Tuesday, August 31, 2010

the neitherworld.

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these photos by marc da cunha lopes conjure thoughts of death and extinction & yet, these skeletons appear alive. really, they creep the hell out of me, the same way ikea creeps me out. creating scenes or furniture arrangements to look alive/ lived in & yet are really dead/abandoned is chilling. mostly i'm interested in this idea of the neitherworld, where the dead continue to live their lives. it fits into the show i'm working on 'darker, my love.' more on this soon!
xo.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

sleeping with books in bed.

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xo.

beneath the bell jar. . . .or lily dale pt. ii.

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whilst in lily dale, i met privately with a medium. over the last 2 years i've had several significant losses. everyone loses to death!
but in lily dale, no one dies.
there is no dead and no death.
when i first heard the above words, i too was skeptical. but these words are the foundations of an entire faith, and other religions are based on equally dismaying claims, so why not go check it out? it's beautiful in upstate new york & lily dale is a lakeside community & it's the summer, why not? even the 9 hour car ride was filled with short stops to places filled with treasures. ( a goat farm that sold the most amazing honey lavender challah bread, an ice cream shop that had a giant ring....)
despite all this, i truly went to lily dale for messages from the beyond, to know that my loved ones who passed were all right and still thinking well of me. but i didn't get any, not one. a complete blank. but, i did receive the most comforting answer to a question that's darkly haunted me these two years; what happens when you die?
well, as i mentioned, in lily dale, or in the spiritualist tradition in general, no one dies. they simply move on to the spirit world where they continue to learn and grow & communicate. as my medium told me when i asked, 'at the moment of death one of our spirit guides takes us by the hand before our last breath to a giant dome, where inside, our families and loved ones are gathered. it is within this bell jar, a place where we are loved and protected, that we review our lives. we see the books we have written and those we are written in.'
xo.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

lily dale part i.

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last night at the maplewood hotel.

i'll have much much more to say about lily dale soon, (including the details of a 6-7 piece collection inspired by the trip) but for now, I'd like to just thank everyone who bought something during my sale and helped me to take this much needed road trip. hopefully the bulk of it will be shipped friday!
xx

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

loved to death X bloodmilk

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the lovely & like minded folks over at loved to death are new stockists of bloodmilk! if you're in the SF area, pop by and see my 'our darling' ring & sparrow claw ring in person! also, i'll be showing a series of new paintings 'darker, my love' there too this october 30 & i'll be in attendance! more on that soon.....
xo

Monday, August 23, 2010

the pack.

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philly native kris chau gets my blood spinning every time.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

the quest for the marvelous:

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surrealism means a great deal to me & if i could, i would teleport to paris in 1929 to be among it's participants in my favorite of places. it's fantastical yet absurd ideas//philosophies//life styles//literature & art seem braided within my very veins. so i love it when i stumble upon a piece of surrealism i haven't seen before such as this glove by Méret Oppenheim who is probably most recognized for her fur covered tea cup & saucer, one of the most famous surrealist 'objects'. this glove makes me think of the surrealist myth of Gradiva. Gradiva is the unrealized ideal woman, the phantom, the woman who can walk through walls. she recognizes the male's desire to see through her 'real self' and plays her role accordingly, helping lift the veil so that the man can overcome his break from reality. in a way she is a lucid dream, leaving a glass shoe on the stair or a veined glove behind.
further reading on Gradiva here.
as for my own break from reality/quest for the marvelous, i have much to share this week to make up for my lack of posting.
xx

Thursday, August 12, 2010

the hidden place.

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i've booked a room within in lily dale with a lovely pair of dear friends & will be making a serious road trip up to the world's largest community of mediums. i feel i've been haunted too long by unanswered questions from the dead / myself /& want to see if i can find some peace. besides this driving force, i've always been interested in spiritualism and it will be interesting to observe such a large formallized group of the religion in practice. due to all of the recent travelling i've had to do and the long journey ahead, i decided to offer 20% off of bloodmilk from this friday-sunday! this is the first time i've ever offered a discount on my work & will be a rare offering. this would be a great time to pick up that piece that maybe you've been eyeing or a gift for a special person in your life, while helping me out at the same time.
the above photos of lily dale were taken by shannon taggart. her entire cataloug is equally mezmerizing.
xo

Monday, August 9, 2010

teenage wasteland.

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yesterday was the official reading of the 'weetzie bat' screenplay in california. like many of you i imagine, the weetzie bat books by francesca lia block made a major impact on my teenage life. these photos come from wildfox and are based on the weetzie bat books. take a peek at the rest!
xo

Saturday, July 31, 2010

asleep forever.

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Consider a girl who keeps slipping off, arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world speaking with the gift of tongues.
from briar rose: anne sexton

these days you can find me more over here than here.

Friday, July 30, 2010

madame guillotine

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the new editorials by eugenio recuenco, (especially this one) remind me of one of my favorite painters, dorothea tanning & of course, current perils.
xo

avec mes souvenirs, j'ai allumé le feu

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a lot of nights lately, i dream of the sea. a black sea. a inky sea. a night sea, with sharp glass stars.
i don't know what it could mean, (although i believe it must mean something due to it's frequency) but somehow it's become a comfort.
my love & i went to see inception today. it's a miracle to get out of my studio.
has anyone else seen it? any thoughts?
xo.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

in the eye of the needle on the eve of the storm.

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i've been wanting to take a road trip to upstate new york for quite some time to go see the grounds at lily dale. it's a far drive from philly, but something is pulling me there & i suppose after all this work is done here, i will go. i want to see a medium (s) there and hopefully find some peace. i've been dreaming of speaking with the dead and forgetting what was said by morning. have any of you had any experiences there or with mediums in general?
xo.
image conjured from tumblr, source unknown. if you know, please email me.

Monday, July 26, 2010

& they spoke to me......

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chad from mon petit fantome has released his first book of silhouettes. at an edition of 50 & hand-bound, these beauties are surely a rare treasure & are sadly sold out, but they were just released in soft cover for all of us who missed out.
what i love most about mon petit fantome is the cohesive aesthetic of dark themes set against a kind of innocent light. this juxtaposition is always something i'm going for in my fiction & it's done so well here. chad has great personal style & plays in a ghostly, whispery band, st.mary's,
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that i've been listening to these days as i paint. a soundtrack to my hermetic life filled with black silver and portraits of bee-keepers & astral travellers.
xo.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

off with my head!

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the other night i pulled 'the hermit' tarot card, which couldn't be more fitting for me; as i've been literally & mentally holed up these days painting & battling inner phantoms. this turbulence often leads to new ideas & inspirations just as much as it makes me feel headless.
xo.

Friday, July 23, 2010

when you think they're whole.

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i've been immersed in all things magickal lately. magick colored pencils on wooden panels, ouija boards & communing with ghosts /// a voice on the other side of the country. perhaps one of the phantom hearts of all this thinking is home, which for me is long island. what a strange place! so near the sea in any direction! if you are from there, then you understand.
the photographer above, fleurs de lune, is from long island & somehow seeing them comforts my subtle homesickness.
xo.

out late in the enchanted wood:

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the new work by amy earles is absolutely killing me. i'm a fan of both her drawings & paintings & especially love these two above. i want my whole house to be filled with her paper dolls!
xo

Thursday, July 22, 2010

jackie puwalski x bloodmilk

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incredible photographer jackie puwalski had asked me a month or so ago if she could borrow some blood jewels for a shoot. the mail was messed up a bit & the pieces didn't arrive in time so instead, jackie shot some of the work on herself. i especially love the hands, so creepy and primal! look out for the rest of the shots forthcoming on my etsy!
thanks jackie!
xo

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

the reveal part i.

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the incredibly lovely & equally inspiring gala darling interviewed me last week for chinashop magazine. included in the interview are some snips of my vast amount of collections.
xo

Sunday, July 18, 2010

when thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating...

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phantom limbs & 4am.
i figured out my odd interest in severed limbs stems from my teenage obsession with lavinia from shakespeare's strange play, titus andronicus. these lovely images above are by artist
valerie hammond. what i love best about them is that they are elegant and beautiful and ever so strange.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

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the creative folks over at booooooom have set in motion a new project today, 'little drifters'. the rules? build a boat out of natural components, snap a picture of it floating in water and send it in.
i'm in love.
xo

Friday, July 16, 2010

magical thinking.

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i've always had magnetic attraction for historical train wrecks. it is this one in particular that haunts me the most. it took place in 1895 in paris, crashing through the wall of the station and landing on it's nose some feet outside into the street. there was only one casualty.

it existed for a time in postcard form and carried with within different books and journals.what is it about this particular image that strikes me so deeply? it's surrealist absurdity for one. and secondly because it plays the strings of a very latent yet tactile fear; as a little girl i remember walking around long island with my hand in his and being afraid, terrified to cross over train tracks. it was a jinx, a hex, like stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk or catching sight of yourself in your periphery.

(this is a eyelash of a wound / a word spelled beneath a planchette)
xo.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

she came home with half a finger missing....

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claw ring by garbage dress. (ring on ring finger)

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(which delightfully reminds me of margot's missing finger from TRT & is my favorite from the bunch)

jewelry company meadowlark endowed a collaboration of ring making on specially chosen fashion bloggers. these were my favorites; for missing fingers or back alley brawls.
xo.

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