Chimera and Charm: The Art of Lesley Reppeteaux

I am captivated by imagery that tells a story. So I was quite transfixed when I happened upon the work of Lesley Reppeteaux ~ dark and dreamy paintings of fairytale characters with secrets in their solemn eyes.

(Phantom Limb, 2009)
And it's the eyes that are most distinctive and compelling in Reppeteaux's images ~ the exaggerated ovals make her women look sorrowful, as if filled with unbearable knowledge they cannot un-know. Often half-creature and half-woman, her lovelies are frequently trapped in some borderland between freedom and captivity, between innocence and experience.

(Saline, The Saltwater Queen, 2008)
In a recent show at Thinkspace in LA, Reppeteaux hung 22 paintings that told the tragic Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. It's a perfect tale for her sensibilities ~ surrounded by lotus flowers and pomegranate motifs, her pale maiden of the underworld wears pinstriped stockings.

(The Scent of Flowers Filled the Air, 2010)
I found this apt description from her: "My work reads like painted fables filled with strange characters telling sordid stories. I blend the worlds of literature and fantasy to create a peculiar world where pouty-lipped vixens and melancholy beauty resides, striking a balance between the lovely and bizarre, creating paintings with chimera and charm."

(A Hush Fell Over the Meadow, 2008)
Her serpentine lines are Art Nouveau-inspired, her details lyrical in their unfolding of the songs of these forgotten heroines. She is a woman of many talents ~ some of her recent works include glass mosaic frames that become part of the artwork, and she is also an accomplished comic book artist. I am entranced by her vision.

(Nest, 2009)
To my dismay, there does not seem to be a comprehensive gallery of Lesley's work online ~ her own website features only currently available works, and there are a smattering of galleries with small collections.

(The Soothsayers Song, 2007)
Still, you may find her through her website, and her blog, cheerfully sub-headed "the happily out-of-date adventures of Lesley." There is also a good interview with her here, and a lovely video on YouTube that pairs her work with a PJ Harvey song. I will surely be keeping an eye out for more painted fables from her...

Pretty and Dirty Together ~ Scott Radke

I cannot recall what Interwebs chase led me to the work of artist Scott Radke, but I am absolutely transfixed. His sculptures are creatures from another reality, unraveling strange stories to enchant me.

(Tutu #1, 2009)
It's the faces that are most striking. With the most subtle hint of a crease, a sideways glance, a slight turn of the mouth, Radke creates poignantly expressive characters.

(Untitled Egg, 2009)
I am reminded of the human-faced sphinxes of MirrorMask, and also a bizarre Dreamcast video game called Seaman that obsessed my husband for some time, where one is obliged to care for a creepy half-fish-half-man. What is it about animals with human faces that makes them both so compelling and so disturbing?

(Octopus, 2010)

Like the beasts in Spike Jonze's interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are, Radke's creations embody the most raw of feelings, the very roots of emotion. Angst, frustration, boredom, jealousy, bliss... all play out in the textures of their features.

(Swan #40, 2009)
What are their stories? What has befallen these fragile creatures, with their stirring human-like faces and organic beastly forms? What gives them such sturm und drang, such beautiful fragility?

(Hats #3, 2009)
I read a 2006 interview with Radke where, when asked where he got his inspiration from, he replied, "something pretty and dirty together," and I understood. His creatures are the perfect marriage of both the lovely and the ugly, the tragic and the comic, the playful and the serious.

(Koi #1, 2009)
See more of Radke's work on his Livejournal blog, Flickr stream, and his Web site.

The Wild Rumpus!

It's been some time since I've sat through an entire film beaming from ear to ear, but last night I left the theater giddy from the brilliance and purity of Spike Jonze's new interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are.

Not to raise anyone's expectations to unhealthy heights, but set aside all that buzz, rumors of poor test screenings, and the anxiety about the corruption of a classic book, and this is an stunning film in its own right.

Jonze perfectly distills the pathos of childhood, and in particular the challenges of being a creative and intense child, without trivializing it. Though the Arcade Fire song that made the trailer was conspicuously missing from the film, the score by the phenomenal Karen O creates a sublime backdrop of frenzied raw emotion. And the Wild Things themselves, massive monsters made by the legendary Jim Henson's Creature Shop, are surprisingly sympathetic and compelling.

Though the film may not mirror the book exactly, author Maurice Sendak approached Jonze to take on the project and worked closely with him throughout, urging him to "keep it dangerous". I've always been one for the darker themes, scoffing at those who would shield their little ones by offering only sanitized stories, so I love that Jonze preserves the peculiarity and wickedness that earned the book criticism in the first place ~ while making the story his own.

A good article with more making-of back-story can be found here, but I say just go see it. And then let the wild rumpus start...

Le Scaphandrier ~ The Giant Diver

I'm thoroughly enraptured by the work of French performance art and puppetry troupe Royal de Luxe. Their May 2006 performance in London, The Sultan's Elephant, was nothing short of genius ~ I can't even imagine the glory of being in attendance at the event, which included a little girl Giantess, a wooden rocket-ship, and a 50-ton mechanical elephant.

Photo by cocobeloeil
And now I've just heard that they've done it again... Writer R.J. Evans posted a blog about a new performance that took place starting June 6th in Nantes ~ the birthplace of Jules Verne ~ that involved a giant deep-sea diver, Le Scaphandrier in French.

Photo by chilirv
I've always been a lover of puppets and marionettes, so to see a 30-foot-tall diver hauled out of the water by a team of frock-coated puppeteers, and then sent out adventuring, just blisses me out.

Photo by Stéfan Le Dû
And there's a beautiful and complex mythology, too, for these amazingly emotive characters, that's been unfolding around Europe for years in various performances - about how the Diver is searching for his niece the Little Giantess, a character from the Sultan's Elephant performance. With the help of Google's nifty translation engine, you can read more about the back-story on Stéfan Le Dû's blog.

Photo by Stéfan Le Dû
The company is rather mysterious and rarely releases information before a performance, adding to the intrigue. But you can find some jaw-dropping YouTube videos, along with a Flickr pool filled with lovely images from the performance.

Photo by Stéfan Le Dû
It's one of those things that makes me happy to be alive, that there are people out there creating such things. We humans may be making war, and reality TV shows, but we're also making street spectacles with grand mechanical creatures, simply for the sake of wonder and magic and art.

Photo ©2009 by Stéphane Lerouge ~ Nantes
Also keep an eye out for the off-shoot company of brilliant fabricators La Machine. They built the original sultan's elephant, and they were also the ones who sent a massive wooden and steel mechanical spider called La Princesse marauding around Liverpool in a post-apocalyptic frenzy, to the delight of onlookers, for week in September 2008 before moving on to Yokohama.

Photo ©2009 by Charlie Charlton
La Machine also built the permanent exhibition Machines of the Isle of Nantes at its workshop, which is open to the public, features the elephant giving rides, and includes a mechanical squid.


Glorious. Simply glorious.

Why I Love Isabella Rossellini

Truly, one just can't help but adore the fabulous and talented Isabella Rossellini.

Never mind that she came to New York from Rome at age 19 and paid for school by being a translator and circus ringmaster. Never mind that she's been romantically linked to Martin Scorsese, Gary Oldman, and David Lynch. Never mind that she's stunningly beautiful, brilliant, and an active environmentalist.

I love her for her fearlessness. She was mesmerizing as the masochistic lounge singer in Lynch's neo-noir classic Blue Velvet. And who could resist her as a double-amputee beer baroness wearing beer-filled artificial legs in the beautiful surrealist film The Saddest Music in the World by Canadian genius Guy Madden?

But it's Green Porno that sealed my love for Ms. Rossellini. When asked by the Sundance Channel to make a series of "flashy environmental" shorts, Isabella took it upon herself to illustrate the frequently disturbing sex lives of insects.

Most definitely not safe for work, but delightfully bizarre and candid, the series features a charmingly amorous Isabella frolicking about in an oversized, cartoonish set, mostly made of paper. And she's just released Season Two - on sea creatures. Please let there be an octopus episode, please!

Here's a recent interview with Isabella. And my favorite snarky feminist pop culture rag, Bitch Magazine, just featured the series in an article called Wings of Desire, on the radical gender role implications of documenting bug sex.

You know you want to see Isabella as an orgasmic snail in a giant homemade paper maché costume. And her accent makes a statement like "We're sequential hermaphrodites" sound positively sensual. Just go.

A Most Curious Menagerie

The work of Chicago artist Jessica Joslin always makes me feel as if I've stumbled upon a strange and beautiful alternate reality.

Gustave, Clockwork Circus, 2008
With her scientific attention to detail, Jessica has the most enchanting way of melding together the mythical, the mechanical, and the anatomical to create whimsical little beasties that are hauntingly life-like.

Lupe, Flights of Fancy, 2005
She uses found objects to make each oddity like a relic from a natural history museum that never was, in glorious juxtapositions that make magic out of the workaday world's detritus: brass meets fur, leather meets glass, velvet meets bone...

Lartet, Flights of Fancy, 2005
And I simply adore the names she gives her creations, names that somehow impart a sense of purpose and the promise of a breathtaking story - Odette, Leopold, Callisto, Lautrec...

Figaro, Curiosa, 2007
You can see more of Jessica's creations in her new art book, Strange Nature. And read Coilhouse's excellent interview with her if you're as intrigued as I am.

Add this to the list of Things I Must Have One Day When I Am Rich - a Jessica Joslin familiar to keep me company in my golden years.

Furry Formal Masquerade

You can now cease wondering, my dears, what your Choklit was up to on New Year's Eve. We hosted a Furry Formal party, and it was ridiculously entertaining.

Exciting vintage cocktails with names like the Bull's Eye and the Bees Knees were skillfully served up by Cheshire Cat Meester Ralph and Skyeboy, who reprised his Angry Bunny costume to dashing effect.

My personal downfall was the Lion's Tail, an intoxicating blend of bourbon, bitters, allspice dram, lime juice, and simple syrup (recipe courtesy of the Boston chapter of Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails).

The loveliest part was how little overlap there was in the animals represented. We had the sexiest yak ever...

A three-toed sloth for our DJ (although he's exposing extra toes in this photo)...

There was a late arrival of a rather elegant chicken...

And a perilously amorous red fox who wore a Victorian fox-hunting jacket without irony...

And I shunned feathers and fur to be the only reptile in attendance - some sort of Cobra Flash-Gordon Enchantress. Here, surrounded by confused white furry things.

Photos by my love Stache and the ever-fabulous M. Mendelson. See more of M's party pics in her Flickr set.



The idea was partially inspired by these amazing collage portraits by artist Charlotte Cory - she published a book called The Visitors, where she added animal heads to found Victorian carte de visite.

I couldn't resist making them into an invitation where I wrote a little poem to lure in the beasties...




Scaled or feathered
beaked or clawed
waving-tailed
or gentle-pawed,
Softest fur
or forked of tongue
hoofed or horned
or poison stung,
Creatures creeping
great and small
bedecked in finery
for the ball...

Happy New Year to all my animal friends!

Black Cat, White Cat

I find myself melancholy, trying to write a brief tribute to my poor Nimbus, who left us for the big donut-bed in the sky over the weekend.

It's the end of a feline era. Nimbus and her sister Carolina, to whom I said goodbye last spring, were born the month I graduated high school, and kept me furry company through a parade of houses and boyfriends and jobs for, uhm, more than fifteen years.

Nimbus kindly eased our transition by keeping us up all night with her grating senile meowing for the past few months, so we were definitely ready to let her go. Didn't stop me from crying, though. My home is now kitty-less for the first time in my adult life.

Fortunately, she was forever immortalized in psychedelic cat YouTube fame in this video a few years ago, with music and imagery by the illustrious Stache.

Oh, the purr! I intend to go out and rent Emir Kusturica's Black Cat, White Cat in honor of both my dearly departeds. Perhaps a zany Balkan comedy will cheer me.

Farewell, Nimby. All the peacock feathers and pets you could wish for in heaven, my sweet!

Goodbye, Chat Noir

When I started blogging, I promised myself I wouldn't write about my cats. This blog is just too new for me to be posting the cat already.

But sometimes one has to break one's own rules, and this is such an occasion. Late last night I had to put down Carolina, my kitty companion of 15 years.

This poster always reminded me of her - she had the exact same elegantly rumpled black fur and haughty amber-eyed stare.


She was a very good kitty and I'm going to miss her tremendously. Although there will be more room and less claws in the bed tonight, I'm going to be a wreck, and probably will be for a few nights still to come. Here she is, clearly making evil plans for household domination, in 1994.


Skyeboy made a beautiful little pine coffin for her, and sometime this week we'll have a burial.

Fittingly, the band is playing at a bar called the Black Cat this weekend - and so I'm considering it a wake for Carolina.

Farewell, sweet furry friend.

Sleeps With The Fishes

Tonight I'm reminded that life can be so simple, so fragile. I'm traveling for work, writing from a hotel in Boston right now. When I reserved my hotel room, the agent asked if I'd like a goldfish in my room. Excuse me? A what?

"A goldfish, ma'am, it's just a little something special we offer our guests. You won't have to take care of it, just... enjoy it."

Call me sheltered, but I'd never heard of goldfish as a feature. It seemed like a good, if odd, idea. Soothing, perhaps. Colorful, certainly. So I couldn't help myself, I got excited. And when I arrived at the hotel last night, after nearly an hour of driving in circles lost, the desk clerk seemed excited, too. "Welcome, welcome, you made it! Lilly is waiting in your room for you!"


And she was. Lilly seemed well enough at 1:30 in the morning when I finally made it to my room, if a little placid. I settled in and slept.

But in the morning, things had gone horribly awry. Lilly was upside-down. Not floating at the top, mind you, and still opening and closing her mouth mournfully, but being upside-down is never a good sign for a fish. This was definitely not soothing. I told the front desk as I left for the day, "I'm worried about Lilly. She's not well."

And upon my return, the spectacularly orange Lilly was gone, replaced by a large, pale white, heartier finned creature. The notepad next to the bowl said "Hi, my name is Lilly!" But it clearly wasn't Lilly.

I'm listening to the Radiohead song"Weird Fishes" in honor. Sleep well in the big aquarium in the sky, little hotel fish. Oh, what you must have seen in your short life. But dead fish don't tell tales.