July 2019 – Necromantic

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“Larded with orchids/And the ashlar odor of light…”

And to the candle I give a spear
To the morning star a body of hemp
To abiding shame an ax
To the expected guest an oak tree
To the house the cemetery of the world around it
To my coffin an apple
Shining in the atramentous night

{from Ascend Ascend by Janaka Stucky}

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Saintesses by Sad Riot

These are lovely interpretations of four female saints by Sad Riot: Lucy whose emblem is eyes on a golden plate, her eyes having been taken out; Philomena the virgin martyr who underwent numerous torments, scourging, drowning, being shot by arrows (and was finally decapitated), rather than become the Emperor Diocletian’s wife; Maria Goretti the eleven-year-old child, stabbed fourteen times with an awl; and Cecilia, who lived for three days after being struck on the neck three times with a sword.

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Semi-Opaque Sleeper: The Art of Christina Bothwell

These extraordinary and peculiar sculptures by Christina Bothwell play with transparency, opacity, and the meanings conveyed by textural contrasts. Suffering seems to engrave the faces of her figures and to stamp its personality upon them. They have a naive simplicity along with their subtle symbolic tones. I have never seen sculptures quite like these before, and they are instantly distinctive and unforgettable. Her rendition of the sleeper using solid, opaque substance for the physical form and that lovely, occluded-glass material for the astral body or spirit is such a succinct, apt, and beautiful visual metaphor. Friendship, childhood, transformation, isolation, the aching love and expectancy of motherhood, the waking nightmares of life…everything within the shadowy depths of the vast human heart seems embodied in her bold yet delicate sculptures.

{See more}

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Crystallized Remains by Tyler Thrasher

{Tyler Thrasher}