travel with the 2011 tour, start by choosing a theme to the right.”

 

My theme is “It will be fun.  I swear.”  I’m kinda trying to decide what to do for it.  They want 51% of the moleskin to be handwritten text (not a big deal), but I’m not sure what to write about.

 

Suggestions?

 

I’ve been thinking about the zombie!bunny apocalypse or detailing the misadventures of Stymie (all Justin’s fault).

 

Maybe both?

 

I can see it now–haiku poetry about the ending of everything and death brought on the rotting, softly plophop of zombie!bunnies.

 

So cute.  So deadly.  So smelly.

 

In my defense, there hasn’t been a zombie!bunny novel yet (as far as I know); the best that I can come up with in that department is Bunnicula.  Obligatory Wikipedia article over————————->here.

 

Did y’all know that there was a third book in the series?  I mean, so few people know about The Celery Stalks at Midnight, but I’ve never heard of Howliday Inn.

 

Actually, there’s a bunch of Bunnicula books.  Maybe there’s a zombie!bunny in there somewhere?

 

With Stymie, I’m not sure what I would write about.  I have this weird thing going in my head that he’s very sad and morose–kinda like Eeyore–but that he bounced and drip-drops like one of those post-egg but pre-limb Digimon.

 

The Husband and I were also playing with Stymie’s plushie rendition and decided that he can fly, but in order to fly, he has to flip himself upside-down.  And, then, he kinda putputputs rather than zoooooooooooooms.

 

Maybe, that should be the plan; somehow, have the “It will be fun.  I swear.” as part of the shennanigans that Stymie and his other awkward friends get into and have little pencil/pastel drawings and plushie things in there.

 

*plots*

 

This might work.

 

I’d still be happy for suggestions or prompts, so feel free to share or suggest.

 

*tra lala la las away*

Making up for the spamming…

It seems like everything I’ve been posting of last has been promotional spam.

I apologize.  That isn’t fair to y’all who wander through here looking for weird squid-made art to look at.  ’Cause, really, why would y’all want to read the stuff I write for Handmade News; it’s more than a little dull, I think.

*POINTS*  See!  See what I did there?  It’s insidious and nefarious.  That promotion–stuff–is infiltrating every aspect of my life, and it has got to stop.

The real point of this post, aside from profuse apologies, was to show y’all what deconstructing pierott looked like in action.  It was accepted to an online magazine, which I’ll pass along when it’s going to be published!, and they wanted a short video for it! \o/  So, here it is–

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

The piece itself if over in my wearable art section along with several of my other pieces, but in case y’all don’t remember what it looks like in its non-worn form, here are the images.

My lovely model in the video is my friend Genna.  The model in the photographs is my lovely model and flatmate Ian.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

deconstructing pierott

2008
3’6”x1’6”, dimensions vary
chicken wire, feather trim, tulle, ribbon, paper, jingle bells

deconstructing pierott is a wearable art piece that deconstructs the idea of the pierrot from commedia dell’arte while simultaneously referencing late 19th and early 20th century women acrobats and gesturing at the movie Prophecy. In its deconstruction, this piece also addresses the issue of being female, its restrictions, and the way in which women, even today, are displayed. The piece also jingles when it is worn to replicate the sound of the zany and the capering of the pierott.

Mostly a writerly post instead of a studio post–

Kinda wrapping up my day and making certain that things that people asked me for are where they can be found relatively easily.

 

In theory.

 

Part the first is a couple of things I wrote during our Writing Prompt interludes during the bi-weekly Crit Group.

 

Writing Prompt:  scrump

 

There was a slithery noise.

 

He looked.  He listened.  He waited, but nothing happened.

 

As he turned to pull the box off of the shelf, he heard the noise again—dry, raspy, papery—like snakeskin moving across a wooden floor with an underlying thump that was reminiscent of tapping on flax paper.

 

I don’t wanna know.

 

There was another raspy-skitter, which seemed to originate from beneath a table in the far corner of the old garage where it was always darker, colder, where small voices could sometimes be heard cooing and chortling.

 

Where sometimes the bones of small animals lay scattered in the dust.

 

I’m not going over there.

 

But he found himself moving towards the sound as it intensified, amplified, added to itself an odd chirrupy-coo and what seemed like a more intentional thud.

 

He eased himself down onto his knees, somewhere believing that if he moved slowly enough, quietly enough the inevitable wouldn’t be inevitable, that the bad feeling he had would only be paranoia and baseless fear.

 

He crawled forward and saw far in the back, in the darkest, furthest corner something moving, pulsating, looking as if it were trying to wriggle free of its constraints.  Part of him wanted to touch the shadowy-movement, but the smarter part—the reptilian-brain part, the part that remembered what it was like to be hunted and killed for food—recoiled.

 

***

 

Writing Prompt:  head in a bag

 

She was riffling through the attic boxes, covered in dust and cobwebs and generally sneezing every few minutes, when she finally found the box that she was searching for.  Reaching inside, she pulled out a stack of old, sepia-toned photographs, shuffling through them until she found It: gleaming tubes not diminished by time or photographic reproduction, a dull, lifeless black lens eye, and beauty-white, sewn flesh.

 

She had found It standing amongst a group of overall-covered legs nearly obscured by dust and smoke, a factory looming ominously in the background.  In the picture, It was fully bodied, little arms and legs frozen in marionette-like motion.

 

Akimbo and awkward and about ten other words that began with “A”.

 

It was hideous and glorious:  the culmination of the industrial process, as if industrialization had become creation become abomination.

 

Looking at the photograph, the hideous little form, she could feel the constant, overwhelming heat of the factory baking her skin, stretching it taunt and uncomfortable across her face and hands.

 

Feel the ever-present anxiety of men who knew that they were playing at being God and that they would have to pay for it one day with blood and fire and screams.

 

Could hear—could feel—the sounds of the factory on that last day.

 

She could feel the ka-chunk of glass and plastic and metal being formed and enclosed.

 

The whirwhirwhirwhirwhirwhir of the needles sewing dead flesh to simulated bone.

 

The screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch of it all going to Hell, and the patterpattepatterthumppatter of thousands of tiny metal-shod feet as they turned upon those that created them, people who screamed and begged for mercy, forgiveness, something other than the sharp snick-slice of tiny fingers or the tumbling crunch and riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip of becoming components for another batch of hell-spawn Ompa Loompas.

 

She knew those sounds, knew them with an initimacy that the photograph didn’t lend, although this picture was before that knowing, before those sounds were commonplace and those little creatures had revolted.

 

It was before her father had brought that first head home, small rips in its scalp with imperfectly sewn seams.

 

Before those sounds and those creatures were part of an ordinary Thursday afternoon.

 

***

 

So those are they.  I really thing there are some potential story ideas in there.  Either that or I really just feeling Lovecraftian. <—-wooooooooorrisome

 

I also purchased some knitting needles ’cause I’m going to teach myself to knit. \o?

Last weekend, I made my first codex book. Out of envelopes, so it has pockets and writable surfaces. *feels very, very clever*  I should take pictures of it.  I’m kinda proud of it. \o/

And, so I don’t forget, Apollo (Crit Group de-facto leader-lady) wanted me to post Aya Kato’s website:  Cheval Noir.

 

And–I’m done!

 

*tra lala la la*

…vindication at last

Yesterday, I went to the bi-monthly meeting of A Ream of Writers, which is basically the NaNoWriMo kids on the off-season, and came away feeling like a vindicated artist.

 

Which is shiny.

 

I took one of my scrump with me to use as a writing prompt for the group, and it went so well.

 

I don’t know how many times I’ve explained to people that the scrump series, for me, is about body horror and the grotesque and how children are more accepting of those sorts of aesthetics than adults.

 

The name of the series comes from Lilo and Stitch:  How can it not be about children and the grotesque?

 

But!  When the vinnettes were finished, ever single one of them was in some way related to the grotesque whether it was an abominative creature that purred while it burned you alive, a queen’s mishappen daughter, a murderous granny with a propensity towards satin ballet slippers, tribble-like creatures trying to take over a ship, aliens who harvested minds, or a conjoined twin.

 

Ever.  Single.  ONE! \o/

 

I feel vindicated as an artist by my audiences reception.  They wrote these vinnettes before they knew anything about the piece other than how it looked and got it so, so, so right!

 

*SQUEE*

 

And so y’all, lovely readers, can have a point of reference, here’s the piece I took to Crit Group.