Travel Log, 27th of June, 2008, or 1908, I can never tell anymore.
Mechanical Insects in the Forest (more…)

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I was greeted by the most extraordinary collage creations this morning, with a small note trying to convince me the artist responsible for them had come into being by a crazy night of elderberry wine and a strange rendezvous between a gentleman octopus and a charming selkie. Luckily this biography was included in with the artwork to dispel this rumor:

“There aren’t any castles in the suburbs of Delaware and there aren’t any haunted mansions with gloomy mansard roofs, either, and because that fact was nearly too tragic for me to bear as a child, Winona Cookie came to comfort me.

“Appearing in a shower of cookie crumbs one rainy thunderstruck afternoon, she has been my lifetime antidote to boredom. While I trudged through graduate schools and internships, Winona has followed her own path, leaving a trail of fanciful stories, watercolors, ink drawings, collages and jewelry in her wake. She favors the darkest faeries, legendary women, arcane subject matter and inventors that never were. She is currently obsessed with the steampunk genre and is running me ragged with collages and stories. They are frankly beginning to pile up! We live in San Diego where I practice psychotherapy and try to find a place for my ill-tempered cat to sit in my studio.”

All of these lovely creations are available for purchase at Ramona and Winona’s Etsy shop, located at winonacookie.etsy.com. Ramona and Winona are also members of EtsySteamTeam – search “steamteam” on the Etsy site for lots of imaginative and astonishing items. More of Winona’s work can be seen at winonacookieillustration.com.

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In the late 1900’s at the height of the Spiritualist movement, Huxley Auspex took his place among the movement’s elite by creating and ushering into the world the Auspicmoriscope. The fantastic claims of this invention were simple: the user looked into the eyepiece and turned the handle and the spirit realm became visible within the instrument’s view finder.

The instrument caused a stir among even the most hardened in the community and Auspex became a quick celebrity, embraced by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He followed this rise to celebrity by creating a variety of variations on his original device, each offering claims more brilliant and fabled than the next. The final version of the auspicmoriscope was a heavy contraption that came complete with a strange scrying board and typewriter like letter box that was meant to allow the user to type in messages or relay the names of those they wished to contact. Auspex claimed the additions to the device allowed for better locating and displaying of those the viewer desired to see.

Though Auspex was a darling of the spiritualist movement and the auspicmoriscope one of its most valued tools, these things only served to make him a vocal point for the debunkers of the movement’s claims. Auspex even came under the wraith and dedicated attention of the infamous Harry Houdini, the renowned skeptic and revealer of spiritualist trickery. Houdini was one of the first to step up and proclaim Auspex’s invention nothing more than a charlatan’s tool and he sought every method and means to prove this theory. The problem was that the auspicmoriscope was not so easy to debunk and expose for the hoax it was seen to be. When most any viewer put their eyes to the eye piece, the simple fact was they did see a vision of this world as it was not seen through normal eyes. The darker shades of the shadows were highlighted and brought into deeper detail. The bright blue skies no longer looked as simple as they did on a spring day. And all too often thick vaporous forms seemed to dominate the viewfinder with no reasonable explanation as to why. What was more disturbing was how these vaporous forms seem to show more definition the longer one viewed them. Faces emerged and bodies slowly became outlined. Even those who were dead set on not seeing anything within these forms came away from the auspicmoriscope with the unsettling feeling that they had indeed viewed something other worldly.

(more…)

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The Aristocrats of the Metropolis care for nothing more than years, making dynasties obsolete as they persevere into one decade after another, buoyed by ‘rejuvenation treatments’ that leave them dusty and raw. - Eliza Gauger

To see more of Eliza’s work, visit: http://www.elizagauger.com

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Bethalynne Bajema was brought to this world some years past, spring-time-ish, in a dark ceremony using stolen languages since unspoken by man. From an early age she was taught sewing, story-telling, and unconventional warfare… all this in preparation of her foretold future as Dread-Overlord-And-Tailor. What prophecy could not see was the impact her older brother’s comic collection would have on her, and the siren songs of India ink, the arts, and the written word. These talents have since been nurtured and have been showcased in a variety of magazines, books, and for more than ten years online.

Mixing equal parts Victorian horror, sepia erotica, clockwork logic and Industrial music, Beth carves her dreams on the skins of Tibetan holy men before transferring their contents to the computer’s screen.

Beth currently resides on America ’s East Coast with her better half, a rather bizarre little cat, a laptop, and her dark army. Online she can be found at Bajema’s Web or her online journal.

(Biography provided by John Galati)

Examples of Beth’s Work (Click on a thumbnail to see a larger view)

All images in this post are copyright © 2008 Bethalynne Bajema,
and used by this site with permission

Beth’s first collection of work is available through the lulu.com site.

Beth’s prints and various craft work can be found in Etta Diem’s Attic Shop

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Myke Amend grew up in a sleepy little town called Cincinnati, Ohio, a place not far from Earth, nestled at the outer edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Since long before his anticipated arrival, he has spent many aeons painting, drawing, engraving, and dreaming the death of mankind and the end of all life was we know it —and dreaming the days gone by (He also designs handbills and aethernet ’sites’ for the evil corporate faces of the mysterious Elder gods).

In a time heavily influenced by hotel heiresses, boy bands, game shows, reality TV, and people who wrestle each other for spheroids, he has been influenced greatly by Earth ages present and past — longing for a return to those days where human society turned its ugly head towards more meaningful things such as science and invention, exploration, literature, and the arts.

Out of this comes a love for anachronistic art mediums, styles, and concepts—mixing them with modern materials, themes, or subject matter, and twisting them into horrid, the surreal, or the bizarre for reasons most humans are incapable of fathoming, even in their most horrid nightmares.

His style reflects a love for strange fiction and tales of the weird, ancient futuristic relics from a Victorian era aside our own.

Myke is believed to reside in the future and the past, somewhere on the Northern American content, lurking within the mists or swimming in the surrounding shadows, as the driving force behind approaching storms, or in the darkest corners of our mortal minds.

We are unsure of how or why these artifacts, painted, carved, or forged by Myke Amend, have fallen into our hands, but we are proud the share them here.

below: “The Wait” (painting) and “Hope: the Light at the End” (painting)

All of these artworks are available through the Miskatonic Archive Electric Store.
Many are also available at www.mykeamend.com

above: “Heptameron” (digital painting) and “Awake” (engraving)

All images within this post are copyright © 2008 Myke Amend, and used with permission by this site.

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