the neitherworld.

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.

sleeping with books in bed.

due out later next month & featuring a handful of my favorite contemporary writers.

xo.

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

polly morgan.

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.

lily dale part i.

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

loved to death X bloodmilk

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

the pack.

philly native kris chau gets my blood spinning every time.

the quest for the marvelous:

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

the hidden place.

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

teenage wasteland.

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