Like so many of these older masks one of teeth had been broken, so I modelled a new one out of polymer clay and attached it carefully. I'm not really happy with the result (it was a wee bit hasty) so I might re-do it some time soon and blog the process for anyone else out there wondering how to restore these incredible masks in an inexpensive and reversible manner. I'll post more pics of this mask some time soon, along with details from the Afghan and Indian textiles I picked up recently. I know I said I would ages ago, but *jumps up and runs out of the room*
You might not be able to make it out, but this is a fantastic mid-century Balinese mask we picked up from another collector a little while back. We think it might be one of the leyak spirits that form Rangda's entourage, or even Mata Gede, an associated monkey (?) spirit. It's difficult to find reliable accounts of the Balinese pantheon since many sources seem to contradict one another, but we are so in love with this piece; it is everything the later, more commercial masks are not- inhabited, expressive, idiosyncratic. Like so many of these older masks one of teeth had been broken, so I modelled a new one out of polymer clay and attached it carefully. I'm not really happy with the result (it was a wee bit hasty) so I might re-do it some time soon and blog the process for anyone else out there wondering how to restore these incredible masks in an inexpensive and reversible manner. I'll post more pics of this mask some time soon, along with details from the Afghan and Indian textiles I picked up recently. I know I said I would ages ago, but *jumps up and runs out of the room*
ABOVE RIGHT Next-level shed failure. Particularly awesome due to the contents being so hell bent on seeking alternative quarters. When inanimate objects vote with their feet, it might be time to review your arrangements.
* Part 1 of this series here * More photoessays here *Agostino Arrivabene. Vesperbild Dal 23 maggio al 26 luglio una personale dell’artista Agostino Arrivabene alla galleria Giovanni Bonelli di Milano. Galleria Giovanni Bonelli, Via Luigi Porro Lambertenghi 6, Milano 23 maggio – 26 luglio 2014 Inaugurazione giovedì 22 maggio, ore 18.30 If these images are anything to go by and you're in Milan, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to catch this show. Such transcendent beauty. Thin, slip-textured silt welled between his fingers as he smoothed the surface of a small clay mound, kneeling in the mud alongside the temple gates. Birds performed a stilted aubade from the cover of the ginko boughs, as though they were yet to be convinced of the morning’s worth. Dawn pervaded the mist with the pallid ghosts of brighter colours and brought back rain to cloak the mountainside; it had soaked the torn silk of the little corpse’s shroud as it had lain beside the grave that he had fashioned for it. Kala'amātya knew only one rite germane to the inhumation of a stillborn and spoke the words of the forgotten language slowly. Summoning the impetus to return to the flooded courtyard, he stood waiting beneath the eaves while the water drained from his clothing and pooled around his feet. The white silk mon of her grandsire’s house glowed against the black sleeve of the hitatare he had given the girl to wear. She lay awake beneath the saddle cloth, the older woman still sleeping with her back to them. “I am happy she did not live.” she told him without looking up. “Girls are never welcome.” “My mother would have given her two sons twice over for a daughter.” he replied. Kala'amātya sat against the wall beside her and brushed the yellow dust from his hands. “I have read the scroll. Tokogawa says that you are to be left in this place to serve the monks. Your aunt was to have returned to Honshu with your bearers, but it seems that she is destined to remain here with you. Your grandfather has abdicated in favour of your uncle... Hidetada has decreed that no foreigner may enter Honshu, so I am no more welcome than you.” Though she did not reply, the slow, pained sound of her breathing underscored sentiments born in loss, and prospects as colourless and unremitting as the day outside. “You are the cause of this.” she murmured. "You are salted ground... a desolator, and I was warned of you." He gazed at her unheeding form without replying, then left her side to take up his belongings before returning to the girl once more, sliding the odachi from his shoulders and laying them on the boards beside her. If her gaze perceived the curving weapons, their scabbards lavished with glowing, semiprecious colour in the cloisson feathers of fighting birds, hilts bound with dark shagreen, they did not move her. “Stay here until you are well.” he told her, bending low so that his advice could remain confidential. “But do not live your life in this place. Go south, to court... the odachi will make a dowery, should you wish to find a husband, or go to the north, buy slaves and horses, and a good bow.” She withdrew beneath the striped cover, tears sliding over her pale face. "Do not counsel me, yōkai." Suki replied, wiping at her eyes beneath the blanket. The rain slowed as he rode out under the temple gates alone, starting along the narrow trail that led toward the dark heart of the mountains. “He rode back through China, the Kyzylkum, Poland and then Germany with Paris in mind, but er... never made it that far. It happens to the best of us.” William concluded, glancing at Susan, who watched the fire. She reached across to partake of his cigarette. “I told you not to let me smoke.” she scolded. "What happens to the best of you?" “Girl trouble. Helaine de Marchand... countess, bas bleu... sociopath... hardcore witch queen with a thing for sullen white meat. You know how you run into those one or two people in your life, who you don’t need to explain anything to? They just dig you and all your evil ways, basically because they’re as fucked up as you are, if not more? And you just go at each other because you’ve both been so starved of any kind of affection or... er, comment dit-on cela en anglais? What’s that thing, when you sympathize with someone, but it doesn’t start with S?” "Empathy?” “Yeah... you know, when you finally strike some sort of empathy and you get sucked into one another's hideous shit and things just spiral horribly downward in an endless smoking tailspin...?” Susan shook her head. “Not really, no.” “Well, Helaine was that, for Kala'amātya. He went from forty-below with teflon-styles attachment issues, to total obsession with her. It did not end well.” "Now your brother's really going to kill me." she observed. "What he doesn't know you know can't hurt him." "Until he knows." she murmured, lying back down. "I don't want to talk about that anyway." She inched over the gleaming silver compound and kissed the hollow where his neck began, already certain of its effect; she watched it cause him to draw breath as the sensation darkened the colour of his eyes. "I probably should have asked you this before I slept with you, but... you can't actually do anything... strange, can you?" "You mean do I have powers?" "Not powers... I mean extra... different... abilities..." "Just say powers." "Shut up. I mean like... if you bit someone, hard, would it start to digest them? Can you burrow into the ground really quickly? If you fell out of a plane, would you actually die?" He shrugged. "If I cut your head off, would that be fatal?" “Someone did cut my head off once. At the battle of… well, the fall of Bukhara, really. This fucking huge Iranian came along and whacked it right off. Whomp, phutt.” She flicked his ear in disgust but he refused to qualify the claim. "I only have ghetto powers, Christabel. All I can do is... see in the dark... remember account numbers... take a good beating... get it up forty eight times in twenty four hours, especially in winter. And hold my breath for an hour and twenty six minutes. I can't play the fucking harp or get away with cravats or envenom randoms." "It feels more like two hours." Susan smiled, somewhat obliquely. He picked up her right leg, bending to grasp her thigh with his teeth and murmuring an ode to its tender qualities as he sucked the frail skin behind her knee while she writhed and exclaimed at the almost insupportable sensation. It was through the fingers she pressed to her eyes that she perceived the staring of a white face, painted by the glow of the flames and floating between enclosing fur and dark, abundant hair; Petrouchka's thirsting intent held Susan still, until she was reminded of the spectacle they offered and pulled the cloth beneath her arms. The vampyre's mouth opened in the dark shape of a smile as she walked around the flames, its colours gleaming in her gaze like two swamp fires. “Darlink...” she told William. “I am thinking... you are still owing me five thousand American dollars.” He looked at her blankly. “I know. How I can forget such things?” “I thought you gave that to me out of the kindness of your heart.” "Pozhaljsta... there is no kindness in my heart.” “Do you know how many arseholes I’m going to have to kick the shit out of to get that kind of money?” he sighed, watching the visitor lean her elbows against the floor span. “One.” he smiled to both womens' frowns, using the dawamesk plate to preserve his modesty while passing Susan her alienated clothing. “Is good that you can laugh still under crushing weight of guilt.” Petrouchka remarked. “You pull me out of an important meeting to tell me you're broke?” “I don't like to have nothing, Sachiin... she know this name?" He nodded. "Good. I sell what things I have, but still, it run away like water. You don't think it will happen with you, but this Bailiss in Prague, he finish us, I tell you..." she asserted while he knotted the ikat at his waist and began to groan as though her familiar insistences would prove fatal; Petrouchka pressed on with her complaint, turning toward Susan. “And if he tell one thing to you, be sure to make him tell it all." "About that..." he interjected. "I haven't actually told Kala'amātya that Christabel's in as yet, so zatk'nis when he's around." Petrouchka inspected what remained of her pale fingernails. “You talk to Auberjonois? He come here, soon.” “He won’t.” he muttered. She glanced at Susan again; her warm, plush skin glowed in the firelight, replete with all the delectable qualities the vampyre cherished, the latter’s cheeks drawn in by the action of her tongue. “You have met this wolf, Auberjonois? You must meet. If I could love, I would love wolf. They are so rough and dirty. Quelle sauvage." William glanced back at her with a private smile that matched her own, the vampyre expressing a purring little laugh at the intimate exchange. “And what have Sachiin told you? That he have these scar from falling on to rose bush?” she chuckled. “You know what he do for all this time? Fighting, for money... then waste money, whoring... then more fighting, to pay whore.” In cataloguing his depravity Petrouchka seemed to discover more of her regard for him, and turned a smile that might have been fond if it were not for the intolerable irony leant to it by the condition of her face. “Alas for old, old days. Gideon will come... we should see each other, while we are still here to see.” “Yeah well, Rana’s here to see. And no, I don’t know how or why, so don’t ask... just watch your back.” “No! Horrid woman! Suka! Stupid, crazy mule! Do you know the worst thing of these people? Is not what they do, but what they make us do. Think of your brother.” It was the fervid energy of the vampyre's denunciation that led William to study her more closely; satisfied of something, he interrupted, sliding down from the castle toward the fire. “Who was it and where are they now?” he sighed, as though she had already confessed, using her language to keep the charge from Susan's ears. Petrouchka shrugged and touched her collar again, following suit. “I think was criminal. Knocking on door, oh please, I must be using your telephone...” she related, pleased to have been of service to the household. “I put in Kala'amātya's car. No mess. Is good there, do you think?” "Nyet." he muttered. Susan picked up the plate, frowning at their exclusive discourse while William dumped a bucket of water over the fire. "Do we, or do we not have a fucking security guard?" "I don't see him." Petrouchka offered. "Fall in, Belyaev. This fucking hole's not going to dig itself." he called over his shoulder, the dark cloth and the design upon his back muting his white shape into crypsis amid the gloom beneath the trees. While William and his houseguest disappeared into the garage in pursuit of their secretive task, Susan took her plate into the kitchen, shouldering the door that opened into the darkness she expected and a figure she did not. It stood motionless in the midst of the chequered linoleum with its arms by its sides, face smeared to disquieting anonymity by the night-blind spot in her gaze. Slowly she reached back for the light switch, waving her hand at the unseen wall, then dropped the plate already half-forgotten in her grasp. Lilian's eyes flickered a deep, stained black in fractured inverse with the blinking florescence overhead; she did not flinch at the shards of porcelain that struck her bare feet, but stood at the heart of a shapeless volume that twisted and condensed around her, as though required by the light to return substance to her shape. The crash brought William and Petrouchka from the garage so expeditiously that it redoubled Susan's start, and she knelt quickly to collect the fragments from the floor, loath to look again at Lilian. The vampyre paused as though struck by the same force. Susan glanced up from the creature's polished little shoes as she advanced slowly, naysaying uncertainty wrestling with some obscure and baffling delight that seemed to raise her almost from the ground. Her arms extended, then retracted to her breast, where they trembled and came together beneath her mouth. “Non...” she breathed, still staring wildly, looking to William when he moved too late to warn her. “Helaine... ce n’est pas vrai! Where have you been?” Seizing the blonde woman's hands, the vampyre brought them to her dead cheeks and kissed them as though she were a lost sister. Lilian's gaze fell to the stranger's features, studying their bittersweet arrangement amid the smiling graveyard pallor. “Je ne sais pas.” she murmured. Pink-stained tears welled deeply in Petrouchka's eyes though Lilian's remained blankly pale and utterly remote. The sight of them seemed finally to overcome the vampyre, to refract the unguarded effusion and she stepped back, her lost hands like white stars as they reached to close her collar against her throat, then fled the room. William caught Susan's arm, retreating with her into the hallway. "What's wrong with her?" she hissed, wide-eyed in the darkness. He lifted his hands to his head and leant against the wall, grasped by the same obscure distress. "This cannot be happening..." He leant back on the panelling for a moment as though requiring support. "Christabel... you didn't see this, and don't say anything to Frost... go and find Belyaev..." She opened her mouth to object. "Do you want to go in there and talk to her?" he whispered, gesturing to the kitchen. The proposition dropped her hands from her hips and Susan set off quickly in pursuit of the less onerous task, leaving him to steel himself to face the other. Lilian stood before the refrigerator, its interior light blurring her outline and conspiring with her indifference to his presence. He leant against the counter, waiting and watching her amid an almost pensive apprehension. When she looked to him it was as though in laconic reply, a glance offered over her shoulder that contained neither surprise nor reproach. "Laissez-moi." she said briefly. He could not bring himself to do so and she looked at him again, and William granted her request rather than hear it repeated. C O N T I N U E D N E X T W E E K © céili o'keefe do not reproduce. * Like indie writing? Help make it sustainable. Buy the Book. $3.99 ** View Part 1 Here *
Makarora itself is a small, almost incidental settlement strung along the main tourist route to the southern West Coast. The narrow northern line of houses backs directly on to a chain of hills, mountains really, rising without preamble from the river flat and already dressed with snow when we arrived. I went out late at night from the home stay cabin we had chosen, trying to take pictures of the stars so sharply blotted by the hillside's precipitous black severity, to no avail; permission had been denied, and the darkness felt no obligation to intruders.
ABOVE somewhere near the Blue Pools, I think. The Haast region and in fact the entire spine of the South Island is prime stone country. River cobbles, pebbles, gravel, boulders, strata- you name it, it's there. The Haast river itself is a majestic, milky cyan chute gargling eastward over schist and tumbled glacier moraine, licking and soaking the donkey and hare coloured stone. Maori used to come to this area looking for ponamu or nephrite, and while that is an undisputed metamorphic wonder, it's dark, secreted green is an anomaly; the colour of this place's blood is surely blue.
Light is everything to this scene; when the afternoon is closing down and in the overbearing shadow of the mountains that press so close on each side, it's just a noisy little gully, damp and seal-brown.
For my money, the Haast highway west of Makarora offers one of the best stretches of short-medium walks and cluster of arboreal photo-ops in New Zealand. Accommodation can be an issue since it's not on any skiing trail and the locals tend to want their houses back in summer, so plan to camp or van it, or book a home stay in advance. * More of our images Here * More photoessays Here *This is the Lovely R's rebuttal to my initial shot over his bow. R says- "This is a quick low-key black and white conversion using NIK Silver efex with the highlights tweaked slightly. Ordinarily I would sharpen this but I think it's pretty good as is from my amazing $50 Vivitar plastic fantastic macro lens. This Oystercatcher skeleton was flown about and dropped by a number of seagulls onto concrete at my workplace. It was quite old and mouldy by that stage so I bleached it for a couple of weeks in a dilute ammonia/bleach solution (a splash in a bucket of water) and then dried it in the sun for a week or so. It's turned out quite clean and photogenic. I used one of our Nikon D300 bodies and the aforementioned Vivitar vintage 100 mm F3.5 macro lens at F8 in natural indoor daylight. I like it!" I like it too. But I think mine's better lol. We'll each do another shot and post the results. While I know what I like, I also enjoy being blindsided by abject and complicated strangeness. When ordering from somewhere like Indiescents, I trawl the sample options like a perverted maniac, looking for something that'll piss me off or prompt me to abandon a long-standing olfactory relationship in its rakish favour. Slumberhouse had me at slumberhouse and I picked two enfants terrible from its contentious archives, prised Norne from the package, blew it onto my wrist, toughed it out for an hour and then ran to the bathroom like a little bitch to scrub it off. A week later I tried it again and came back with nope. Another attempt brought me round a small distance and got me questioning the depth of my own reaction. Was I really mad at Norne for being a tall dark fucked-up stranger? Who am I? So I went a few more rounds. Like many good things, Norne is immensely aberrant, especially at first. It yawns wide open like a lifted slab, full of latent, moonless lycanthropy, offering up a richly phenolic bucket of neat liquorice, damp saddle, black tar something, peaty malt, signal fire and refrigerator vegetable bin feat. celery. Scraped-up moss and shovel handle, distant aniseed and molasses tins drift in and out of that dense equation. After half an hour fresh white sawdust creeps under the door as the aggressive tar and vegetable elements collapse, and this develops further into the smell of dressed timber, roasted, savoury caramels and brown liquor and cola-breath huffed against a neck. When taxed for his opinion of the surprisingly moderate silage, my partner muttered dried fruit and cinnamon, which confused me, but maybe there is an analogue in the molasses note. Then he said warm horse. Writing this an hour later leads me to reassess the tail which is both lengthy and indeed a lot more aromatic than I remembered, with lowball powdered cinnamon, maybe sandalwood and the ghosts of nameless conifers emerging. Every time I consult Norne in its first half hour I am enclosed in a beetling ring of old-growth trees that exclude the sun and stand buried up to their titan waists in a thousand years of moss and lichen. The visual association is immensely powerful; I can't lift my wrist to my nose without seeing tannic forest colours, feeling water around my ankles and being reminded both of the sound of an approach and my own breathing. To me, that is pagan, deeply erotic and very welcome. These mental and emotional transports are rare, their value completely distinct from that of a scent's aesthetic worth. Full marks to Norne in this respect, and also to its aforementioned depravity; it is almost autoerotic, inverted and careless of spectators and if it was devised as some sort of upskirt voodoo delivery system, it certainly rings the dirty bell in my Pavlovian experience. Is it perfect? No. I'm not averse to gritting my teeth and dousing myself in something completely fucked for the sake of art and/or pretension. But I feel there are some flies in this ointment and that they are not just questions of personal taste. Volume is one; Norne is too fucking loud on the skin. Even on a half-squirt this juice shouts I am Norne in my face like someone with tuna stuck in their teeth. This may be the extrait strength talking and while I wonder if another, more volatile embodiment might help, I also suspect this scent would lose too much to alcohol. As it is, it makes no constructive concessions to your personal chemistry, getting up to buy you a drink and coming back with a huge neat Pernod. Sometimes sarcastic generosity gives you all kinds of wood and sometimes it just engages your headbutting impulse; the chasm between wrist-experience and sillage is problematic in my humble opinion. And on a hot day it can sour and turn horribly green- I mean horribly- and this comes from someone with dry and annoyingly sweet skin. Under these circumstances Norne can morph toward that dread strain of smell that I feel many men are anosmic to, namely the low, pungent mouldy scent of stinky towels hung too long in a damp place, of cotton Tshirts not completely dry when they were stuffed into a drawer. In my opinion, while Norne is hotly courageous and deeply creative, it would flower into perfection given a modest technical revision. Apparently the dark juice stains, but that depends on your wardrobe.
* More Perfume Review Here *RADIOLARIA INDEX BY CHAOTIC ATMOSPHERES Chaotic Atmospheres (behance) Topologically Generated Radiolaria - "I’ve been requested by Neonmob (a trading-card social network), to make a big set of more than 100 pictures. As I had freedom on the subject, I searched for base shapes that I could vary sufficiently so there’d be a relationship, and yet each shape would be different from all the others. I ended up representing an index of fake radiolaria inspired by SEM imagery and the incredibly detailed illustrations of Ernst Haeckel." devidsketchbook * I don't know what any of this is about either, but I like it. |
Independent Creativity
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