Finnish photographer Juha Arvid Helminen has created a black on black series that has me all aflutter. It’s the same mix of fear and attraction as the first time I read The Invisible Man or watched The Headless Horseman at the age of six. And a more recent instance–a shameful tickle in my pants upon discovering Pyramid Head in Silent Hill.

Besides the fetish appeal of complete coverage, tight-lacing, and uniforms, for me the mystery factor is the most potent reason for such a strong visceral response. Masking to create apprehension and giving the imagination freedom to explore its limits is such a common literary and artistic instrument that it’s almost surprising to feel just how effective it is. I’m sipping a cup of tea in the middle of afternoon–far from a spooky ambiance–yet every time I look at these images another infinite, matte black dimension of anxiety unfolds.

Picture yourself as a young ballerina, fresh out of the academy. Your head held high, your posture perfect, you feet turned out just so. The years of training, all those countless hours of acerbic critique, nights spent awake with debilitating foot pain, cold instructor hands twisting your ankle into the correct position on the barre, all those things are falling away behind you like a house of cards. No more Swan Lakes and Nutcrackers. It’s the 70s, you’re Czech, sassy, and your future is bright. So you join the The Ballet Company of the Czechoslovak Television. You’re gonna be famous.

A few months later, thousands watch in awe as you strut your shiny stuff across their TV screens. In your go-go boots, fancy hat, and chic shoulder pads you’re almost unrecognizable, moving in unison with your colleagues, merging into one unified body of DANCE. Now they see you as you truly are.

Golden Weeds

When I look at Ewelina Ferruso‘s art, one thing pops into my mind: “this is what lowbrow art is supposed to look like”. Like Nadya, I’ve grown a little weary of the pre-teens in distress and bloody bears barraging the genre over the past few years; my brain simply doesn’t respond to spooky imagery as it once did. Ewelina stands apart because she manages to capture the very essence of childhood’s dreamy, happy haze and fears alike without dipping into that same old collective symbol pool.  And let’s not forget her keen technical skill – I’ve seen a couple of these pieces in person and have to say that hers is some of the most impressive workmanship I’ve encountered this year. What I especially dig about Ewelina’s painting style is the way she integrates textures with smooth gradients – each shiny little blob carefully considered and attended to, each stroke blended to perfection.

Above, likely my favorite of Ewelina’s pieces. When I look at this I see yellow flowers pictured from below, as they would look to a child lying in a sunny meadow on a warm summer afternoon. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the enchanted wonderment most of us don’t indulge in nearly enough.

Below, Ewelina describes her evolution and the direction of her new work to Coilhouse.

EF: “My intention is to chronicle a personal spiritual journey. We are the storytellers, fable fibbers, truth seekers, elaborators of dreams and embracers of muses and magical things that others are consciously or unconsciously drawn towards. As artists, we are the magnets of beauty. We bring unlikely particles together in orgasmic connections. Thus, it is in a sense, fireworks in the making as I see it.

I work on a deep inner plane coming from a place of an accumulation of experiences, meditations, mid-night visions, psychic revelations, appreciation of the unseen and a profound passion to evolve. The earlier pieces were centered in childhood and express a certain innocence in play and discovery. I allow myself to be immersed in mystery and often find that the work reveals to me what the mystery is in due time. And so, I expand and demand more mysterious phenomena. The current revelation of work is unraveling itself now as a thorough digging within the denied realms of this soul. I pose the question, ‘How can one fully share their lightness, if one does not embark on a quest to know their darkness?’ It is within this yin and yang that a true woman unfolds. There will be a shedding of old skin and an unlocking of doors.”

Peace in the Garden

More of Ewelina‘s work below the jump.

My childhood edition of Town in a Snuffbox was published in 1981 and, as you can see by the cover alone, it’s Steampunk as f**k. It’s a tale of a boy who travels inside a wind-up musical snuffbox to find a town called “Din-Din” and anthropomorphic bells, hammers, springs and cogs inhabiting it. The bells tell young protagonist Misha about their life of forced music-making and daily beatings from the dreaded hammer-men. The hammer-men explain that they’re just following orders from their superior, who in turn takes his orders from Queen Spring. Displeased by all the violence an bureaucracy, Misha confronts Queen Spring and brings down the system by uncoiling her.

Here’s a book that probably wouldn’t get published today, at least not in the US, for the mere fact that its premise involves tobacco paraphernalia. But Prince Vladimir Odoevski didn’t write Town in a Snuffbox in modern times. Yep, the author was a prince. He was also a music critic, philanthropist, philosopher, senator and an enthusiastic fan of phantasmagoric storytelling. Oh, and a magazine editor, working on the socio-political Sovremennik with such literary greats as Pushkin and Gogol.

1800s Moscow was brimming with radical-thinking upper-crust entrepreneurs – Odoevski was doing all he could to keep up. Looks like he did a decent job of it, too. He’s recently been credited with predicting blogging in his unfinished utopian novel, Year 4338. From Wikipedia:

Finally, today we received a household journal from the prime minister, where we, among others, were invited to a soiree. You need to know that in many houses, especially those well connected, such journals are published, having replaced regular correspondence. <…> The journals usually provide information about the hosts’ good or bad health, family news, various thoughts and comments, small inventions, as well as invitations; in case of a dinner invitation, also the menu. Besides, for communicating in emergency, friends’ houses are connected by means of magnetic telegraphs that allow people who live far from each other to talk to each other.

Eerie!

The illustrator, Alexander Koshkin, is a contemporary artist, whose vision and watercolor technique make the dreamy tone of the book come alive. I love that though this is a children’s book, the art  doesn’t feel dumbed down – sparse backgrounds balance against super-detailed characters so there’s enough room for the imagination. Everything seems to be veiled in warm glowing fog and you can almost hear the music.

Koshkin was one of the first illustrators in the former USSR to branch out internationally. The English-laguage books he’s illustrated can be found here. Check out his version of Alice in Wonderland and click the jump to see more of his art from Town in a Snuffbox. Large scans of all the illustrations are here and definitely worth a look – so much detail!

My favorite web discovery of the past couple of weeks is Headphone Commute. First of all, I love the name. It instantly conjures images of foggy morning train rides and late-night buses – hands in pockets, head in space, bobbing along to the music. From the “About” page:

Headphone Commute is an independent resource of candid words on electronic and instrumental music. The range of covered genres includes electronica, glitch, idm, drum’n’bass, breakcore, dubstep, trip-hop, modern classical, post-rock, shoegaze, ambient, downtempo, experimental, abstract, minimal and everything in between. HC is not associated with any artist, band, record label, promoter, distributor or retailer covered by the reviews. There is no hidden agenda behind these words. What you see is what you get. All that means is that we share our love for music because we want to – not because we have to.

A word of caution – this blog is is easy to get lost in upon first visit! Between album reviews, in-depth interviews with labels like Somnia and bite-size interviews with artists like Max Richter, on top of my favorite Headphone Commute feature – mixes available for download, it’s kind of impossible not to spend hours reading, researching and hoarding new music. It’s thanks to Headphone Commute that I found out about The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and had my ears taken to their special place by this incredible Best of 2008 Modern Classical mix. I actually can’t recommended this one enough, especially if you’re somewhere that’s beginning to show signs of autumn. Stunningly beautiful, moody, inspiring. For more mixes see Intelligent Breakcore mix and Ten Favorite Mixes of 2008. Happy listening, comrades!

Inspiration is where you find it, and everyone’s gotta start somewhere. Before Enki Bilal’s blue-haired future-hotties and Peter Chung’s Aeon Flux, I had Gennady Kalinovsky and his black-bobbed, fishnet-stockinged, high-heeled no-nonsense powerhouse, Mary Poppins. From the moment I opened the book in 1988 I perceived Miss Poppins as a polished badass, with a collection of dubious acquaintances and a seedy past. Her lipstick was always perfect, she wore well-fitting suits and kept many secrets. Sure, she was sardonic and vain, but she was the best.

The original Mary Poppins stories are kid brain-candy, with magic, adventures, talking animals and going behind parents’ backs, but what really made me love the now-tattered book I’ve kept my whole life is the artwork. One might call Gennady Kalinovsky a Russian Edward Gorey, but I’d rather not. His line-art universe is looser and more psychedelic, with warped perspective and spindly figures you’d sooner expect in an eerie Jean-Pierre Jeunet flick than on the pages of kids’ classic. The twins drawing below the cut gave me nightmares and I’m forever grateful – I only wish more illustrators exercised this kind of freedom in children’s books.

After a bit of research I found that Gennady actually had quite a penchant for the surreal – check out the art he created for Alice in Wonderland , Behind the Looking Glass, and Master and Margarita – my top all-time favorites.

I remember the first and only time I watched the 1964 film about the character I grew up loving, and how disturbed I was by my Mary parading about in ugly pseudo-Edwardian garb, dancing, and, perhaps worst of all, singing. It’s not the first terrible thing Disney has done to a childhood favorite, but for me it was certainly the most jarring.

Looking over the Mary Poppins books’ Wikipedia page it becomes even more apparent just how much my view of the stories and the character has been colored by a Russian translation and the accompanying illustrations. I almost want to give Disney credit for matching their Poppins costumes to the original Mary Sheppard illustrations! Instead, I wish I could shake late Kalinovskiy’s hand and thank him for the introduction to my very first female ideal. Short dark hair, perfect makeup, stockinged legs and an arsenal of experience is how I pictured every modern fictional heroine for years after reading Mary Poppins. I remember when Margarita looked just like her.

A few more of Kalinovsky’s Mary Poppins illustrations after the jump, and the rest of them here on Flickr just for you!

Scarlett Take Manhattan, Molly Crabapple‘s first foray into a full-fledged graphic novel, is out in just two days and is sure to make readers giggle with delight. It’s an audacious prequel to Backstage – a webcomic about seedy vaudevillian adventures set in Victorian New York. And what better way to get the party started than with a bang. A most literal bang, at that – we enter Scarlett’s world as she’s whispering her life story into a beau’s ear while making love. Entirely appropriate for a tale of a woman making her way to the top in a brutal city known for eating its residents alive.

Scarlett Takes Manhattan is a visual delicacy, with detail bursting from every page like yet another fresh-popped bottle of champagne. Molly’s florid style blends with John Leavitt’s writing to reveal 1880s New York’s fleshy underbelly. We peek behind closed doors, over corrupt politician’s shoulders and under ruffled skirts as Leavitt and Crabapple show an uninhibited girl of humble beginnings traipse through manual labor and sex work to become queen of Vaudeville. Sex is celebrated, morality is, surprisingly, maintained and show business gets a new star when the smoke clears.

And now, a special treat our readers!  Scarlett Takes Manhattan is peppered with charming Victorian slang. Post your favorite Victorian euphemism in the comments – the sauciest will win a copy of Scarlett autographed by Molly Crabapple.

[Note from the editor: we have a winner! Random Tangent’s reply caught miss Molly’s eye, here it is:

I find ‘buttered bun’ to be much more preferable to ’sloppy seconds’ or ‘cream pie’.

But what kind of brute would refer to a woman’s commodity as ‘crinkum krankum’? That’s messed up.

So if you’re putting Nebuchadnezzar out to grass with a real dirty puzzle, you best mind that you don’t end up having a buttered bun. That dollymop will give you a nasty flap dragon. Once you’ve got a nasty shanker you’d better spend some time in the lock hospital before you knock another botail. It’s not good to go spreading the French disease.

Congratulations and enjoy your signed copy of Scarlett Takes Manhattan!]

Click the jump for two previews of pages from the book, one of them decidedly NOT Safe For Work.

Do you like blinky-lights and alien androgynes? Then I suspect that this clip from 1981 cult classic Urgh! A Music War will haunt you indefinitely. Prepare to be hilarified by Gary Numan in all his made-up and awkwardly-turned-on glory, performing Down In The Park – a dystopian single about robots and violence. The king of Synthpop slowly emerges from a flood of light and smoke on a joystick-operated mobile throne, casts a malcontent gaze into the audience and does his red leather suit justice with a surprisingly saucy performance. Far past the “suggestive” mark, Numan expresses love for his machine in a manner that may have you feeling a little dirty next time you pick up a game controller.

Take me away on your big, bad bumper car, Mister Numan! This mixture of resentment, admiration and laughter is too much to bear alone. I’ll wipe your furrowed waxy brow and you can have as much alone time with the chair as you require. Let your headlights guide us as we drive at a reasonable speed straight into the future, where we’ll start a mobile chair racing club.

Professor X and Davros

Be it impossible heels, rib-crushing corsets or extremely tight pants, many beautiful items leave us suffering for fashion. While sadistic sartorial contraptions are a thing of the past for most, those of us from thee Darque Side continue to shun comfort and reason in favor of looking really fucking hot. Sadly, “really fucking hot” takes on a sinister literal meaning with the onset of summer. Only the very brave manage to find the strength to maintain their look in the face of nature’s merciless opposition, and Goths In Hot Weather – a new blog dedicated to “celebrating the Sunshine Goth” has noticed.

With events like Bats Day and costumed picnics popping up across the globe, goths are being continuously lured out and into the cruel, cruel sunshine. Alas, what to do but proudly brandish that parasol, cake on the SPF 75 and face the season in all its scorching ice cream and surfboard glory. I’m currently wishing I had a bit of extra time to dig through my photos for a worthy submission. If your moments of summer fashion victory [or defeat] get posted on Goths In Hot Weather, please link to them in the comments section here!

Vaguely related: Look At That Fucking Hipster

I heard “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas while switching between radio stations in my car. The words “I got the that rock and roll, that future flow, that digital spit, next level visual shit” piqued my curiosity so I decided to listen to the rest. As the beat kicked in, I remembered sort of liking the Peas’ first album and dreamily wondered whether T-Pain and Kanye West have inspired an amazing new genre: cyber rap. Just as I was starting to smile at the prospect of a Funkadelic generation for the 21st century, Fergie’s brute battle screech crushed all my hopes of space-hop grandeur with just one verse: “I like that boom boom pow, them chickinz jackin’ my style, they try copy my swagger I’m on that next shit now”.

Still, I looked up the video when I got home – wanted to see what boom-boom-pow looked like. Observe:

Alright, I’ll admit that, with the exception of the cheesy gas masks and biohazard symbols, there is a lot to like about the visuals thanks to art director Norm Myers but… I can’t help but weep for the future if it is to be filled with My Little Ponies headphones and slang from the 80s. I like a little supersonic boom as much as the next guy, but until one of these Peas can be a little more specific about their zooming space shit I’m afraid I just don’t buy it. What exactly makes this song futuristic? Help me out. Until then I’ll try to avoid saying “You’re SOO two thousand and LATE” in my lexicon and look to the cosmos for answers.

Enjoy the uncensored lyrics, below the supersonic space-jump. Try not to get shat on.