asleep forever.

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.

madame guillotine

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

xo

via.

avec mes souvenirs, j'ai allumé le feu

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.

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

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.

& they spoke to me......

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,

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.

off with my head!

shary boyle.

jessica harrison.

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.

when you think they're whole.

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:

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

jackie puwalski x bloodmilk

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

the reveal part i.

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.

take a peek!

xo

when thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating...

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.

via paul romano.

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

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

magical thinking.

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.

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

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

di$count finger ring.

(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.

the language of underworld show folk....

photos from coney island from the 1920's.

coney island is one of those places i wish i could to teleport to in it's heyday.

xo.

ghoul next door.

featuring the lydia sparrow claw ring.

featuring the owl skull two-finger ring.

ghoul next door has added (with my permission) some bloodmilk into her polyvore collages. i'm really interested in the way she composes outfits around antique art & dark themes. polyvore reminds me a bit of this toy 'fashion plates' i had when i was a kid & a more intense version of window shopping. i know there's a bit of controversy over the site, but it inspires me & helps me get over my retail lust a bit.

xo.

paul frank art attack contest.

if you're so inclined, please vote for my painting 'palmistry'

over here at paul frank art attack contest.

xo.

happy birthday frida.

"i hope the leaving is joyful; and i hope to never return." f.k.

(but have you really left?)

xo.

when you see me again it won't be me.

dream.

james plumb via liza corbett via world of interiors.

the insides of a circus steamer trunk on etsy.

lately i've been feverish & on edge. i'm moving things around, from one room to another, from one physical plane to the next, trying to set up and really dig into planchette which opens august 14th for all of you who are in philly or who might be visting. more details on this soon.

what the essence of this right now is, crossing merdians & celestial bodies and hoping to come out whole on the other side.

the doppelgänger is a notion i've always been interested in. i'm working on a line of rings that illuminate this and also, in a way, these new paintings are a kind of conversation about this too, a kind of exploration of the feeling of another person present in your extrapersonal space. of course what i'm outling here isn't the 'evil twin' but the unconsious that can also be reached via a planchette. more on this soon too.

as for now, i've been dreaming of both a twin heart and the circus, and a way in which to set up my new space.

xo.

15 ways to describe the rain.

sleep now.

dear you,

my dearest wish is that where ever you are now, that you are at rest & at peace. i thank you for all those times you showed me such kindness of heart.

"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."

-kahlil gibran