A sort of apparition – a tall, elegant and bejeweled creature, with wavering elegant gestures, reminding one rather of an Aubrey Beardsley illustration come to life – Clough Williams-Ellis about Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquis of Anglesey
The subject of the “Coilhouse patron saints” comes up in conversation quite often, and Henry Paget deserves a high rank on that list, perhaps between Genesis P-Orridge and Marchesa Luisa Casati. He was the most outrageous of the English aristocrats, often seen gallivanting around London bedecked in jewels and silk, with a poodle under his arm or driving a custom car spraying perfume from the exhaust pipes.
This was a boy raised entirely by women, first in a theater environment in Paris and later in the seclusion of a Gothic mansion in north Wales with little peer contact and sudden access to a seemingly endless supply of money. To call the grown up Henry Paget an eccentric would be a grave understatement, and his upbringing was blamed for his behavior and suspected homosexuality. The charismatic young man transformed himself into a work of art with each waking breath. Obsessed with being photographed, he spared no expense for his costumes, meticulously preparing his poses and taking on new personas for each shot. He even employed a team of dressers to help with frequent costume changes.
Briefly married to his cousin, he showered her with jewels, as well. He “liked to view his emeralds, his rubies, his diamonds displayed on her naked body. But he didn’t lay a finger on her. There was no sex… The marriage was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation.” says the Daily Mail. The Marquess may have shunned romantic involvement entirely, but surrounded himself with other beauty despite the raised eyebrow of aristocracy. His expenses included a number of modified cars, canes, “jewels, furs, boats, perfumes and potions, toys, medicines, dogs, horses and theatricals on a scale unimagined”.
Gamers everywhere are mourning the loss of Gary Gygax, godfather of RPGs. After recovering from the initial shock, my thoughts turned immediately to an old friend, author Wayne Chambliss, who knew the man personally. I’d like to thank Wayne from the bottom of my polyhedral heart for taking the time to share some of his memories of Gygax here on Coilhouse. ~Mer
E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on Tuesday. He was 69.
I can’t say I was surprised to hear the news. Last July, Gary told me he was already a year over his “expiration date”—the six months doctors gave him upon diagnosing his abdominal aneurysm. So, I wasn’t surprised. But I am hurting.
I don’t know why I miss him so much. I didn’t know him well. I spent maybe sixteen hours with him altogether. Sixteen hours on the porch of his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Two long, summer days. Even so, Gary was an easy guy to like. He looked like a cross between Gandalf and Stan Lee, with a Lucky Strikes voice and a big laugh. He was a marvelous storyteller, an autodidact with wide interests, and, of course, the developer of an incalculably influential game system millions of people have been playing all over the world since 1974—including myself and at least 33% of this blog’s masthead.
The original Dungeon Master.
There are plenty of obituaries online right now that cover the basic facts of his life. The one in the New York Times seems representative: it contains no misspellings, but also very little of the man I knew, however slightly.
My friend Paul La Farge does a much better job. In a 2006 issue of The Believer (“Destroy All Monsters”), he tells the story of our first trip to Lake Geneva in a way that gets Gary Gygax right. For anyone even vaguely interested in Gary’s biography, Dungeons & Dragons or TSR, I strongly recommend Paul’s article. In my opinion, it is the last word on the subject. Moreover, its postscript is a more fitting eulogy for Gary than anything I could write myself—or have read anywhere else about him.
Maybe it’s simple. Maybe losing Gary is simply part of losing something even larger I will not, cannot, get back.
If you see this snowy picture hanging on your new friend’s wall, watch out: you’re hanging out with an art thief! Someone had the gall to swipe this drawing, part Lori Earley’s Fade to Gray Exhibition, right off the wall at her solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC last Wednesday.
If you do happen to see it, feel free to swipe it back and make a daring escape. There’s a reward being offered for its return, but I know that any Coilhouse reader would return it simply out of the goodness of their heart. The painting wants to be reunited with its sister creations on walls of the gallery space:
Even if you don’t find the painting, you should stop by the gallery, which has been completely transformed to provide the right atmosphere for Earley’s work, on display until March 22. The ghostly paintings, in their intricate china-white frames, hang on walls which have been covered by white damask-motif flocked wallpaper designed by Lori herself. You can see the transformed interior, along with all of the images in the exhibition, on the gallery site.
Sculptor Gregory Brotherton (aka Brotron) resurrects the scrap metal of old cars as new creatures inspired by mythology, pop culture and science fiction. The sculptures on his website include a minotaur, several sci-fi rayguns that remind me of Weta’s fine creations, and slightly lumbering but nevertheless Sorayama-like statue of Eris, goddess of Discord (who’s worshiped by many CH readers, I’m sure). There’s something sexy and elegant about these; they look like they could be villains in a 1930s pulp novel that takes place in the future. Thank you to Ashbet for the tip on this one!
In the past 12 months, I’ve seen more clock bits glued in places where they shouldn’t be than I think I’ll ever see for the rest of my life. So when I received an email this morning from a stranger named Eric about “steampunk clocks,” I was skeptical. “Really? Steampunk? Clocks?” is what I said as I clicked on the link, expecting to see nothing new and believing that nothing could beat those mysterious rugged watches from Japan.
And you know what? It’s nice to be completely, delightfully wrong sometimes. Eric Freitas’ clocks completely Shocked and Awed. Every part of the clock is handmade, and they’re not just elaborate static sculptures; they actually tell time. The clocks employ calligraphy as a stylistic method, and no two clocks that are the same. On his Etsy store, Freitas describes the intensive process of creating a clock: “all of the pieces were cut out with a handheld jewelers saw, ground to shape with a flex-shaft tool, and assembled with hand-machined screws. The dial was inked by hand, then was ripped, weathered, and aged.” He’s made five mechanical clocks from scratch so far (and two using a quartz motor), and each one is more complex than the one before.
To reiterate: to make these mechanical clocks, he didn’t go out and buy a clock at the store and embellish it. He made every gear by hand and put all the gears into a mechanism that actually worked. Something that looks so Ye Olde but from another timeline, a work of art that’s also a functional machine that was assembled from scratch… I can’t call it anything other than what it is, a term that’s being used by so many and deserved by so few, a term I thought I’d never apply so reverently to something I saw this year. But I’m humbled. So I’ll say it: it’s Steampunk Art.
Each furby has 4 controls: mute, crash, loop and reset. The handle turns 8 cams which operate corresponding microswitches to create interesting rhythmic patterns. Part of the ‘setting up’ section at the beginning has been fast forwarded. Please commission me to make lots more of these machines!
Hang in there ’til the furbies gets revved up. It’s actually rather beautiful.
Thanks for the heads up, Jhayne! (If you haven’t been over to Whitechapel’s filthy and absurd “Things That Should Not Exist” thread, go now. Bring wet naps.)
Andreas Hofer is s German-born artist that specializes in nightmares. Unlike much of the spooky-cute stuff on the art scene today, Hofer’s bizarre work actually makes me uncomfortable the way I wish more art could.
While Hofer works with all types of media, of particular interest to me are his sculptures. Almost toy-like, their scale exaggerated and subject matter not without humor, they are remarkably imposing and unsettling. So much so that I’m tempted to actually pinch myself to ensure lucidity.
Part of “Reich”, Acrystal, silicone, 2006
Most perfectly innocent objects can be terrifying when magnified, but Andreas’ strongpoint is twisting recognizable imagery in simple, potent ways that make the viewer cringe. He distorts things as nightmares would. This doesn’t seem to curb my desire to have his various beasts guarding my future compound – their design is just that appealing!
Many thanks to Jerem for the tip. Click below for more from Andreas Hofer.
Occasionally, while exploring the wild untrammeled frontiers of the world wide interwub, you’ll stumble across something so revelatory, so mind-bogglingly exquisite, it knocks you back several feet, clutching your head and speaking in tongues. Today I had just such an experience. Like Nietzsche who gazed too long into the abyss or Icarus who flew too close to the sun, I shall never be the same, for I have seen the cruel, implacable face of G*d:
Three examples of finely crafted deer butt alien head taxidermy, a.k.a. “assquatch art.”
For centuries, families have enjoyed the camaraderie and joy of making alien heads from deer butts. Join the fun! Once you know the secrets, it’s easy to transform an ordinary deer butt into a work of redneck fine art. Let’s take a closer look at this ancient and noble craft…
All you need to create your own deer art is a styrofoam mannequin head, a fresh deer butt, a sharp knife and some glue and you are ready to get started making your own deer masterpiece.
This is indeed a disturbing universe.
Many people say that the real red neck art is the shaping of the deer anus to look like a mouth. This is the true test of the artists loving hand.
The anus can be made very simple, or you can stretch the anus for realistic effects such as smiles and frowns. In general, the leading deer butt artists concentrate on the details of the mouth.
Thank you, Mr Burleson, for exposing an ignorant city mouse like me to this rustic art form. Not since 1996 –when I fished a homemade hunting video called Mostly Squirrels out of the bargain bin at Poughkeepsie Video Barn– have I known such divine ecstasy.
On Saturday I watched Sejayno at the Machine Project. Sejayno is a nomadic experimental noise group, composed usually of Peter B, Carson Garhart and Severiano Martinez. Machine Project’s website lured me in with promises of “homemade electronic instruments (renaissance trompette coat, spoon bowl shinth) and channeling ghostal hippy fluttertalk to enraptured open-mouthed audiences”, despite my fear of hippies.
It had been too long since the last time I’d seen or heard anything of the sort, and the entire thing actually took me on a ride down into the cobwebby recesses of memory. As one of the members put on what look like a cardboard half-moon from a samurai helmet, I wondered if this was going to hurt, and whether sitting in the second row of the small art gallery space was a good idea after all.
There were several instruments and contraptions laid out on a workbench in the dark room, and two video projections – one pre-recorded montage of distressed images reminiscent of El Topo, and another on an adjacent wall filmed live through what appeared to be a webcam.
The sound initially made me think of a project conceived by people deep in throes of a bender. It was unclear whether the performance was rehearsed or entirely improvised, reminding me of Throbbing Gristle, the Far East and Pink Floyd, to name a few. Members took turns singing, humming and muttering. Their instruments were indeed unique and handmade; there was what appeared to be a synth with a wind input, something reminiscent of a shamisen, a rice drum that sounded like the ocean and my favorite – the Sidrassi Organ – a pressure-sensitive appliance made of wood. Also impressive was an elegant hand-carved bass guitar.
The show lasted over an hour, though by the end I hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed. After, the audience was welcome to try out the instruments which had me poking at the Sidrassi Organ for a while. Conveniently, you can order Sejayno’s wonderful creations on their website [prepare to scroll, a lot]. And in case you were wondering, “inventor Peter [Blasser] is available to speak at your electronic circuits class, interface symposium, or wabi-sabi house conference.”
Posted by Zoetica Ebb on February 21st, 2008
Filed under Art, Music | Comments (5)
“The only real depression is a depression of individual ingenuity.” -George Daynor
The exploits of George Daynor read like the synopsis of a Coen Brothers flick. As the story goes, Daynor was a former gold prospector who’d lost his fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hitchhiking through Alaska, he was visited by an angel who told him to make his way to New Jersey without further delay. Divine providence had dictated that Daynor was to wait out the Great Depression there, building a castle with his bare hands.
Daynor had only four dollars in his pocket when he arrived in Vineland, NJ. He used the money to buy three swampy acres of land that had once been a car junkyard. For years he slept in an abandoned car on the mosquito-infested property, living off a steady diet of frogs, fish and squirrels while he built his elaborate eighteen-spired, pastel-hued Palace of Depression out of auto parts and mud. His primary objective? To encourage his downtrodden countrymen to hold onto their hope and stay resourceful, no matter what. Daynor opened his homemade castle to the public on Christmas Day, 1932, free of charge (he started charging an entrance fee after someone made fun of his beard), and proved an enthusiastic, albeit eccentric tour guide.
“The Palace Depression stands as a proof that education by thought can lift all the depressed peoples out of any depression, calamity or catastrophe; if mankind would use it. The proof stands before you my friends. Seeing is believing.”
Daynor held back his wild red hair with bobby pins, wore lipstick and rouge, and enjoyed dressing alternately as a prospector or a Victorian dandy. Legend has it he kept his common-law wife, Florence Daynor, locked up in one of the Palace’s subterranean chambers during visiting hours. He offered his “living brain” to the Smithsonian for experiments (they declined). His Palace of Depression, a.k.a The Strangest House In the World, quickly became a popular tourist destination for folks on their way to Atlantic City.
