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.

Everything that Creeps: Elizabeth McGrath

I've long been an ardent admirer of Liz "Bloodbath" McGrath ~ woman of innumerable talents and one of my aesthetic heroines. Equally comfortable in a gallery, on a stage, or wearing a dress made of candy wrappers.

(Portrait by Darla Teagarden)
You see, as if it weren't enough to be an auspiciously brilliant pop surrealist sculptress and artist, she also fronts the theatrical L.A. outlaw rock band Miss Derringer, along with her husband, Morgan Slade. Liz creates all of the album cover designs, naturally.

She sings, she paints, she draws, and she sculpts. But my true love is for her compelling dioramas. Like so many artists I'm drawn to, she finds the loveliness in the grotesque, the magic in the wicked, and binds it all together to craft dark and whimsical little worlds for us.

(Sailor's Valentine, 2001)
I'm mad about McGrath's meticulous attention to detail and her penchant for the macabre ~ the unlikely bedfellows of preciousness and freakish oddity. Many of the pieces have a carnival side-show feel, like she's built a tiny stage for a character with a story to unfold...

(Detail from Honey Creeper, 2006)
I'm fortunate enough to own a copy of her lovely and sadly now out-of-print book called Everything That Creeps, which contains gorgeous full-color images of her work, so one can get close to the haunting creatures she's created.

(Detail from Queen of the Inanimate, 2001)
Wide-eyed blue-lipped waifs and mournful two-headed fawns, winsome skeleton birds and tutu-wearing insect girls, they're all in here.

I hope to see her work in person, someday, to peer into the vast reaches of the twisted universe of her imagination.

(Portrait by Mark Berry)
Until that day, I'll content myself by reading about her adventures on her new blog at my favorite underground art mag, Juxtapoz.

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.

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.

Things That Please Me: Enchanted Dolls

You may have guessed, faithful readers, that I have a deep appreciation for meticulously detailed work. So you can imagine my excitement upon discovering Enchanted Doll, and the exquisite art of Marina Bychkova. Here is her most recent work, a vision of Alice.


I am transfixed by these dolls. Painstaking bead-work! Miniature accessories! Hand-cast porcelain! Anatomical correctness! For many of them, Marina crafts phenomenally detailed costumes, with actual gemstones and precious metals, and the finest velvets, furs and silks... as for Dunyazade's and Scherezhade's lustrous dresses.

The steampunk in me fell head-over-heels for this one ~ the helmet she wears is actually cast bronze.

Marina sometimes goes to elaborate lengths to photograph them in creative environments. On her blog she details building a miniature lotus pond so her boyfriend can photograph Kia, her russet-haired, henna'd, water naiad doll.


I'm absolutely floored by Marina's work. These are more than just dolls, they are high art. They are at once sensual and innocent, disturbing and stunning. As someone who began my journey in costuming by hand-sewing tiny Victorian dresses for my dollhouse dolls as a child, I have nothing but admiration for someone who can elevate my childhood passion to such heights.

If you're intrigued, read this interview with her. And of course, take some time to get lost in her world. You'll be blown away.