Arcanifacts

Baby, It's Cold Outside

2012-01-01T00:05:00.004-05:00

I’m Growing Warmer Now… (inspired by the 1843 American folk ballad “Frozen Charlotte” by Seba Smith) – Black wood-framed shadowbox; Epsom salts; beer; Plexiglas; artist’s board; colour print of snow woodland scene; colour print of Currier & Ives sleigh; colour print of underwater ice; colour print of frozen woman

January 1st.

The New Year’s come in and the winter winds are ablowin’…

A whole brand new 365 days stretch out ahead of us (actually 366, since 2012’s a Leap Year).

Time to reflect on the past; time to plan for the future.

Maybe a time to make some of those New Year’s resolutions—you know them, the good intentions we make, lose a few pounds, get in shape, spend more time with the kids, the wife, the hubby, to slow down, not let things bother us so much…

Yeah, those good intentions that are usually forgotten by dawn on January 2nd.

And remember, Hell is paved with good intentions…

Maybe another of those good intentions should be to follow the advice of your elders—like Mom who’s always after you to be careful, eat your vegetables, to cross at the green, or to wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident, and don’t talk to strangers, don’t make that face it might freeze that way, or if you fall out of that tree and break your leg, don’t come running to me.

Yup, you should always listen to your mother.

And I’ll tell you, fair Charlotte should have listened to hers.

Fair Charlotte was a country gal. She had her share of swains, all waiting for the chance to court the comely young maid. One handsome youth vying for her affections tempted the Fates by asking if fair Charlotte would be willing to accompany him to a New Year’s Eve celebration in the village, some fifteen miles away from fair Charlotte’s humble cottage.

And fair Charlotte said yes.

That night, fair Charlotte attired herself in her finest—her satin party dress, her silken cloak and scarf, her bonnet and gloves; she was a beauteous sight.

Sleigh bells were soon heard as her escort rode up. Bowing low, he greeted fair Charlotte, kissing her hand, leading her toward the door and the bitterly cold darkness that lay beyond the threshold.

Then came her mother’s voice:

“Make sure you bundle up, dear daughter! Wrap the blanket tight around you! ‘Tis a dreadful night tonight!”

But fair Charlotte shook her head. “Nay, mother! My silken cloak and my silken scarf are more than enough to keep me warm. No one shall see my finery if I am covered!”

Saying so, she stepped into the sleigh. With a crack of a whip, they were off.

In only a few miles, fair Charlotte’s swain began to grumble of the cold, the ice beading his brow, numbing his fingers. But all fair Charlotte could manage was a single shivering sentence:

“I am exceedingly cold.”

The swain whipped his steed faster, the sleigh flying through the snow, and soon, alas, all fair Charlotte could utter was a faint whisper:

“I’m growing warmer now…”

At last the sleigh reached the village, it skidded up to the ballroom, all aglow, with sounds of laughter and merriment coming from within. Fair Charlotte’s beau leapt from his seat, and put out a hand. But fair Charlotte moved not. He called her name once, twice, no answer came.

For fair Charlotte was now frozen Charlotte…

…stone, cold dead.

This Edward Goreyesque cautionary tale was first published in 1843, and quickly became one of America’s first fads—long before hula hoops, or yo-yos, or Cabbage Patch Kids, or Beanie Babies, or Tickle-Me-Elmo. It was set to music and sung in theatres, dancehalls, and candlelit parlors. It was read to children, to scare them out of their wits—or at least into obeying their parents. And just as with any good fad, there were those all ready and waiting to cash in—so country store and city shop were soon stocked to the rafters with “Frozen Charlotte” dolls. They weren’t much, it must be said—just a simple, standing naked little white bisque figure, molded cheaply, all in one piece. They ranged in size from about an inch all the way up to a foot-and-a-half; the smallest ones found their main function in being charms cooked into Christmas plum puddings.

But, exactly as with pet rocks and Rubik’s Cubes, the “Frozen Charlotte” craze waned, leaving behind a glut of the various-sized dollies. Manufacturers were left high and dry, with an inventory of thousands of the little vacant-eyed porcelain zombies. Then some bright, enterprising soul somehow convinced the booming housing industry that the dolls made for excellent—and more importantly, cheap—insulation, and all that unsold supply vanished from company warehouses.

They can still be found, those “Frozen Charlottes”—hundreds of them, thousands of them—stuffed in walls and in-between joists and behind chimneys in old homes throughout the country.

Maybe we have found a practical purpose for all those dusty Cabbage Patch Kids and dog-chewed Beanie Babies and laughed-out, drained-batteried Elmos after all.

Who knows what the next fad will be, but believe me when I say, there’s probably another right around the corner… but I digress.

Fair Charlotte…oops, frozen Charlotte should have made a New Year’s resolution to heed her mother’s advice. It was probably on her list of “things-to-do” for the coming year, but, sadly, she never got around to it before those hardhearted Fates gave her the cold shoulder.

So, before it’s too late, make sure you take note that, like it or not…

…your mother’s always right.

Happy New Year!!

The Furious Winter's Rages

2011-12-01T17:43:00.003-05:00

Stykker fra den Sneedronningen’s Spejl – Splinters from the Snow Queen’s Mirror (inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 short story, Sneedronningen) – Antiqued, silvered, frosted, and hand-stained resin frame; white paint; rusted tacks; mirror shards; colour print of “grunge” frost; colour print of Edmund Dulac’s illustration of the “Snow Queen”

Christmastime is upon us once again, the season of peace on earth and good will toward men. A season of smiles. A season of giving, of open, generous, happy hearts.

But some hearts are not giving.

They are not generous.

They are not happy.

There are hearts that are closed—sealed shut—frozen.

Those are the hearts that are longed for by the Snow Queen.

Who is the Snow Queen, you ask?

She is the bitterly cold ruler of the polar regions, living amongst the shifting dunes of snow and floes of ice, with her hives of snow bees.

Snow bees?

Yes, every snowflake created by the Snow Queen is a bee, and just like all bees, they have a queen…

That’s why snowflakes swarm and fly in the winter, and where the snowflakes cluster most, there is their sovereign.

In her great, white sleigh, the Snow Queen traverses the globe in search of those hearts frozen against good and beauty and love.

And she found such a heart in a little boy named Kai.

Kai lived with his grandmother and his best playmate, Gerda, in a garret in the big city. Kai and Gerda loved each other very much—they were happy and joyful. Then, one morning, Kai changed. He became cold and angry, he could only see ugliness and bad in all people—for Kai had a splinter of the Snow Queen’s mirror lodged in his eye, and it soured him against the world.

What is the Snow Queen’s mirror?

It was created by the Devil; a massive silvered looking glass, and anyone that peered into it would only see the worst of things. But the Devil had a plan, he wanted to carry the mirror all the way to Heaven to torment the angels. Thus, he and his minions flew higher and higher toward the pearly gates, but on their way aloft the mirror slipped from their grasp and plummeted to the ground. There it shattered, the splinters flying off in all directions, carried on the wind, and those splinters got into people’s eyes and hearts and all of them would be cursed to Kai’s fate.

Hence the Snow Queen came, in her great, white sleigh, in the midst of a blizzard to take Kai away. And the Snow Queen kissed Kai, twice—once to numb him against the cold, and once again to make him forget all about his grandmother and Gerda and his warm home; to make him forget about happiness; to make him forget about love.

But Gerda did not forget about Kai, she did not forget about love. Gerda went off in search of him—all the way to the Snow Queen’s palace in the faraway frozen north.

There she found Kai a prisoner, alone and still, in the middle of a vast arctic lake, where sat the Snow Queen’s throne. She found him playing with shards of ice, moving them this way and that, as if at work at a giant jigsaw puzzle, for the Snow Queen promised him release, but only if he was able to spell the word “eternity”—a word Kai no longer remembered.

Gerda made her way across the treacherous ice, embracing her beloved Kai. But Kai was so cold, so still, so unmoved that Gerda’s joy became sorrow, and she began to cry. Her warm tears flowed down, dripping onto Kai’s blue, numbed skin, they dripped into his eyes, burning away the cursed splinter of mirror.

Kai’s heart melted.

He was happy, warm and rosy-cheeked again.

He remembered Gerda.

He remembered happiness.

He remembered love.

He and Gerda danced, the ice crystal puzzle pieces being swept up in their delight, and when those ice crystals fell back to the surface of the frozen lake, they spelled out…

…eternity.

So, this Christmas remember that word—eternity.

For only love is eternal.

Only love opens your eyes.

Only love melts your heart.

Only love…

Merry Christmas.

Don't Lick the Spoon!

2011-11-03T09:53:00.003-04:00

Typhoid Mary’s Tasting Spoon (inspired by the life and legend of “Typhoid Mary” Mallon) – Antiqued and stained wooden frame, with cracked glass; antique silver spoon; black thread; cobwebs; hand-stained newspaper clippings; hand-stained typhoid fever warning; hand-stained potato soup recipe; paper flies; black and white print of a photograph of a New York tenement kitchen, ca. 1909

Thanksgiving time is here again!

What was that, groaning I heard amongst the groaning boards?

Not that traditional menu again?!

Your grandma’s time-honored roast turkey—so dry the oven must have been set to “cremation”.
Your wife’s cherished stuffing recipe—so gummy it could be used to repair the mortar on the chimney.
Your sister-in-law’s famous pumpkin pie—so heavy the Mafia’s threatened to use it instead of cement to weigh down bodies in the river.

And we won’t mention that string bean casserole, swimming in Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup; the one with French’s canned french-fried onions sprinkled on top?

Stop shuddering.

You should be thankful.

Thankful?! you scoff, eyebrows raised.

Yes.

Thankful.

Thankful that your annual holiday repast is not being prepared by history’s most notorious cook, Mary Mallon…

…better known as “Typhoid Mary”.

Typhoid—a disease that once spread horror—is described thusly by a modern day medical journal (in laymen’s terms):

Typhoid fever is a bacterial infection characterized by diarrhea, systemic disease, and a rash – most commonly caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi. S. typhi are spread by contaminated food, drink, or water. Following ingestion, the bacteria spread from the intestine via the bloodstream to the intestinal lymph nodes, liver, and spleen via the blood where they multiply and…

Okay, that’s enough of that—I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details. Basically, it’s a really, really, REALLY bad case of food poisoning, really, really, REALLY bad, as in, you-could-be-pushing-up-daisies-soon bad.

But that same medical journal provides an interesting footnote to its typhoid definition:

A few people can become carriers of S. typhi and continue to shed the bacteria for years, spreading the disease while being asymptomatic themselves, as in the case of "Typhoid Mary" in New York over 100 years ago.

There she is!

Typhoid Mary!

Mary Mallon was from good Irish stock, emigrating at age fifteen to the Land of Opportunity where she soon found employment in the upper-middle class New York suburb of Mamaroneck. Mary was a strong, willing worker, and a mighty fine cook it was said. Regrettably, all of her recipes came with an extra added ingredient—a heapin’ helpin’ of ‘em nasty S.typhi germs. That’s why, two weeks after being added to the servant roster at her very first job, those in the household came down with typhoid.

Mary jumped ship, and began quickly stirring up trouble in the heart of New York City. There her new family was, by and by, suffering from fevers and other ills of the Pepto-Bismol television commercial kind, if you know what I mean, and the laundress died, and they were out a cook, since their old one had just skedaddled.

Mary’s next position was behind the stove of an attorney, until seven out of eight of his relatives were rapidly indisposed, and a big “Quarantined for Typhoid” notice was plastered on his front door. It must be said here that tender-hearted Mary stayed on for a while, nursing those she made ill—those she had made unintentionally ill, continued to make unintentionally ill.

That’s the macabre joke of it all—Mary herself was perfectly healthy. Not a symptom of anything to be seen, to give fair warning—not a rumble of the tummy, not a twist of the bowel.

Nothing.

And so, with her current employers not much in need of a cook any longer—since most of them were unable to eat—Mary and her culinary expertise moved on to a post in the wealthy quarter of Oyster Bay, Long Island. Lo and behold, you guessed it, all there got sick, too! Six out of eleven hospitalized. Mary handed in her walking papers, and strolled into three more households, serving up bacteria by the spoonful.

By then, the New York Health Department realized it had a “carrier” on its hands; one redoubtable investigating agent finally tracing the breakouts straight to Mary Mallon’s kitchen door.

Poor Mary.

Under the law of the day, she was taken away to a clinic on North Brother Island located in the middle of Manhattan’s East River. There she languished for three years, until she promised she was “prepared to change her occupation (that of a cook), and would give assurance by affidavit that she would upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact, from infection”.

Didn’t work.

Mary was soon back in the midst of the human throng, and cooking up a storm. In early 1915 alone she was alleged to have sickened over two dozen unfortunates—and causing one death—at, of all places, New York’s Sloan Hospital for Women.

Hey, you gotta do what you do best, right?

And damn, her fresh peach ice cream was first-class…

Be that as it may, the officials had had enough. Mary was carted off, kicking and screaming, back to her quarantine in the East River; this time confined there for life and becoming something of a minor celebrity with journalists always on the hunt for a good bad story.

In the end, it’s calculated that Mary Mallon, “Typhoid Mary”, was responsible for infecting fifty-three, and causing three deaths.

Mary’s own death came in 1938, when she was sixty-nine.

She was cremated (you can insert your own jokes here).

Since then, Mary’s name has gone down in infamy… well, at least her nickname. “Typhoid Mary” has been for nearly a century the medical world’s label for someone who passes along an ailment without being sick themselves. It’s also a term for anybody out there in cyberspace who deliberately and maliciously infects innocent computers with viruses. There’s even a hip-hop group named after her, and a comic book supervillian.

Oops! There goes the dinner bell!

See…there are worse things than that dry turkey, that gummy stuffing, that leaden pumpkin pie, so stop complaining…

…and go wash your hands.

The Thirteenth Child

2011-10-01T13:13:00.002-04:00

The Opprobrium of Mother Leeds—or The Umbilical Cord of the Jersey Devil (inspired by the legend of the Jersey Devil) – Vintage Depression glass candy jar; antique hand-forged fish hook; tissue paper; black thread; theatrical blood; red paint; white glue; floral wire; rotted burlap; hemp twine; dried leaf; dried pine branches and pine cones; sand

Come closer round the fire, kiddies—have I got a Halloween tale for you…

A long, long time ago—near on three-hundred years past—in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey – a lonely, desolate sweep of coarse sand and dense forest – there lived a woman known as Mother Leeds. She and her husband (a drunken lout if ever there was one) and their twelve children (guess there wasn’t much else to do in-between brewin’ up ‘em batches of moonshine) called a single, ramshackle cabin home. Life was hard enough scrounging up food sufficient to feed her current brood, then Mother Leeds once again discovered herself “with child”. Maddened at the forthcoming so-called blessed event, Mother Leeds railed at the heavens, shouting, “Let this one be a devil!”

And thus the child was cursed, even before its birth.

Fast-forward nine months.

It was a dark and stormy night when the babe arrived. Lightning crackled, illuminating Mother Leeds’ bed. A midwife scurried about in the candlelight, while the Leeds’ children huddled in the shadows near the fire anxiously awaiting their sibling’s delivery, while Father Leeds snored off the last of the alcohol. Thunder rolled, combining with Mother Leeds’ cries, a deafening din that continued until…

…there came another cry—the cry of the newborn.

The midwife cut the umbilical cord and held the infant up proudly, all smiles. “A boy, Mrs. Leeds—a beautiful boy!”

But no sooner had those words been said then the smiles withered. The midwife frowned, it seemed that the babe was all of sudden heavier, bigger—that the babe was growing! She dropped the little one to the filthy floorboards and backed away, hand to mouth, aghast. Mother Leeds, sweaty and exhausted, drew herself up on her elbows, trying to see, while her other offspring stared, whimpering.

Then those whimpers turned to screams.

Mother Leeds’ thirteenth child was changing, metamorphosing, mutating, right before their very eyes! A devil she’d wished for; a devil she’d received.

The babe uncurled. Pink skin turned dark and leathery. Wings, like those of a great bat, sprouted. Gnarled horns budded from either side of a lengthening skull. Little fingers elongated, lethal claws pushing their way from each tip. Feet became hoofs. Sharp teeth grew from bloody gums, filling in the animal-like muzzle the creature now possessed. Its eyes blinked, its irises glowing hellfire red, its pupils thin, black slits.

It stood.

It stretched.

It turned.

It took in its family, one by one, until those infernal eyes caught its mother in their sights.

There came an inhuman howl—and it leapt!

Carnage ensued.

Those bestial talons tore through flesh, snapped bones, decapitated, dismembered, and disemboweled.

Its work of familicide finished, the creature went to the fireplace. It spread its wings, and with a leap and a bound it flapped its way straight up the chimney and into the storm.

And ever since then, it’s called the Pine Barrens home.

Sightings are still reported.

For three centuries there are those unfortunate few who claim to have encountered it. For three centuries strange sounds have be heard in the Barrens at night—unnatural sounds—eerie wailings, uncanny cries. For three centuries weird hoof prints have been found, in mud, in snow. For three centuries dogs, horses, and cows in its territory, have vanished, or been found slaughtered, half-eaten. For three centuries it has never been caught, never been captured.

It.

Mother Leeds’ thirteenth child.

It.

The Jersey Devil.

Yup, it’s still out there…

…somewhere.

And if you listen real hard, maybe you’ll hear…

Wait!

What was that?

An inhuman howl?

A guttural growl?

A stomp of hoofs?

A flap of wings?

Silence.

Guess it was nothing.

But… then again…

So, be careful when you’re trick-or-treating this Halloween, kiddies…

…’cause the devil just might get you if you don’t watch out!

Beware the Autumn People

2011-09-01T09:21:00.005-04:00

The Autumn People (inspired by Ray Bradbury’s 1962 novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes) – Old wooden book box; autumn leaves; dried autumn foliage; thorn branches; cracked pomegranate piece with seeds; pine cones; plant pods; rusted tacks; hemp twine; hand-tinted print of old-fashioned carnival/skull clouds; altered art pieces—Green Town Public Library card, paper wasp, Mr. Dark silhouettes, old typewriter quote, ticket to Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

Carnivals stop coming before Labor Day, everybody knows that. They’re summertime revels—merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels and cotton candy and hot dogs and lemonade, balloons and games of chance with gimcrack plastic prizes on the midway—the perfect way to celebrate the longest days of the year, the liberation from the schoolroom, the clear, wide, sultry afternoons that melt into cooling twilights as the sun descends, then into breezy nights of glaring lights, loud tinny music, and booming fireworks.

Yes, all of that ends as soon as there’s a hint of autumn in the air. That season brings with it crisp evenings, the smell of freshly picked apples, the scents of dying leaves and chimney smoke; the days grow shorter, darkness begins its reign, and Halloween is fast approaching.

But some years, in some places, Halloween comes early.

The ear heeds it first, the rhythmic click-clack of the train as it draws near, a black serpentine silhouette in the night. Then the nose takes in the bittersweet black clouds of coal smoke. Next the eyes catch the engine’s lamp, round and white and as bright as the moon; a moon those billowing black clouds of coal smoke are obscuring. A strange, unexplainable frisson of fear runs up the spine as the plaintive wail of a calliope—a siren’s song—sounds.

The carnival is coming.

Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival.

A fair like no other.

Whereas other carnivals are sources of merriment, of jollity, of laughter and screams of delight, feeding its gluttonous attendants with the thrills and chills and spills of a more innocuous, ingenuous type, this one feeds off of you, your friends, family and neighbors until there’s nothing left but dry husks, like corn stalks left to rot in the farmer’s field.

Mr. Dark and his entourage—the Dust Witch, the Illustrated Man, Mademoiselle Tarot, even the Most Beautiful Woman in the World—know your deepest, darkest secrets.

What would you trade for the fulfillment of your fondest wish?

You there, portly matron—what would you give to be a fine-looking, svelte filly again, a feast for any man’s eye?

And what about you, the faded football hero—wouldn’t you like one last chance to prove yourself, to make that winning touchdown? All hail the conquering hero!

And you, old man—what would you offer in return for another taste of youth, of strength in those limbs, of a restoration of your masculine virility?

And you, son—wouldn’t you like to be older? Wouldn’t you like to be a man, to know what men and women do behind locked doors while the children sleep?

They can smell your yearnings, they salivate at the thought of your unrequited desires.

After all, most men jump at the chance to give up everything for nothing, and there’s nothing we’re so careless with as our own immortal souls.

So, step right up…

Visit the Egyptian Mirror Maze, constructed to trick the eye, boggle the mind, as you see yourself, your faults and shortcomings reflected back ten thousand times!

Ascend high in the Monster Montgolfier Balloon! Catch a glimpse of your town from God’s perspective; so quaint, so orderly from above—so ripe, so fetid, so foul from within!

Take a ride on the carousel! Choose your steed! How many years do you want to gain by going forward? How many years do you want to lose by going in reverse?

A flash of early-autumn lightning reveals Mr. Dark for who—and what—he is, as a bleached skull materializes from beneath the skin.

His minions scuttle in the dust, in the must, and fallen leaves, seeking out any morsel of your soul you’ve left behind, gorging themselves on your pangs of regret and remorse.

And when they’re finished here, like any good carnival, they’ll pull up stakes, pack up and move on—so, beware of the train that arrives in the night; beware of the carnival that sets up tent after summer’s end…

But most of all…

…beware of what you wish for…

…you might just get it.

Happy autumn to you all.

The Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer

2011-08-01T14:42:00.008-04:00

The Venable Venus Flytrap (inspired by Tennessee Williams’ 1958 play, Suddenly Last Summer and by Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams’ screenplay for the 1959 film of the same name) – Gold-leafed frame; gold-leafed gothic arches; faux Venus flytrap plant; dried moss; dried leaves and branches; dried white rose; genuine desiccated ladybug; genuine desiccated leaf mimic insect; rusted T-pins; sea shells; peacock feather; rusted nails; colour print of a painting of St. Sebastian by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi; colour print of palm fronds; altered art pieces—Dr. John Cukrowicz business card, Violet Venable note, front page ripped from “Poem of Summer, 1935” notebook, postcard from Cabeza de Lobo, lobotomy diagram

“My son, Sebastian and I constructed our days. We would carve each day like a piece of sculpture, leaving behind us a trail of days like a gallery of sculpture until suddenly, last summer…”

So said Mrs. Violet Venable.

Summer.

A time of scorching heat and oppressive humidity, of somnolent, sun-drenched days and sultry, sleepless nights. A season when the crime rate, the murder rate, the suicide rate skyrocket from coast to coast. Tempers flare. Rage seethes. A madness bubbles neath the skin, like hot asphalt; everybody seeking an escape.

The wealthy, widowed, aged Southern Belle, Mrs. Violet Venable sought hers in the mammoth glass-framed conservatory her late, lamented son, Sebastian, created as a sanctuary, modeled after Michelangelo’s “Dawn of Creation,” a temple to a miasma of lurid, fetid, carnivorous flora—his favorite, his prized Venus flytrap, a work of nature that requires the flesh, the blood, the very essence of the living to survive—much like Mrs. Venable herself.

It’s summer, 1937.

The setting, Lions View State Asylum in New Orleans, Louisiana—a grand, forbidding madhouse, currently host to an irritating summertime pest that Mrs. Venable would just love to swat, a bothersome, buzzing mosquito, the ant at her picnic, the stinging horsefly in her ointment—her niece, Catherine, a desperate, unstable girl Mrs. Venable wants silenced, at any cost. You see, Catherine has been spreading stories, sordid, scandalous untruths, completely obscene lies, about the venerated Venable, Sebastian, the way he lived, the way he died. And what better way to silence an obvious lunatic than with the generous offer of a full frontal lobotomy—a knife to the brain that brings peace and quiet to all.

And just what are those lies poor Catherine is spreading?

Seems Sebastian died under awfully mysterious, awfully bizarre, awfully awful circumstances while vacationing on Cabeza de Lobo, in the Encantadas, and nobody knows exactly how Sebastian met his end—except Catherine, who was there…

Who saw it all.

And soon the festering truth oozes forth, bursting in the overheated, almost incestuous air Mrs. Venable breathes, each breath taken in idolization of her adored offspring, as she recalls them as being, not a mother and a son, but a famous couple, saying:

“People didn’t speak of Sebastian and his mother or Mrs. Venable and her son, they said ‘Sebastian and Violet, Violet and Sebastian are staying at the Lido, they're staying at the Ritz in Madrid. Sebastian and Violet, Violet and Sebastian have taken a house at Biarritz for the season’, and every appearance, every time we appeared, attention was centered on us! - everyone else! Eclipsed!"

Always Sebastian.

Saint Sebastian.

The exalted image of gilded, virile youth shot through with arrows.

But Catherine's image of her cousin Sebastian differs significantly from that of his mother’s. To Catherine he was certainly a martyr but hardly a saint, he was someone who used people. Appears Sebastian was shy—just a tiny bit closeted—and he needed first his mother and then the younger, more seductive Catherine, “as bait” to meet people and to make contacts—to procure, to satisfy his cravings for young male flesh. To Sebastian, his victims existed only for his gratification, his nature much like the life-sucking greenery of his garden. “Blondes were next on the menu,” Catherine confessed. “He was fed up with the dark ones and was famished for blondes....that’s how he talked about people, as if they were - items on a menu. – ‘That one’s delicious looking, that one is appetizing’...”

And, a fate would have it, that’s precisely how Sebastian got his just desserts – by being devoured, literally, by the very boys that he had fed upon, himself.

The truth told, Catherine was spared her brain butchering, and Aunt Violet?

Well, she was left with the one thing that mattered the most to her—her son.

Or, at least his memory, as her brain devoured itself.

“Oh, Sebastian, what a lovely summer it’s been. Just the two of us. Sebastian and Violet. Violet and Sebastian. Just the way it’s always going to be. Oh, we are lucky, my darling, to have one another and need no one else ever.”

So…

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
You'll wish that summer could always be here

You'll wish that summer could always be here
You'll wish that summer could always be here

You’ll wish that summer…

This is a Special Report...

2011-07-01T09:15:00.008-04:00

Scot D. Ryersson (left), Joanna Tower (centre), and Daragh O'Connor (right)

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. For the next few minutes we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits…

Arcanifacts on TV.

Beginning Sunday, July 10th, and continuing until the end of the month, Cablevision’s Neighborhood Journal program will feature a segment on artist Scot D. Ryersson and his infamous Arcanifacts. The show will air in northern New Jersey on channel 78, at 6:30 pm and 10:30 pm on that Sunday. Check local listings for encore airings.

Neighborhood Journal ’s host and producer Joanna Tower and her crew were at the River Edge Public Library in mid-June to interview Ryersson and the library’s director, Daragh O’Connor. The library’s Arcanifacts exhibition of twenty-two pieces of the arcane and phantasmagorical, now on view there until the first week of August, was filmed in detail. Highlighted were Ryersson’s first of over one-hundred Arcanifacts, "Shards of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cup", and his latest, "A Snippet of Peter Pan’s Shadow", thus taking the viewer from the depths of Wonderland to the heights of Neverland.

So, remember that date, time and channel!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program…

To a Happier Year

2011-06-01T13:32:00.005-04:00

Beneath the Stiff Collar: A Panegyric for Maurice Hall (inspired by E.M. Forster’s 1971 posthumously published novel, Maurice) – Black wood-framed shadowbox; vintage men’s detachable linen collar; antique key; dried rose; beach rocks; sea shell; antique carte des visite; antique tintype; vintage British shilling coin; colour print of photograph of a male nude by George Platt Lynes; colour print of tortoiseshell veneer

In 1913, the eminent English author, E. M. Forster, who had penned such literary classics as A Room with a View, A Passage to India, and Howard’s End, began writing his most personal, most controversial book—Maurice. The story is a deceptively simple one; Maurice Hall, a young Britisher, is born into a privileged life. He grows up confident in status, precise in social ritual. Yet although priggish and conforming, Maurice finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Through Clive, whom he encounters at Cambridge, and through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive’s country estate, Maurice gradually experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening.

Completed in 1914, Maurice is a powerful condemnation of the then repressive attitudes of British society and a continuing plea for emotional and sexual honesty. Aware that its publication would cause a furor, Forster—he himself a closeted gay man—ensured that the novel did not appear until after his death in 1970. Even then the manuscript was found to have taped to it a note in Forster’s hand, saying “Publishable, but worth it?”

Almost a century after its completion, Maurice celebrates its fortieth anniversary in print this year. And what has happened along the way in reference to its subject matter, its cause—the right for someone to love whom they want regardless of gender? The intervening decades have seen the repeal of England’s harsh laws banning such acts; in the United States, the Supreme Court has also abolished the same. Celebrations of gay pride are seen annually internationally—from New York City to Toronto, from London to Paris, from Rio to Sydney. In some countries, in some U.S. states, same sex couples are now able to legally marry, to adopt children. Yes, great strides have been made, ones that probably would have astounded E. M. Forster—including the fact that, in 1987, Maurice, the book whose merit he questioned, was made into a much acclaimed motion picture, with most movie goers hardly batting an eyelid at the male/male love scenes.

Today, we live in an age when mass media inundates with homoerotic imagery—fashion magazines, television screens, gym advertisements, and even your local mall’s Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bags exult the nude male form, explicitly enticing gay audiences, gay clientele. We have gay vampires and gay werewolves; we have gay congressmen and gay celebrities. We have gay dating shows and gay game shows. We have pop diva Lady Gaga rejoicing in her affirming mantra, “Baby, I was born this way!”

None of this would have been thinkable, let alone possible, when Forster wrote Maurice.

I was born in 1960, coming of age in the garish years of pounding disco beats, the flashing floors of Studio 54, the gender-bending of Boy George, Annie Lennox, and Pete Burns, the clichéd stereotypes of the Village People, as well as the introduction of Playgirl magazine with its blatant, though groundbreaking, masculine frontal nudity and the first publication of The Joy of Gay Sex—years of excess that not only unlocked closet doors, but virtually smashed them to smithereens. I was nine when the Stonewall riots occurred in Greenwich Village, the aftermath of that and many other protests, making my coming out something easier, not that earthshaking, not that terrible. I’m fifty now. I’ve seen the changes. I’ve lived in more tolerant times, in more tolerant places, surrounded by more tolerant people. Yes, I’ve been harassed; yes, I’ve been ridiculed. I’ve been called names, have endured disgusted stares. But I’ve also had the chance to openly love—and be loved by—two extraordinary men, both of whom changed me, my life, my heart, my soul, for the better.

And for all of that, I am grateful.

On the first page of Maurice, Forster wrote:

Dedicated to a Happier Year

Words that must continue to inspire.

You Axed For It!

2011-06-01T09:06:00.002-04:00

Due to its popularity and its critical acclaim, the current exhibition of Arcanifacts - Arcanifacts II - at the River Edge Public Library is being extended until the end of June! So scurry, scuttle, scamper, or skedaddle your way there...

...they're still waiting.

They're Baaack...

2011-05-01T10:40:00.021-04:00

By popular demand, Arcanifacts has returned!

Beginning May 4th and running through to June 2nd, the River Edge Public Library is once again hosting an exhibition of the arcane and the phantasmagorical—

Twenty-two all new pieces will be on display—from Snow White’s poisoned apple core to a chunk of Narnia’s White Witch’s frozen heart; from Miss Muffet’s spidery cereal spoon to chips of Humpty Dumpty’s shattered shell; from briny crocodile tears to Dorian Gray’s last teardrop, from fallen angel feathers to harpy claws, and so much more. Each a bit of unreality preserved and submitted for your consideration.

The River Edge Public Library is located at 685 Elm Avenue, River Edge, NJ.

So, stop by if you dare…

…they’re waiting…

Read an article on the exhibition below:

http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/events/121300913_Arcanifacts_exhibit_returns_to_the_library.html

ARTICLE TEXT:

ARCANIFACTS EXHIBIT RETURNS TO THE RIVER EDGE LIBRARY
Thursday, May 5, 2011
BY MEGAN BURROW
Town News
MANAGING EDITOR

Just six months after his first exhibit at the River Edge Public Library, artist Scot Ryersson is back at the library with 22 new pieces. The River Edge resident will be displaying his work from May 4 through the end of the month.

The pieces are part of Ryersson’s "Arcanifacts" collection, a project he began in 2007. Each piece on display is an assemblage of found objects and pictures inspired by short stories, novels and folklore.

Ryersson said he coined the term by combining the Latin words arcanus (secret) and factum (thing made) to describe an artifact containing both mystery and truth.

Among the pieces currently on display are works inspired by "Mother Goose" nursery rhymes, "The Picture of Dorian Gray," by Oscar Wilde and John Milton’s epic poem, "Paradise Lost."

Like the first Arcanifacts exhibit, a bibliography will be provided to visitors so they may read the original works that inspired the pieces.

Ryersson said he was pleasantly surprised by the first exhibit’s reception and is excited to once again display his work in what he called a "summer sequel."

"The library had contacted me and said the first exhibit was popular and had garnered a lot of attention," he said. "I guess after no one showed up with pitchforks and torches after the first time they were ready to have me back."

Before creating Arcanifacts, Ryersson designed movie posters for about 15 years, including ones for "The Silence of the Lambs," "Ghost," and "The Hunt for Red October." His work on "Evil Under the Sun" and "Another Country" each garnered him an Art Directors of London Award.

In 1999, Ryersson co-authored a biography of the Marchesa Casati, an eccentric Italian celebrity in the early 20th century, with Michael Orlando Yaccarino. The book, "Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati," has been adapted into a play and the fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano have each based collections on Casati. Most recently, an illustrated version of the biography was released by the art book publisher Abrams.

To learn more about Ryersson and his work, visit arcanifacts.blogspot.com. He accepts private commissions and can be contacted via e-mail at arcanifacts@gmail.com.

The Fears of a Clown

2011-04-01T09:06:00.005-04:00

Petals from the Joker’s Boutonniere (inspired by Bob Kane’s Batman characters) – Vintage hand-blown purple glass perfume bottle; dried Stargazer lily petals; antiqued French dyed ribbon; antiqued art nouveau print ribbon; vintage sterling jester’s head charm; purple glass–beaded tassel, vintage Joker playing cards

April sweet is coming in, let the feast of fools begin!

Coulrophobia.

What is that, you question?

Let me tell you.

Coulrophobia:
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: an extreme fear of clowns

Was that a scoffing laugh I heard? How ridiculous! How absurd! I hear you say. How could anyone be afraid of a clown?

Ask the people of Gotham City.

For that major metropolis quakes in terror of one.

The Clown Prince of Crime himself—the Joker.

He’s suave, he’s debonair.

He’s a homicidal lunatic.

A sociopathic psychopath with a sick and sadistic sense of slapstick.

Whether by make-up (war paint some have called it), by accidental immersion in a bath of toxic chemicals, or by true physical deformity, the Joker’s skin is pasty pancake white, his hair brilliant green, his lips vivid red—lips that surround, delineate, define and outline a hideous rictus, an appalling twisted smile, which leaves him grinning from ear to ear.

All this the jolly jester enhances, embellishes, with his distinctive, dandified attire. An elegantly-tailored suit—striped pants, double-breasted waistcoat, long-tail coat—that is of a dazzling purple hue. The color of his shirt, sometimes a vibrant orange, sometimes a garish green. A large and floppy bowtie, purple gloves, polished black shoes and spats, and even an ebony wood walking stick with a sterling handle, complete the ensemble.

Along with an unique boutonniere.

And what a strange flower it is.

Is it a lily?

Is it an orchid?

While its genus might be debatable, one thing about it is not.

It’s deadly.

Remember those harmless prankster flowers, the rubber ones you knew as a child that squirted water in the face of those invited to closely inspect? Well, kiddies, the Joker’s done you one better.

His squirts sulfuric acid.

Now ain’t that a laugh?!

But that’s the Joker’s specialty, you see, his forte, his talent, his raison d’être, taking seemingly innocent practical jokes, and turning them inside-out. That exploding cigar contains enough nitroglycerin to take your head off. That fluffy cream pie is spiked with cyanide. That joy buzzer sizzles with 10,000 volts, and those playing cards are razor-edged.

Then there’s his favorite gag—a lethal form of laughing gas; giggle your way to the grave.

Whatever the trick, whatever the stunt, it is heralded—and followed—by hysterical fits of hilarity.

He’s the Harlequin of Hate.

He’s the Ace of Knaves.

He’s insane.

Mad as a hatter.

He’s not playing with a full deck.

So, if you ever plan a trip to the big city, to Gotham City, to see the sights, beware.

Because in the Joker’s world, the joke is always on you…

“You see, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push!”

—The Joker, quoted from the film, The Dark Knight (2008)

The Reason for the Season

2011-03-01T09:37:00.010-05:00

The Six Pomegranate Seeds Left Uneaten by Persephone (inspired by Greek mythology) – Antique art nouveau bottle with original cork; six dried pomegranate seeds; dried pomegranate rind; floral wire; French silk ribbon, hand-embroidered and beaded in a pomegranate pattern

The comely, innocent maid hummed a simple tune as she promenaded through the vernal splendor. The surrounding flowerbeds bloomed with a plethora of multi-colored blossoms, whose enchanting fragrance perfumed the balmy breezes with each brush of the hem of her dress. The sky was a blue, cloudless expanse, from east to west, north to south. The sun was warm, its beams creating dappled pools of light on the grassy carpet beneath the maid’s bare feet. Trees bent their branches so that their leaves might caress her rosy cheek; birds trilled, bees buzzed, alighting from petal to petal—the whole world gloried in the maid’s beauty, her virginal purity.

But there must forever be a worm in the bud.

All at once the ground began its tremors, shaking, shuddering, then splitting, and from that fissure was manifested hell on earth.

Literally.

Hades, dark lord of the Underworld, ascended. His great steel-wheeled and ebony wood chariot emerging in plumes of sulphurous yellow, drawn on by a pair of inky steeds. His vast shadow blocked out the sun, his armor black as pitch, his eyes a conflagration of hellfire and lustful desire.

As one of the dark lord’s large, rough hands gripped the black leather reins of his team, the other shot out, seizing hold, snatching and capturing his targeted prey…

Our comely, innocent maid—

Persephone.

Overpowered, overwhelmed, Persephone was dragged down into the crater, clods of dirt and blades of grass suturing up the gaping wound in the earth’s crust, obliterating the scene of the crime from men’s eyes.

Once entrenched in his subterranean lair, Hades embarked on wooing his adored, she a heavenly radiance in the perpetual gloom of the land of the dead; his words of love falling upon not entirely deaf ears. But such a sorrowful, blackened, desolate kingdom was not for Persephone, and so she spurned the dark lord’s advances, and vowed a hunger strike until she was once again allowed to bask in the sun.

Hades fumed and raged.

He wheedled and cajoled.

He enticed his intended with the finest foods, finally leaving nothing more to excite her appetite than a dozen pomegranate seeds.

Throughout all, Persephone remained adamant, steadfast, unmoved…

…but she was so very hungry, and those glistening red seeds looked so very tasty.

Meanwhile, high above on the plane of the living, Persephone’s progenitrix, Demeter, Mother Nature herself, was in frantic search of her missing offspring. Getting nowhere, finding nothing, she decimated the earth, laying waste crops, fertile farmlands withering into nothing but barren dustbowls. A loud cry went up from the people, straight to Zeus’ ear. And the King of the Gods delivered Hades an ultimatum—release Persephone or face divine wrath.

Hades relented.

Of course the girl could go back home, as long as she hadn’t eaten anything while below ground, because, you see, it was one of those inexplicable regulations created by the fickle Fates that asserted whoever partook of any food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there.

When questioned about her eating habits during her time as the dark lord’s guest, Persephone had to confess that she had indeed failed in controlling her cravings and had succumbed to the temptation of eating six of those offered twelve pomegranate seeds.

That slip of the tongue, so to speak, sealed her destiny.

It was ordered that as a penalty, our comely, innocent maid must spend six months—one for each pomegranate seed consumed—with Hades in the lower regions. But mere mortals paid the price, too, for Demeter decreed that as long as her daughter resided beneath, the fruitful bounty of tree and field would cease, to flourish again only upon her return.

Thus the seasons were created.

Spring—the season of rebirth.
Summer—the season of plenty.
Autumn—the season of harvest.
Winter—the season of want.

Fickle as were those Fates, whose injudicious law caused her plight, Persephone herself was a tad capricious for she soon grew quite fond of her dark lord and accepted his hand in marriage, thus becoming Queen of Shades, ruler of shadows, whose very name it was forbidden to utter. Her love for her hellish husband eventually ran so deep that when learning that his roving eye had fallen in turn upon two most appealing young nymphs, Leuce and Minthe, Persephone cursed the rivals, changing the first into a white poplar tree and the second into the small, bittersweet, green-leafed plant that bears her name to this day—mint.

Hades and Persephone.

Their life was, well, a living hell—everyday he went off to work in the pits, she ran the house, one with superb views of the River Styx, and they even adopted a puppy, a bouncing ball of black fur with three heads.

So, in the end, they were really like any other happily married couple just keeping the home fires burning.

Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, “My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here."

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Persephone"
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874
(Tate Gallery, London)

Love Hurts

2011-02-01T09:17:00.007-05:00

The Disillusionment of Miss Havisham
(inspired by Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel, Great Expectations) – Antiqued and stained wooden frame; vintage velvet; vintage tapestry fabric; rotted tulle and lace; dried flowers and leaves; desiccated moth; antique pearl hatpins; antique diamante hatpin; antique wedding ring; vintage silver shoe buckle; theatrical cobwebs; cracked and broken porcelain cherub head; vintage French satin ribbon; Fuller’s Earth; LED flickering candle; altered art pieces—wedding invitation, antique clock face, (box is heavily scented inside with Penhaligon’s “Bluebell” perfume)

Cupid has a lot to answer for.

Yup, that rosy-cheeked chubby cherub with the kewpie wings—the one with the quiver of poisoned darts, the tips of which have been dipped in a potent l’elisir d’amore. A single strike and passion infects the bloodstream, enflaming, enraging, intoxicating.

Sometimes to disastrous results.

Case in point—one nineteenth-century damsel from merry ol’ England; prim, proper, pretty, not to mention prosperous, she was, the heir to a brewer’s fortune. A good catch, therefore, for any suitable young fellow. But our little miss…well, like they say, a bad beginning oftentimes makes for a bad end.

Our little miss’s mother shuffled off this mortal coil while her issue was just a babe, leaving daddy to spoil his offspring—excessively—catering to her every whim, her every tantrum, crowning her queen of the house…

…a massive manse of old brick called Satis House.

“Satis” being the Latin for “enough”…

Enough House, then.

However our little miss never had enough.

And she got even more when daddy died.

Ensconced in her ivory tower, our little miss was unfamiliar with the ways of the world, the dangers therein, the wolves waiting right outside her door, and she lost her heart to a most unsuitable suitor, a silver-tongued swain by the name of Compeyson. He wooed her straight to the altar…

…and then left her there.

Jilted.

Absconding with most of her considerable dowry while they skipped down the pathway toward hymeneal bliss.

The bitter news reached our little miss on the very morning of her intended nuptials—at twenty minutes to nine, to be exact.

And that’s exactly when time stood still in Satis House.

The clocks were ordered stopped; windows were barred or boarded up; the servants were dismissed, and our little miss—now damned to be a “Miss” forever—entombed herself in that great mausoleum of a mansion, a mansion festooned for the marriage ceremony that never was.

There she remained isolated, wandering the house’s halls, the corridors of her own mind—one shoe on, one shoe off—still clad in her bridal dress and veil, the dining table still set, the wedding cake still holding pride of place as its centerpiece. Although his hands were fixed at Satis House, Father Time marched on, the years multiplied and within those prison walls decay overwhelmed, dust choked, the petals of the bouquets went brittle, the garlands withered, the wedding cake petrified, feeding only mice. Our little miss’s bridal dress became a shroud of rotting silk and stained satin clothing a living corpse, something described as a cross between a waxwork and a skeleton, with moving eyes—she, like her house, decomposing from the inside out.

You might think that that was the end of our little miss, bearing Cupid’s tragic curse alone to the grave, but not so. In her solitude, madness picked away at her in the same way vermin picked away at the moldering wedding repast and bit by bit, morsel by morsel, our little miss planned a pitiless revenge.

One man betrayed her, so all men must pay.

She adopted a daughter, a bright, shimmering shining star she named Estella. She groomed her, taught her, and when primed, she then used her as Nemesis’s weapon of retribution.

Every male heart Estella captivated, she would break.

Until, sure enough, the arrival of another Prince Charming, whose youth, whose innocence, simplicity and virtue began to untangle the knotted skein of the old spider’s web.

And the old spider saw at last what she was, what she’d done.

Sadly for our little miss, Fate had one last lesson to teach. Upon her redemption the tatters of her bridal dress caught light from the coals on the grate, and…

The flames of love finally consumed Miss Havisham.

So, what have we learned from this Dickensian tale of romantic woe?

That Cupid can be a really bad shot.

Oh, yes…and a very happy Valentine’s Day to you, too.

Oh, innocent victims of Cupid,
Remember this terse little verse;
To let a fool kiss you is stupid,
To let a kiss fool you is worse.

—E. Y. Harburg

Like Other People

2011-01-01T11:37:00.009-05:00

Joseph Merrick: A Three Act Tragedy (inspired by the legend of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man) – Handmade, antiqued cardboard & paper vellum Victorian toy theatre, based upon an original design in the collection of the Theatre Museum, London; battery-operated miniature white lights; LED flickering candle; pewter figurine

“Ladies and gentlemen ... I would like to introduce Mr. Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Before doing so I ask you please to prepare yourselves—Brace yourselves up to witness one who is probably the most remarkable human being ever to draw the breath of life.”

The barker inclined toward his suitably cowed and curious audience, his greasepaint running, staining the brim of his battered showman’s topper. His eyes glinted in the gaslight, his lips curled in salacious glee, the listeners were hanging on his every word. Anticipation heightened, the room suffused with the pong of sweat and soot.

Then…

The curtain was drawn back with a flourish.

A woman screamed.

One gentleman covered his eyes with a kidskin-gloved hand and turned aside, shuddering, while another raged that the barker was a charlatan, a swindler, that what stood before them was nothing but a fake, a fraud, trickery constructed of theatrical putty and makeup, of deliberate shadow and subterfuge. That was until the gaslights flared, and what was revealed was painfully all too real.

The Victorian era was one rife with grotesqueries. Circuses, seedy spectacles located in less than salubrious alleyways, even grand exhibition venues like London’s Egyptian Hall, all catered and pandered, offering artifacts and oddities, historical and religious relics, wax figures and clever automatons, menageries of strange and exotic animals. Most who bought tickets, who paid their tuppence, did not care much about such things as sanitation and safety; they only cared about the marvels and the magic promised. As public taste for the macabre escalated, perversity took the place of propriety, and sideshows proliferated, presenting human prodigies and human anomalies. At first, the unpleasantness was kept at a safe distance, in glass cases containing photographs, effigies, or plaster life-casts. But the public quickly put it all down to some type of deception, claiming that it was all make-believe. Photographs could be altered, effigies enhanced, even life-casts could be manipulated. Next came a glut of preserved remains, multi-headed calves and sheep, kittens with six legs, conjoined infants, all pickled in formaldehyde. These, too, could be dismissed as nothing but mere rubber. So, at last, came the parade of the genuine—the living. Fat ladies, dwarves, bearded women, armless men, living skeletons, pallid albinos, the tallest and the smallest were shoved before the footlights, made to dance, sing, or recite for their meager wages.

The worse, the better.

Ugliness was paramount.

Throngs gathered to gawk and gape, to ride and ridicule, to point at and mock; the milk of human kindness curdled and went sour.

Until…

Joseph Carey Merrick was born on 5 August 1862, to a Leicester carriage driver and his wife. The babe seemed perfectly normal during his nascent years, chubby, vivacious, with all ten fingers, all ten toes. But fate held a nasty trick up its sleeve for the poor lad, and at the age of five, Joseph began to warp, to mutate, right before his parents’ horrified gaze. His right arm and hand, his right leg and foot grew to outrageous proportions; huge growths began to appear on his head, his face, his back; his fair skin transforming into thick, gray flesh, bulbous, coarse and lumped.

His affliction, known today as neurofibromatosis, an excessive continual growing of both skin and bone, was explained away in the most exaggerated and melodramatic of terms—that his mother had been knocked down and nearly crushed by a rampaging elephant at a fairground while pregnant with the unfortunate child, thus the pachydermatous deformities.

And so, Joseph Carey Merrick became thereafter, the Elephant Man.

Shunned by his family, his pitiable early existence was endured in a workhouse, his schooling abandoned when his misshapenness overwhelmed. To hide from prying eyes, he cloaked himself inside the folds of an oversized trench coat, his massive skull, his travesty of a face masked by a burlap hood, into which one large eyehole had been cut. Living in darkness, his workhouse days of rolling cigars came to an end when his right hand was rendered useless by his disease. His time as a hawker, selling trifles from door to door, was a dismal, humiliating failure; housewives bolted their locks against the monstrosity on the threshold; packs of children followed him in the streets, leering and taunting, pelting him with garbage.

With no other option to be had, Joseph entered into the lurid underworld of the Victorian freak show. Advertised as “Half-a-man, Half-an-elephant,” Joseph toured London and its environs, his appearance oftentimes considered too dreadful even for such novelty acts. Complaints came thick and fast, the show was shuttered, and Joseph discovered himself a freak amongst freaks. Spurned by the legitimate circuit, he was soon on display—a lone performer—in a hovel in London’s squalid Whitechapel district, saving his pennies, his dream to someday have a home of his own.

Cruel fate now turned a kind eye on Joseph. The little space in which he was on view happened to be directly opposite the London Hospital, and one day the eminent surgeon, Dr. Frederick Treves, visited him. Treves at first saw nothing more than a prime specimen of dire defect, one that could provide an hour or so of interest in his next lecture. He believed the Elephant Man to be an idiot, an imbecile, someone of insufficient mental capacities…

…he was wrong.

Joseph was clever; Joseph was cultured; he could read and write. He wanted to learn, to better himself. He wanted to be like other people.

Something no less than an impossibility.

Even the comforts of sleep were denied him. Because of the immensity of his skull, he could not lie down, the weight of bone too much for his neck, making it difficult for him to breathe. So, Joseph was forced to doze, seated on a bed, knees drawn up, his great head resting forward upon them.

All this Treves was to find out and sympathize with, and with the benevolence and generosity of its chairman and staff, Joseph finally found his home—two small rooms at the back of the London Hospital. His plight was publicized, bringing with it an amazing outpouring of donations, of the compassion he was so sorely lacking prior. Even Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, took an interest in Joseph’s well-being, sending her daughter-in-law, Princess Alexandra, to call upon him.

And where princesses went, so went the world.

Joseph was a sudden celebrity, playing host to such notables as actress Dame Madge Kendal and her circle. His guests brought him books, walking sticks and sartorial accoutrements he would never use, as well as signed sepia-toned cabinet cards of themselves in chased silver frames; so many came that Joseph’s chambers became a picture gallery of England’s aristocratic who’s who. Each and every gift Joseph acknowledge with always a note of gratitude, and sometimes a small, well-detailed building, a church or cathedral, constructed of cardboard. He attended the theatre, he was taken on holiday to the English countryside, where he spent the languid days, untroubled by prying eyes, wandering the wooded glens, collecting wild flowers.

And if the delight found in his last years could be criticized by saying that he was yet on display, this time for a higher echelon of spectator, so be it. He was happy. But still his dream of being like others eluded. Why couldn’t he walk the city proudly? Why couldn’t he take tea in the High Street? Why couldn’t he lay his head upon a pillow to sleep?

It was in pursuit of his dream that Joseph died.

He was only twenty-seven when he was found stretched out on his back on his bed, serene, asphyxiated by the size of his head.

But it was the size of Joseph Merrick’s heart that really mattered—one filled with joy, with wonder, with dignity, with simple human kindness.

Joseph Carey Merrick’s quest was to be like other people…

…other people should have been like him.

'Tis true my form is something odd,
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.

If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.

—poem used by Joseph Merrick to close his letters, adapted from “False Greatness” by Isaac Watts

You Better Watch Out...

2010-12-01T09:03:00.012-05:00

Schwarzes horn von Weihnachts Krampus (inspired by Germanic legend) – Vintage apothecary jar with lid; genuine ram’s horn; mica flakes, faux snow; shattered antique glass German Christmas ornaments; antique glass German St. Nicholas ornament; white wax; tarnished silver tinsel; antique sleigh bell; wired French ribbon; antique German Christmas Krampus postcard; antique rusted chains; switches

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why…

Nope, sorry, it isn’t Santa Claus comin’ to town…it’s the Krampus.

The what? I heard you ask.

The Krampus, jolly old St. Nicholas’ original traveling companion. See, in olden days, in the gloom of the Black Forest in Germany where the legends began, St. Nicholas, or Sinterklass as he was known back then, was a kind, beneficent figure, bestowing gifts upon all good little children everywhere—you know the kind, the ones who say their prayers at night, who eat their vegetables, the ones who listen to Mama and Papa, who do as they are told. But it seems jolly old St. Nick had issues with punishing those kids that made his naughty list. So he hired a terrifying black-furred, black-horned, black-hoofed creature, with bulging yellow eyes and one really long, lolling pink tongue to do his dirty work.

Yup, that’s the Krampus—and he gets his name from his set of spiky, feral claws.

It was the Krampus’ job to chastise the disobedient, the insubordinate, the disrespectful and the rebellious into submission. This was done with the sharp switches he carried. And if after being violently thrashed the miscreant was still unrepentant, the Krampus lugged a great big wicker basket and rusty chains around with him and pop! into that basket would go the shackled, wailing brat and he or she would then be the recipient of a one-way trip to the infernal regions.

In short, he was the bad cop to Santa’s good.

Sometimes the Krampus was lenient; if a child had been just a wee bit too mischievous the past year, a lump of coal would be left as a warning of what they would be stoking in the hellfires below if that bad behavior didn’t improve—and fast!

As the stream of German, Austrian, and Northern European refugees disembarked on America’s shores, they brought with them their customs, those involving the keeping of Christmas being the most prevailing. But the fainthearted, lily-livered folk in the New World couldn’t stomach the darker traditions of the Old, and so the Krampus’ immigration papers were refused at Ellis Island and he was deported back home.

Even St. Nick himself got watered down from imposing holy figure in miter and robes to a small, rotund elf in a red flannel suit. After all, that merry old elf with the white beard and cherry cheeks, whose belly shook like a bowlful of jelly with each giggle was so much easier to take—and so much more marketable. Who’d want an inky devil hawking Coca-Cola to the masses? Or climbing down their chimney flue in the middle of the night. And let’s face it, Herr Krampus would be a real tough fit into a season’s recitation of “The Night Before Christmas”…more Edgar Allan Poe than ho, ho, ho…

…and he probably wouldn’t have gotten on too well with those flying reindeer anyhow.

Gone are the days of being borne off to Hell in a hand-basket; the worst punishment Santa seems to be able to manage now is to dole out underwear and socks.

But as history teaches us, old habits die hard, and the Krampus has clung on tenaciously with his claws, refusing to give in to obscurity. He became a prominent figure during the Christmas postcard craze that hit Europe from the late-1800s to the beginning of World War I; his evilly grinning visage bearing “Grüß vom Krampus,”—“Greetings from Krampus”—arriving in the post to households everywhere. And he even has his own eve of festivity, Krampusnacht, the 6th of December, where young male townsfolk are encourage to dress up, their Krampus costumes made from sheepskin, rams’ horns, and a switch or two that they use to swat children and unsuspecting young ladies.

Just goes to show, you can’t keep a horny old goat down for long.

So, remember, the Krampus is still there, lurking in every shadow where the flickering firelight and guttering candle flame can’t reach…and maybe those sleigh bells are in fact the jingling of rusted chains…and maybe Rudolph didn’t make those hoof-prints in the snow…and maybe those twinkling bulbs on the tree might just be a pair of bright yellow eyes blinking…

…and that often-sung holiday tune suddenly takes on a whole new meaning…

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The Family That Preys Together...

2010-11-01T09:54:00.011-04:00

A Rememoration of the Bloody Benders (inspired by the legend of the infamous Kansas Bender family)– Papier mâché trunk box, hand-painted and stained; antique hammerhead; dried rose, twigs and leaves; rusted doodad; wax; theatrical blood; genuine human hair; dirt; antiqued and stained newspaper clippings; altered art pieces—antique Queen of Spades playing card, stained black-and-white print of abandoned cabin walls and floor, Benders Drops advertisement

Ahhh, Thanksgiving…

A time to count one’s blessings.

A time to honor hearth and home.

A time to celebrate family…

…the ties that bind…

…round the table.

Ma and Pa and their son and daughter.

Come, you must be plum tuckered out after all that wandering. Sit a spell, dinner’s just about ready…they’re all glad to see you…

But you haven’t been properly introduced…meet the Benders.

Ma (she has no other name it seems) and Pa John are sturdy, hardworking folk, from the old country. They don’t mingle much, stay to themselves mostly.

The children are more sociable, good church-going type. The son, John Jr., is a well-mannered, simple sort with a newly sprouted moustache; the daughter, Kate, an auburn-haired beauty, she’s a bit of a flirt, a young spitfire of a filly who already has local lads’ tongues hanging out, panting, like parched dogs during a summer scorcher.

It’s a heartwarming picture, no?

But take another look…

Ma’s got ‘em shifty eyes, and she ain’t too friendly.

Pa’s a great big bear of a man, dark gaze peerin’ atcha from under heavy brows, watchin’ yer every move.

John Jr.’s really a half-wit, gigglin’ a lot when it, well, just ain’t right.

And Kate, claims to be a healer, she does, cure all yer ills with her patent medicine, her layin’ on of hands, and…oh, yeah, she talks to the dead. Ain’t pullin’ yer leg.

Somethin’ just ain’t right ‘bout ‘em Benders.

Labette County, Kansas, 1872.

The Benders were supposed German immigrants. They settled in on a plot of homesteaders land brought from the government and opened The Wayside Inn, just off the main route of the Osage Mission-Independence Trail, surrounded by miles and miles of unspoiled Sunflower State prairie. The Wayside was a small, dingy place—but hungry pioneers didn’t seem to care. It was a spot to get some home-cooking, stock up on a few provisions, grab forty-winks, and then hit the trail before sun-up. The grub wasn’t bad, the bedding adequate, and they’d even take care of the horses for you, but what drew them in was Kate.

That auburn-haired beauty.

She made you feel right at home.

Put you in the seat of honor at their table, she did.

Then…

You see, the Benders were so famous for their warm welcome that many of their guests stayed on…

…permanently.

The seat of honor at the Bender’s table had its back against a curtained wall. If you looked prosperous, had a gold watch or a silk handkerchief, shiny boots or a new hat, a strapping stallion or a strong team, a full cart and cash in your pocket, beware the hammer.

The Bender Hammer.

Pa was real good at wielding it.

A shadow, a shuffle behind that curtain and…

…I think you get the picture.

And Norman Rockwell it ain’t.

The leftovers were disposed of through a trap door to the cellar, soon to be stripped and sown somewhere out in the apple orchard, or by the vegetable garden—real good fertilizer a fresh corpse is, you know.

Plan went off without a hitch for well over a year, until, as danged luck would have it, they done bumped off the wrong person.

Most of the casualties were those on the move, seeking a better life, following Horace Greeley’s sage advice, “Go west, young man…” and if they disappeared? Hell, the Indians got them, or the wolves, or whatever rough country ailments were out there—Rocky Mountain spotted fever anyone? But one of the Bender’s callers had been the brother of quite a renowned Civil War Colonel—and that Colonel came looking.

Brought the law with him, too—the sheriff and several deputies.

But by the time they reached the Wayside, the Benders had vanished.

The place was empty of everything—except the terrible smell.

Ten bodies were discovered buried on the Bender’s land, including those of one woman and a little girl. By coincidence, the first found was that of the Colonel’s brother; his skull had been bludgeoned, his throat cut from ear to ear, and he’d been planted in the ground headfirst, his feet all but exposed.

That same day, the Wayside Inn became known as “Hell’s Half-Acre.”

It was estimated that the Benders—America’s first recorded serial killers—had offered their inimitable style of hospitality to close to two dozen unsuspecting travelers and pocketed about $4,600, two teams of horses and wagons, and a pony and a saddle.

Rewards were offered for the murderers capture; police, sheriffs, bounty hunters, and just good ol’ plain folk searched and searched, but neither hide nor hair was ever found of the Bloody Benders.

Nowhere.

No how.

Not ever.

So, when you sit yourself down at the dinner table with your kith and kin this Thanksgiving, and after you’ve said grace and thanked the Lord for your bounty, give up an amen for family. In the end, the love of a family is life’s greatest blessing…

…blood’s thicker, ain’t it?

Enter at Your Own Risk...

2010-10-21T08:55:00.016-04:00

The premiere exhibition of Arcanifacts is on view through November 1st at the River Edge Library, 685 Elm Avenue in River Edge, NJ.

Twenty-one pieces of the bizarre, the unusual, the arcane, and phantasmagorical await...

Don't miss it, for once the sun sets on All Soul's Day, they disappear...

See pictures from and read an article on the exhibition below:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen/105409913_Exhibit_inspired_by_fictional_characters.html

ARTICLE TEXT:

River Edge Library Exhibit Inspired by Fictional Characters
BY MEGAN BURROW
Town News
STAFF WRITER

At first glance, the meticulously collected objects arranged in antique glass bottles look like specimens in a mad scientist's laboratory rather than an art show. But upon further inspection, visitors to the River Edge Library, where the exhibit, "Arcanifacts," will be on display until the end of the month, will discover that each piece draws the viewer into a mythical world through its creative assemblage of pictures and found objects.

"Arcanifacts" is a collection of 21 works taken from a larger project River Edge resident Scot Ryersson began in 2007. Ryersson said he invented the term from the Latin words arcanus (secret) and factum (thing made) to describe an artifact containing both mystery and truth.

Most of the pieces are inspired by fictional characters from short stories, novels and folklore that captured Ryersson's imagination.

"It started off as the idea of found objects of fictional characters, like shards from the Mad Hatter's tea cup." he said. "It was almost the idea of proving that fictional characters were real."

The pieces range from a collection of rotting antique lace, a broken porcelain cherub head, and a wedding ring on a string, evoking the heartbreak of Charles Dickens' Miss Havisham, who was famously jilted on her wedding day in "Great Expectations," to Sweeney Todd's shaving brush and an antique diagram of the arteries of the neck. Visitors will be given a program identifying each object on display and a bibliography of the works that inspired the pieces.

While most are based on fictional characters, at least two have been inspired by real people. Lizzie Borden's hatchet is the focal point of one piece, and another work draws its inspiration from the mid-20th century story of the Collyer brothers, two of the original "hoarders," found dead in their Fifth Avenue apartment surrounded by more than 130 tons of old newspapers and decades of collected trash.

Ryersson estimates that he has made about 70 of these pieces and said he was surprised by how much people seemed to like what had been originally something purely for his own amusement.

"They are really strange … People don't quite know what to make of them right away, but then they really get into them," he said. "They've never crawled out of the house before, except for commissions. This is the first time they've been released upon the general public."

When he initially approached the library, Ryersson was wary that the exhibit might be too weird for display. He said a few of the librarians looked "stunned" at what was coming out of the boxes he had packed. But with Halloween just around the corner and the pieces' literary connections, the exhibit has found a fitting home.

Ryersson's interest in the macabre has long bled into his work. Before creating Arcanifacts, he designed movie posters for about 15 years, including ones for "The Silence of the Lambs," "Ghost," and "Witness." His work on "Evil Under the Sun" and "Another Country" each garnered him an Art Directors of London Award. He stopped working in the film industry after studios began using digital images instead of art to sell their product.

In 1999, Ryersson co-authored a biography of the Marchesa Casati, an eccentric Italian celebrity in the early 20th century, with Michael Orlando Yaccarino. The book, "Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati," has been adapted into a play and the fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano have each based collections on Casati. Most recently, an illustrated version of the biography was released by the art book publisher Abrams.

To learn more about Ryersson and his work, visit arcanifacts@blogspot.com. He accepts private commissions and can be contacted via e-mail at arcanifacts@gmail.com.

Harlem Nocturne

2010-10-01T08:58:00.013-04:00

2078 Fifth Avenue (inspired by the legend of the Collyer brothers) – Cardboard photo box; antiqued and stained newspaper clippings; wooden dollhouse windows with acrylic panes; LED light; desiccated orange peels; miniature chair; silver wire; genuine desiccated beetle; rusted nails; genuine Model T Ford sparkplug; altered art photographs of the inside of the Collyer Mansion, 1947

It was something that could have, should have, come only from the pen of O. Henry—the master American storyteller, celebrated for his mordant wit, his sardonic wordplay, his dexterity at always producing a surprise ending, one with a twist, a real kicker; like the yarn about the two crooks who abduct a boy of ten and hold him for ransom, until their victim turns out to be so obnoxious that the kidnappers actually pay the boy’s family to take him back.

Yeah, that sort of thing…

And here it was, in real life.

New York City, March, 1947.

Something sure stunk at 2078 Fifth Avenue. The cops knew the address well, that huge, rotting four-story brownstone at the corner of 128th Street. It had been an eyesore for years—filthy, rundown, its façade a patchwork of broken, boarded-up windows. God only knew what it looked like on the inside!

And the owners were just as peculiar.

A pair of brothers—Homer and Langley Collyer, scions of a once prominent Manhattan physician and his wife. Both of them wealthy, snooty, and well…just plain odd. Homer had a degree in admiralty law from Columbia, one that was never put to much use, especially since he was slowly going blind, and Langley…Langley let his hair grow long, played concert-level piano and tinkered and collected—anything and everything.

After both their parents died in the 1920s, that massive strongbox of a home became theirs and theirs alone, and Langley’s collecting went from benign quirk to all-out obsession. With Homer ensconced quietly, and evidently contently, in his room, Langley took to the streets, roaming the deserted city thoroughfares after dark, dressed in strange Victorian garb, amassing trash along the way, like a bee attracting pollen. He ferreted his findings back and into his hive.

Though moneyed, the Collyers lived off the scraps Langley scrounged from garbage bins in the back of local restaurants. The electricity and gas were disconnected owing to overdue bills, the telephone was cut off, and the banks threatened to foreclose as mortgage payment after mortgage payment was ignored. Income taxes were scoffed at—why pay income tax if we have no income, Langley reasoned. It was said they paid for nothing. Nothing except the daily newspapers—they had a subscription to every one published in every borough—and the oranges. Yup, oranges. It seems Langley was convinced that if his older brother ate enough of them, a hundred a week was the regimen, his eyesight would return and he’d want to read all those newspapers, to catch up on what he missed. But, sadly, Homer’s vision didn’t come back…and the combination of a poor diet and a lack of adequate activity hardened his joints. So blind and wracked by rheumatism, the elder of the Collyers took to his reading chair and gradually desiccated.

Gossip was rife, tongues wagged. Since no one saw them—or at least one of them—until after nightfall, the Collyers were soon christened the “ghosty men” by their astonished, incredulous, and oftentimes irritated, neighbors. Rumor claimed the house was full of treasure, priceless jewels and masterpieces of art. Burglars began sniffing around, and the manse’s windows were prime targets for any young hooligan with a rock in his fist. Such attacks exacerbated the brothers’ anxiety, fueled their paranoia, so the front door was barred, the windows shuttered behind plywood and iron grillwork; the world was shut out…

…and 2078 Fifth Avenue became a tomb.

Literally.

That brings us back to the stink. Back to the morning of March 21, 1947, when the telephone rang at the 122nd Police Precinct, and an anonymous tipster claimed there was a dead body in the crumbling brownstone at Fifth and 128th. Officers went to investigate and found the address all but hermetically sealed. The only way in was through the roof. Whether the cops drew straws or flipped a coin for the dirty job isn’t known, but patrolman William Barker lost, and made his descent.

What should have been nothing more than a ten to fifteen minute search, lasted nearly an hour. The police were getting worried. Then Barker’s head popped out of the rabbit hole, his face pale, his eyes wide.

And the story he had to tell about his journey to Wonderland…well, that’s still talked about to this day.

To start off small, within there were cardboard boxes, some lashed together with rope; folding beds and chairs; the frame of a baby carriage, half of a sewing machine; farming tools; collections of disintegrating umbrellas bunched in twine; parts of a wine press. Book towers teetered. And everywhere, newspapers—decades worth, morning edition and evening edition—stacked along the walls, from floor to ceiling, creating a labyrinth, where, in some areas, it was necessary to crawl on hands and knees through tunnels of them just to reach the next room, many of them booby-trapped against intruders. Touch a trip wire and an avalanche of heavy suitcases crammed full of junk would squash and flatten.

A partial inventory of accumulation: rusted bicycles; old food; potato peelers; gas chandeliers; bowling balls; camera equipment; the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage; a sawhorse; three dressmaking dummies; painted portraits of long-forgotten ancestors; pinup girl photos; Mrs. Collyer's hope chests; rusty bed springs; a kerosene stove; a child's chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless, what a shock!); more than twenty-five thousand books; human organs pickled in jars (from their doctor/father, one hopes); eight live cats; threadbare European tapestries; hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric; fourteen pianos (both grand and upright); a clavichord; two pipe organs; banjos; violins; bugles; accordions; a nine-foot-tall mahogany clock with a music box inside; thirteen ornate mantel clocks, one contained a metal bust of a girl whose ears and bodice dripped gold coins; a cache of weapons and ammunition; a horse’s jawbone; two anatomy school skeletons; a broken x-ray machine; a gramophone with records dating from 1898, including “Round Her Neck She Wears a Yeller Ribbon for her Lover Who is Fur, Fur Away” and “Nobody In Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine;” and, of course, those multitudinous bundles of newspapers.

And the chassis of an old Model T Ford, taking pride of place in the dining room. The ol’ tinkerer Langley believed he could generate enough electricity off the motor to light the house.

Didn’t work.

Oh, yeah…and no inventory would be complete without…

Homer’s corpse.

The withered shell that had once been Homer Lusk Collyer was discovered curled up in his favorite reading chair, dead as a doornail, the carpet surrounding littered with moldering orange peels. He’d starved to death.

But where was Langley?

Had he killed Homer and fled?

Had he finally gone totally bonkers and was now a homicidal lunatic wandering New York City’s streets?

An all-points bulletin was issued for his capture. A nationwide manhunt followed and although some Langley look-alikes were detained, the genuine still eluded.

But the haunted mansion at 2078 Fifth Avenue had one final secret to reveal.

Langley.

His rat-gnawed body was found crushed beneath a pile of debris. He was wearing a bathrobe, three jackets and four pairs of trousers. Around his neck as a scarf was a white onion sack fastened with a safety pin.

He had been done in by one of his own booby-traps while bringing food to his brother.

That’s the O. Henry ending I was talking about.

Ultimately, over one-hundred and thirty tons of hoarded items were removed from 2078 Fifth Avenue. The brownstone, neglected and deteriorating, was deemed a hazard to life and limb and demolished. A small park is located there now—the Collyer Brothers Park.

And what of the brothers themselves?

They were interred, side by side, in the family plot at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Their graves remain unmarked.

The Collyer brothers have finally succeeded in shutting out the world.

“Scot D. Ryersson’s ‘2078 Fifth Avenue’ is both a meditation on the Collyer brothers, in its careful arrangement of their symbols and sigils into a new whole, and also, in its making, a recreation of the impulses that led to their deaths, for saving the newspaper clippings and orange peels becomes its own kind of hoarding, and his confining of these artifacts in this box his own way of demarcating what is his from that which is not.

And now what, and what next? I cannot help but wonder: What does it mean for the artist, if the only way to keep his art is to never again set these gathered objects free? What does it cost to take from the world and make for oneself a new one, as each worthy work of art must be?

After all, Homer and Langley Collyer did nothing more than this, and their act was still heavy enough to bury them beneath its weight.”

--Matt Bell, author of How They Were Found, which includes the novella “The Collectors,” based on the lives of Homer and Langley Collyer

Boats Against the Current

2010-09-01T09:02:00.015-04:00

An Ounce of Water from Jay Gatsby’s Swimming Pool (inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby) – Vintage 1920’s art deco glass lithographed picture frame; vintage 1920’s art deco crystal perfume bottle with sterling top; dried leaf; dried daisies; old feather; broken sea shell; strand of genuine vintage pearls; altered art pieces—postcard of Gatsby House, newspaper article on car accident, colour prints of marble tile, white marble and wave mosaic

The end of the season.

The days grew shorter, summer was fleeting.

There was a slight chill in the air now after sunset.

The tips of the leaves were just turning gold.

The sun sparkled on the pool’s gently undulating waves.

The gardener wanted to drain it, get it ready for its long winter’s nap, pointing out that it was better to get a head-start before the leaves began to fall, clogging up the drains. But he had said no, stating that he hadn’t had a swim all summer—it could wait until tomorrow. And so, he headed inside, emerging a short while later in his au courant one-piece bathing-suit with its black trunks and striped top, pausing only to stop in the garage to blow up a rubber air mattress before diving in.

Time seemed to stand still.

He floated, all but oblivious to the sounds surrounding—the serenade of birds, the hum of a speedboat on the bay, the clear, cool water lapping against the pool’s tiled perimeter.

The speedboat moved on, the rumble of its motor fading, then the birds took flight as the languid silence was shattered by one gun shot—then another—and then, once again, all that was left to be heard was the lapping of the clear, cool water against the pool’s tiled perimeter.

Cool, clear water slowly being tainted with a spreading scarlet stain.

The rubber air mattress drifted aimlessly, buffeted to and fro by the afternoon breeze, its rider motionless.

The great Jay Gatsby was dead.

Jay Gatsby—West Egg’s young rajah, a small town kid with big dreams, the former James Gatz, a hick from North Dakota. He a self-made, self-disciplined, self-invention sculpted from a suspect youth as an Oxford graduate, a disillusioned soldier, a rake, a bon vivant left off the leash in all the capitals of Europe, a possible rum-running yachtsman and even a little boy who once liked to read Hopalong Cassidy.

Yes, quite a mystery was the great Jay Gatsby.

The respectable old wealth of Long Island’s East Egg watched on in dismay as the nouveaux riche of West Egg partied. The music was too loud, the girls too loose, the men too louche, manners be damned, and despite the laws, the liquor flowed freely. The stone steps, the marble patios, the great lawns of Gatsby House, a massive faux French chateau on the Sound, were venues for orgiastic carousing, revels that made the 20s roar to the syncopated rhythms of snare drums and bakelite bracelets. And while his guests—both invited and uninvited—gorged their stomachs with fine fodder, seared their throats with bootleg gin and danced the foxtrot and the Charleston into the wee hours, their host, that same aforementioned handsome, prosperous, and enigmatic Jay Gatsby, was to be found alone, standing on the dock, his eyes searching the night for a glimpse of a strange green light in the distance.

A strange green light that symbolized his buried past and his hope for the future, a strange green light that hung on the end of the dock of his lost love…

Daisy.

Daisy Buchanan—a brittle, angelic creature, pampered, superficial, and spoilt, with a sirenic allure, an indifferent enchantress who conjured up days of divine romance long gone even though she was now wife to another.

But still Gatsby clung to his American Dream, enmeshed in the seemingly fragile cobwebs of what went before, his life as dusty, dried-up, and desiccated as the Valley of Ashes, a desolate stretch of land laid out between West Egg and Manhattan; a veritable desert, dark and barren, of black cinders left behind by a devastating fire.

A wasteland soon to be the setting of a horrendous event.

Too fast; they were going too fast.

A shadow darted.

A scream.

A dull thud.

The screeching skid of tires.

A momentary silence.

The snarl of an engine as it was revved up, before speeding away.

And the American Dream lay in the ashes.

It was something both simultaneously fated and accidental, something that had far-reaching consequences, something that punished the innocent while the guilty went free, something that caused the clear, cool water of a swimming pool to run red.

And across the bay that strange green light had gone out.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Did She or...?

2010-08-01T14:42:00.019-04:00

August 4, 1892 (inspired by the legend of Lizzie Borden) – Antique Borden’s wooden crate; antique hatchet; genuine 1893 Police News cover on Borden acquittal; rusted wire; rusted nails; rusted tacks; straw; thorn branch; genuine pigeon feathers; vintage bolt lock; antique fishing leads; antique house key; antique watch face; genuine dried weevil; desiccated pear core; antique poison bottle; antique scrap of black lace; vintage Virgo brooch; black lace mourning fan; dried pansies and violets; altered art pieces—newspaper articles concerning history of Borden case, Johnny cakes recipe, Lizzie Borden rhyme, newspaper advertisement for Andrew J. Borden’s Undertaking business, Sargent’s store advertisement, prussic acid and poison label

Spring, 1927.

The fine Victorian manse sat atop the hill, its parlor windows opened to the balmy afternoon, gauzy white curtains billowing in the gentle breeze. Beyond lay the greensward of a manicured front lawn, the carpet of grass bisected by three stone steps leading to the sidewalk. The topmost step was artfully incised with the house’s name—Maplecroft. And within, beneath the whitewashed gingerbread trim and the towering gables; below the tall brick chimneys and the verdigris weathervane; behind the mullioned glass and the sedately-painted clapboard and the tall oak door, lived one of America’s most notorious.

She—an aged New England spinster, a plump, gray-haired former Sunday school teacher suffering from arthritis and kidney problems. Her failing, bespectacled eyes gazed out past the draperies to study a lone child—a girl, five or six at the most, in a simple white dress and shoes, skipping rope, her bouncing gilded curls catching the sun, a bright smile on her rosy-cheeked face as she sang:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
Gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one

The aged New England spinster withdrew.

The song was about her.

Thirty-five years earlier she had stood accused of a shocking crime—the grisly murders of her father and stepmother.

The date: a stiflingly hot Thursday morning, August 4, 1892.

The place: 92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts, an unfashionable address, a rabbit warren of a house with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no hallways—where rooms just opened upon rooms. A house of locked doors, divided by hate; the front occupied by two sisters, the back by the victims. The public rooms—the kitchen, the parlor, the dining room—no-man’s lands where only forced smiles and cold cordiality were allowed.

The casualties: Andrew Jackson Borden, 70, a prosperous but miserly man, a former mortician, worth over half-a-million hard-earned dollars, and his corpulent, unpleasant second wife Abby Durfee Gray, 64. No tears would be shed for either of them.

The suspects: Andrew’s daughters, Lizzie Andrew Borden, 32, and her devoted sister, Emma Lenora, 41; an Irish immigrant maid, Bridget Sullivan, 26; and a visiting uncle, John Vinnicum Morse.

The weapon: claimed to be a hatchet.

The motive: some said it was greed—money surely the root of all evil—and that Andrew was preparing a new will in favor of his wife and not his offspring; some said it was a dispute over fair distribution of property; some said it was the culmination of years of abuse, the ink blots of detestation spreading; some said it was the foul, days-old mutton broth, stale Johnny Cakes and bad coffee served for breakfast.

All that was certain, though, was that they were dead.

Abby, the first to go, met her end while changing the sheets in the second-floor guestroom. Eighteen strikes brought her down, leaving her a bloody, sweaty, soggy mess on the carpet between bed and bureau.

Andrew was found in the sitting room, laid out on the couch, his skull gaping upon a pillow, his clothes, the floral wallpaper behind, the rug in front, the framed picture above, the leather upholstery below, ensanguined.

Both were crimes of hatred—someone wanted them not only dead, but obliterated from the face of the earth.

Someone—but who?

Older sister Emma was with friends in Fairhaven. Bridget was chatting with a neighbor’s maid over the fence and Uncle John was in town.

And Lizzie…?

Lizzie Borden was arrested, tried and acquitted (after all, whoever would believe that any well-bred, Christian girl, a member of the Temperance Union, so beloved for her kindness to animals could ever, would ever hack someone to death in broad daylight?), but no other explanation was ever offered officially, no one else was ever brought to the dock.

And Lizzie…?

Lizzie Borden found herself ostracized. With her share of her father’s estate, she moved not out of Fall River, but above it—to an affluent area known as the “Hill,” staring down upon all those who snubbed her. Emma went with her, sisters together, until 1913 when Emma abruptly up and left and never saw nor spoke to her infamous sibling again. Lizzie lived on alone in her mansion, dying from pneumonia on June 1, 1927. Emma followed her to the grave just nine days later. They were buried in the family plot, the Bordens once more forced by fate to spend eternity in close quarters.

And Lizzie…?

Lizzie Borden was damned by folklore—condemned forever by a nursery rhyme.

"Scot D. Ryersson's Arcanifact celebrating the mystery of Lizzie Borden captures for me those lingering feelings and heightened senses I have always connected with Lizzie and that fateful August day: the smell of aged wood and burnt paper; the delicacy of dried flowers and dark lace; the claustrophobic presence of locks, hooks and wires; the rust and rot of lives half-lived...

Mr. Ryersson's attention to detail and macabre flair for the absurd make this work of art both inspired and inspiring. I am a fan."

- Brendan Byrnes, Author, Lizzie Borden's Tempest

Borne Aloft

2010-07-01T09:25:00.011-04:00

A Feather From Pegasus’ Wing (inspired by ancient Greek mythology) – Vintage gold-leafed shadow box frame; natural white feather; theatrical blood; black paint; star field showing the constellation of Pegasus in the night sky done in white pencil; altered art pieces—cut-outs of clouds, stone label

Sunlight strikes the keen edge of a sword blade.

In the mirrored brightness of a polished shield the hero sees his quarry.

The sword is raised and cuts the air.

A neck is severed, a head rolls, blood spurts.

With the help of the gods, the young Perseus has just slain the gorgon, Medusa.

Medusa, a legendary beauty who so offended the goddess Athena by a base coupling with the lord of the oceans, Poseidon, within the sanctity of her temple. Thus the goddess of wisdom and war cursed the lovely maid with an ugliness beyond compare. Her fair skin grew dark and covered in reptilian scales, her lithe fingers became a lizard’s claws, her lush tangle of hair coming to life, a writhing nest of serpents—and from that moment on, any living thing from ant to human that gazed upon this frightful creature would be turned to stone.

Now that abomination lay dead, Medusa’s head snatched up and placed in a leather bag, and off Perseus flew to smite his family’s enemies, leaving the gorgon’s body twitching in the sun, a grotesque island in a sea of blood.

But from that blood something arose—a magnificent winged horse, shaking its pristine white hide and mane free of sanguine spots. The equine tested its wings, once, twice, and then took to the clouds.

From Medusa’s vile hideousness, the dazzling splendor of Pegasus was born.

Ancient Greek legend tells that one day Pegasus came to rest on Mt. Olympus, the home of the gods. When his hoofs touched the ground there, four sacred springs of water burst forth and from these fonts the Muses were born, nine goddesses who reigned over the arts and sciences, especially music, poetry, and all of the visual arts.

Since that time, Pegasus has become the symbol of divine inspiration, ready at any moment to take flight, carrying an artist’s imagination into the creative heavens, where he can still be seen as a constellation in starry northern sky.

—in the collection of the internationally acclaimed artist, designer, and illustrator, David Palladini, Corona del Mar, CA

“My doorbell rang today. I never answer the door. Through the peephole, I saw the postman in his shorts and pith helmet, and his white handlebar moustache. He was holding a box.

The box was a gift from a friend I have never met. An artist and illustrator like me. Inside, I found a wondrous black frame with a glass front. It contained a beautiful white feather tipped with blood. It was “A Feather From Pegasus’ Wing.” Pegasus, my hero, my inspiration. The creator of the artistic muses who guided my life.

I have gazed upon Pegasus in the night sky through my telescope. He flies free through the astral progression with his wings spread in the blackness of space.

My artist friend had encapsulated the essence of the great winged horse in a simple and beautiful way, and had offered it to me. With much thought, labor, and love, Scot had given me the product of his artistic soul. I will treasure it always.”

—David Palladini

Drawing Lots

2010-06-01T09:29:00.010-04:00

The Black Box (inspired by Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story, The Lottery) – Antique wooden slide-top box, painted black; various dried flowers and plants; various stones; altered art pieces—lottery label, slips of hand-stained paper bearing town-folks’ names, slip of hand-stained paper bearing black dot

Fertility rites.

Pagan rituals.

Dances round the priapic May Pole.

The wheel of the year. The change of seasons—from excess to want.

Light to dark. Vernal to autumnal.

The golden Oak King reigns beneath the sun, abdicating his crown at the solstice to midwinter’s frost-bound Holly King.

Beltane to Samhain. Greenman to Wicker Man.

The eternal cycle of birth and death and rebirth.

Human sacrifices made to the gods. Rich, ripe, red blood seeping into the earth to ensure summer’s hale and hearty crops, an abundant harvest at the waning of the year, to see a community through the lean, dormant blight of snow and ice.

The stuff of legends; told and retold in history books, in supernatural fiction, in horror films…surely such practices have been relegated to the past; modern man—the so-called civilized man—has no need for those archaic, rural traditions.

But old habits die hard; old sins cast long shadows.

Hearsay tells of the celebration of these ceremonies lasting into the mid-twentieth century, at least in one small village in Vermont, a close-knit hamlet of only three-hundred; good, honest, staunch New England people bearing good, honest, staunch New England names—Summers, Warner, Hutchinson, Anderson, Jones, and Martin; from Adams, meaning progenitor, to Graves, man’s ultimate destination. There every June 27th, those ordinarily stalwart and steadfast townsfolk seem nervous, anxious…fearful. For upon the dawning of that day, daily chores are forsaken, mundane tasks put aside. Children are sent out to collect stones while a plain wood black box is taken down from a shelf, twelve months of dust blown from off its lid. The adults gather, slips of paper being placed inside that black box—all blank, save one.

Upon that one is a single black spot.

The head of each family steps forward, puts his or her hand into the wooden container, each making their choice of the chits within…

The lottery has begun.

The prize?

Whoever chooses the black spot is that year’s mactatus; a solitary life given up, offered up, so that the many may live.

And those stones—the most ancient and simplest of weapons—gathered that morn by the young, will soon be put to their ritualistic use.

Is there truth behind this tale; a skull beneath the skin, so to speak?

Once again, we must turn to the earth.

Northern Vermont.

Leaves browned and brittle as parchment; clods of dirt and clouds of dust, spikes of hay and kernels of corn, spider webs and beetle wings—almost an incantation in itself—the skeleton of an old barn, its timber bones soon to be reclaimed, resanded, recycled into flooring for a modern luxury condominium kitchen, the aged now a foundation for the new; antique knotty pineboard supporting new-fangled stainless steel appliances—reveals its secrets…

…a plain wood black box—almost a coffin in miniature.

Inside?

Well…you can see for yourself.

"I do like it. The work is very strong and interesting." - Laurence J. Hyman, Shirley Jackson's son and literary executor

Claws and Effect

2010-05-01T09:28:00.014-04:00

The Obliviscence of James Howlett (inspired by the character of Wolverine from Marvel’s X-Men comics and films) – Antique Canadian explosives crate; faux bone claws; pair of vintage forceps; glass test tube; black rubber stopper; chrome paint; bone specimen microscope slide in plastic case; vintage 1940’s O’Keefe’s Canadian beer bottle cap; genuine Canadian army World War I uniform button; Canadian military dog tag and chain; Cuban robusto cigar butt; rusted tacks; tree branches; pine branches; pine cones; black walnut shell; theatrical snow; theatrical blood; ice-blue LED light; altered art pieces—Canadian army World War I discharge paper, Canadian World War I dental exam paper, Wolverine car advertisement, Second Boer War newspaper article, Canadian World War I recruitment poster, Canadian World War II recruitment poster, maple farm photograph, Xavier Institute for Higher Learning logo sheet, Alkali Lake postcard, slashed manila folder, adamantium beta label, pair of X-rays, cage fight poster, “Lone Wolf” cigar label, Canadian Bohemian Beer label, 1910 Canadian Logging postage stamp, 1926 National Geographic cover, J.B. Laliberte Fur Establishment label, “Lucky Dog” hockey stick label, Valtine Meat Globules advertisement, Adams-Powell Timber Company advertisement

James Howlett.

Weapon X.

Wolverine.

Logan.

No matter the name, he is the most mysterious and singular of the already mysterious and singular faction of avengers known as the X-Men, a cadre of mutants who live among us, fighting with us, for us and against us for their right to share our planet. Such mutants were believed to be only the stuff of comic books, of blockbuster science-fiction movies, of supermarket tabloids—those “people” who could read thoughts, move objects with their minds, control the weather, walk through walls, incinerate or freeze matter with a mere touch—but truth always teaches us that fact is indeed often stranger than fiction.

The perpetual evolution of nature created mutants; all species have their fair share, so why shouldn’t humans, and nature created James Howlett, a man with enhanced senses, a man of extreme strength and stealth, a man who could heal from almost any injury in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, resisting illness, defying time, perhaps even immortal; but it was humans who made him a living killing machine, the ultimate military weapon. Recruiting him, changing him, bonding to his fragile skeleton a metal so dense as to be virtually indestructible—adamantium. A living creature capable of standing in the front lines, ready to be shot, bayoneted, gassed, burnt, or poisoned, only to rise again, phoenix-like from his own ashes.

But Mother Nature had a further trick up her sleeve for James Howlett.

She gave him claws; a half-dozen, three imbedded in each hand, hidden beneath a scabbard of flesh, ready to emerge, catlike from between his knuckles. Those claws were first like those of any animal, keratin, nerves and blood vessels, but humans did Mother Nature one better; they removed his biological claws and replaced them with blades, cast from the same metal sheathing his bones, gleaming, unbreakable, razor-sharp—lethal.

But a man has a conscience; a man has memories, feels pity, remorse, kindness, and love. Such things as emotions had no place in the supreme soldier, so they took his mind, they took everything that made him who he was, creating in the man’s place, a rabid animal hell-bent on destruction—thus his code name, Wolverine. But the rabid animal escaped into the wild, a desperate part of it fighting its way back from the brink of madness, reclaiming its humanity—a daily battle against the beast within.

The old adage says that some people have a mind like a steel trap; James Howlett’s skull was literally that, but what it held was nothing more than fragments, shattered pieces of a life probably never to be remembered. An eternal enigma as much to himself as to others—the others who took him in—the X-Men, who know him only by his self-christened name, Logan, and with whom he found friends, a family, a reason to continue living; the supreme soldier now on the front lines for good, overcoming the evil of which he had been shaped to be a part.

Finding evidence of such a unique individual would be daunting—the place to start, the ruins of an abandoned military base at Alkali Lake in Canada, the site of his physical and mental transformation.

Shifting through the wreckage of a spot not officially listed on any map, presented here is what was found—a smoked and well-chewed cigar stub, “Lone Wolf” brand judging from the label nearby, and an old beer bottle cap, show his long-ago presence. Further digging finds medical equipment—rusted forceps; a microscope slide with a specimen of bone; a test tube almost filled with a viscous silver liquid, marked as “Adamantium beta”; bloodied file folders stamped “Classified,” containing x-rays of a test subject identified simply as Weapon X; a World War I discharge certificate of one “James Howlett,” along with a dental chart from 1914—his life goes back further than one imagined. Here is a Canadian army uniform button from the same battle, there is a torn newspaper clipping on the African Boer War and a World War II recruitment poster—how much fighting has he seen? A dog tag on a chain, bearing his bestial moniker and his ID number; but only one—Canadian dog tags come in pairs, when a fallen comrade is found, one tag stays with the corpse, the other brought back for identification—so, was Howlett thought—or hoped—to be dead once?

Deeper searches find, oddly enough, flotsam and jetsam of his later life—the cover of an old National Geographic, the main story the conquest of Canada’s tallest peak, Mount Logan—surely the name’s not a coincidence; an old postage stamp honoring Canadian loggers (employment in-between wars?); a label from a store in the fur trade; a tattered flyer announcing a cage fight between two animalistic opponents—Wolverine vs. Sabretooth; a sheet of stationery paper bearing the logo of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, located in Salem Center, NY, home it is rumored to those very same X-Men. And, almost comically, a forgotten ginger ale soda bottle from the Wolverine Bottling Works.

Then, the paramount of finds—a trio of claws, those real claws, amputated so long ago, preserved by the cold, by the ice and snow…

All displayed within an antique Canadian munitions/explosives crate.

Proof?

Such conclusions are made by the viewer’s observation alone.

Beneath the Mask

2010-04-01T11:32:00.016-04:00

Clés d'ivoire et tire l’arrêt de l’orgue du Fantôme de l’Opéra (inspired by Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) – Antiqued custom-cut gilt frame; antiqued custom-cut mirror square; antique red plumes; dried white rose; vintage mannequin hand; antique Victorian velvet frame with viewing doors; genuine antique ivory organ keys; genuine antique gold and diamond ring; antique French black ribbon; rusted tacks; altered art pieces—organ pull stop (vintage black button, “Vox Humana” label) Erik’s calling card, Gounod’s Faust announcement, Le Figaro newspaper clipping, vintage postcard of Dr. Miracle from Offenbach’s Les contes d'Hoffmann, vintage postcard of the Paris Opera House, scrap of Don Juan Triumphant sheet music, Red Death card, OG note, chandelier print

Paris.

The City of Light.

The Eiffel Tower glows, a beacon against the night, thousands of stars sparkling intermittently at the flip of a switch. The classical outline of the Napoleonic Arc de Triomphe; the gothic, gargoyled spires of the Notre Dame Cathedral; the whirling red sails of the Moulin Rogue; the crowded Avenue des Champs-Élysées; all ablaze, halogen and neon, the galvanizing effects of electricity everywhere, dispelling the shadows, causing ghosts to flee. Even the previously murky pathways of the magnificent cemeteries of Père-Lachaise and Montmartre, where the celebrated likes of Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Dumas, and Zola repose, shine beneath the drooping necks of streetlamps, not a specter to be seen.

The ingenuity and invention of the twenty-first century has banished the Parisian phantoms—all but one.

The Opera Ghost.

Built during the glorious end of days of the Empire, the Paris Opera House was a massive monument to music, its gilded halls, its mirrors and marble, its opulent ornaments, its grand staircase, all shimmering by gaslight. From the majestic salons where the bon ton nibbled bon-bons and sipped champagne during intermissions to the narrow iron walkways backstage, where Degas-esque ballerinas scuttled amongst the sawdust, the shifting sets and swinging sandbags, everything was saturated in a dim, golden flickering, shadows seeping everywhere like spilt ink. The glut of candles, the gilt ormolu gleaming, the brilliance of the main auditorium’s massive crystal chandelier were only masks, concealing the darkness underneath. For below the dazzling surface were unlit cellars, subcellars and even a vast lake, all this ruled over by the dreaded Erik, the Phantom of the Opera.

The Phantom’s tragic story is one of unrequited love, of seeking the beauty within. One of melodrama and mystery, murder and mayhem, a tale of a deformed musical genius and the fledging soprano who captures his heart, of a steadfast tin soldier of a hero, of a preening prima donna with a frog in her throat, of masquerades and plummeting chandeliers, all underscored by throbbing organ notes, that has become so famous, so well-recounted, so universally known that it seems a fairy tale, one that should begin with that clichéd line, “Once upon a time…”, but unfortunately for Erik, that pitiful opera ghost, there was no “happily ever after…”—at least not in life. But in death, the Phantom has become immortal, the subject of books and plays, a star on the silver screen, a spirit summoned nightly on New York’s Broadway and in London’s West End. There are even rumours of a missing chapter of his life, in, of all places, America’s Coney Island.

But what of the Phantom—the true flesh and blood man—remains? Was he mere myth, or was there proof to be found, to be excavated in the bowels of the Opera that was once his home?

Descending into the gloom, solving the labyrinth of cold, stone passageways, traversing the black waters of that manmade lagoon, there is nothing of the Phantom’s realm but rubble and rats. Perhaps he was nothing more than a fictitious character created by a hack journalist, who was paid by the word for his sensationalism…but, wait…here and there lie fragments, ephemerae found among the ruins, puzzle pieces that when fitted together provide evidence of this so-called phantom—a few broken ivory keys and a pull stop from what must have been a grand organ; molting feathers, red in hue, from a costume discarded; a strange wooden hand—slender, feminine—a prop only, or a carved facsimile of the touch of someone once loved and lost? A shard of mirror, its silver flaking. A collection of rotted paper—an antique image of the Opera itself; a scrap of original music entitled Don Juan Triumphant; a card warning of the presence of the Red Death; a newspaper clipping from Le Figaro recounting the mysterious fall of that chandelier; an advertisement for a production of Faust starring—can it be?—the Phantom’s adored in the lead role. A desiccated rose, its white petals gone brown and brittle as mummy skin. And if further confirmation was needed, here a torn section of a note signed “O.G.,” surely “Opera Ghost,” and then a calling card, bearing the single name—Erik. And lastly, heartbreakingly, a small gold ring, a token of undying devotion, given and returned, certainly worn on a finger now long turned to dust.

This is what I present—the observer draws his own conclusions.

Maybe the Phantom’s phantom still haunts his deep and dark and damp hell of a lair, and perhaps the music from the glittering, heavenly theatre above drifts down to bring him peace.

All in a Golden Afternoon...

2010-03-01T20:05:00.022-05:00

I’m Late… Le Crâne du lapin blanc (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) – Vintage hardcover copy of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass; genuine rabbit skull; antique pocket watch parts; antique hat pins; antique nineteenth-century pocket watch chain; gold-leafed pewter heart; handmade miniature antique kid gloves; handmade miniature fan with tassel; art nouveau patterned ribbon; vintage Baccarat crystal perfume bottle; tiny gold key; altered art pieces—invitation from the Queen of Hearts, Queen of Hearts playing card, Ace of Spades playing card

The English countryside summer afternoon, heat, dragonflies buzz on prismatic wings, living darning needles skimming the tranquil, mirror-like surface of brackish ponds, towering oaks standing in sun-mottled shadow, clouds of pollen and gnats, infinite silences, time stands still—just the sort of afternoon that sent drowsy Alice dreaming. Tall reeds converse in whispers by the riverside, their roots extending down into damp soil, crisscrossing past and along worm tunnels, pressing ever deeper until they burst through the ceiling of an improbable hallway, doors to the right, doors to the left, paneling and frames warped and snapped, brass knobs corroded. A small three-legged glass table lies shattered, a tiny golden key fallen, cast aside. And what’s this? A bottle labeled “Drink Me” by some unknown hand, its contents a nauseatingly intense Pre-Raphaelite mauve. Doors? A glass table and bottle? One tiny golden key? But how can this be so far underground?

Wonderland.

The rabbit hole has long since caved in, the pool of tears evaporated, leaving nothing in evidence but crystals of salt. Moving deeper, fungi proliferate, mushrooms of variegated colours sprout, some bright, some muted—on which did a large caterpillar smoke his hookah lethargically stopping only now and then to pose psychologically probing questions? Broken crockery is strewn about, an outsized peppermill tossed casually in the scrub. White roses grow in abandon, untended, their heady scent perfuming the air, their stiletto thorns lethal, protecting secrets to be unearthed another day. Right now, attention is focused upon a heap of cobbles, of moldy thatching, of smashed windowpanes and chalky chimney bricks. A ruined cucumber frame is swallowed by unmown grass. All this is what remains of a once neat little house, its address plate lying amongst a plethora of pebbles introducing in tarnished engraving its past owner, “W. Rabbit.”

What to uncover here?

A small skull. Yes, of the Oryctolagus cuniculus, from the Family Leporidae—the common European rabbit and judging from the tatters of fur clinging, white. A Victorian watch chain, bronze and ornate, juts from what was formerly the pocket of a finely tailored waistcoat, now nothing more than specks of rotted silk. Scattered are pocket watch pieces—unwound mainsprings, bent hands, twisted cogs and gears. Look, a pair of miniature kid gloves—white skin now brown with age—and a fan of William Morris print.

Auxiliary scavenging reveals two antique playing cards, the Ace of Spades, the Queen of Hearts, and a well-preserved invitation, with Royal Seal no less, for a long abandoned game of croquet—the flamingoes taken flight, the hedgehogs lost in the underbrush.

But time is fleeting, dusk approaches. Another expedition planned.

Each article retrieved carefully, cleaned and catalogued, and displayed appropriately enough within a copy of the very book that first detailed this miraculous destination so far beneath the earth’s mantle; to read in its pages the somnolent magic of one little girl’s last summer as a child.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out
And now the tale is done…

In Praise of False Gods

2010-02-03T09:55:00.015-05:00

Une évocation de Á la recherché du temps perdu (inspired by Marcel Proust’s Á la recherché du temps perdu novels) – Glass display dome with hand silver-leafed base; ivory finial; antique art nouveau bat cufflink; wired French ribbon; antique art nouveau bone china demitasse cup and saucer; antique sterling Egyptian Revival demitasse spoon; antique celluloid fountain pen; vintage white china vase; dried white rose and rose petals; genuine butterfly wings; antique French cigarette butt; genuine dried bit of Madeleine; burnt wooden match; antique cameo; altered art pieces—Grand-Hôtel de la Plage, Balbec restaurant menu, Baron de Charlus’ calling card, invitation to Elstir exhibition, invitation to M. et Mme Verdurin, postcard of Grand-Hôtel de la Plage, Jupien business card, Venice luggage label, scrap of writing

In the preface he wrote for his translation of John Ruskin’s Bible of Amiens published in 1903, Proust defined (and cautioned against) a tendency he had observed in the English author’s approach to works of art. He called it “idolatry,” and he denounced it, even as he recognized its siren allure.

Curiously, the examples Proust gave of this artistic sin were for the most part attributable not to Ruskin but to the comte Robert de Montesquiou. And Proust would specifically link them to Montesquiou, later the principal model for the baron de Charlus, in the essay “Un Professeur de Beauté” published in 1905. Certainly, Montesquiou, an aristocrat and esthete whom Proust both revered and ridiculed, might be accursed of idolatry in the most obvious sense of the term. For example, in a room of his house, he had created what amounted to a shrine to a notorious Second Empire beauty, the comtesse de Castiglione, with innumerable photographic portraits, as well as moulages of her hands and feet and other memorabilia.

According to Proust, Montesquiou was always enchanted to discover echoes of the works of art he cherished in the real world around him, recognizing a dress worn by Balzac’s Madame de Cadignan or a rare textile from a painting by Gustave Moreau. Furthermore, he actively sought out or commissioned works of art that represented those objects that had personal meaning for him: bats and hydrangeas, for example. A natural proclivity, perhaps, but Proust states severely that the subject of a picture bears no relation to its artistic merit. He tells us that he himself would not care more for a painting of hawthorn blossoms, his own favorite flower, than for any other. While we may concede the basic truth of this puritanical view, a part of us refuses to share it. We sense that idolatry and art are inextricably related and may even doubt Proust’s good faith in claiming to so rigidly keep them separate.

If artistic idolatry gives value to mundane objects in the real world because they have been represented in a work of art, what can we say about a work of art that purports to be the real objects that art has represented? We have passed through the mirror. The game is now twisted like a Möbius pretzel. In Scot Ryersson’s masterful Proust montage, a bell jar protects a small tablescape: a delicate, fluted teacup with, on its saucer, the last crumbs of a Madeleine; an invitation to the vernissage of an exhibition of the work of Elstir at the Galerie Durand-Ruel; a stamped and addressed picture postcard sent from the Grand Hotel at Balbec; the visiting card of the baron de Charlus… Kneeling on the floor, mesmerized in front of this glass reliquary, I discover tangible objects, here and now, in my space, that carry a charge of conviction and persuasion. They convince me that the fiction from which they have materialized was a true history, that I might accept the Verdurin’s invitation to attend their musical soirée. In fact, Scot Ryersson’s tantalizing assemblage is just that—an invitation—an invitation to dream, an invitation to pass through the barrier between this world and the one that a great work of literature has made almost more real to me. I succumb gladly to the idolatry that it implies, an idolatry now taken to a higher plane and, paradoxically, reversed into art itself. Scot Ryersson triumphantly proclaims the supremacy of the imaginary by persuading us to believe our eyes.

—Joan T. Rosasco, Proust scholar and author of Voies de l’imagination proustienne and The Septet: Proust’s Wager, New York City, New York

Shipment #15-6-1948

2010-01-07T15:00:00.016-05:00

One of my all-time favorite films ever is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948.) I suppose I could go into all the details of being a creepy monster kid and catching every repeat showing of this wonderfully silly (and scary) Universal classic on television here in the midwest in the 70's. But the movie still speaks for itself over half a century later, consistantly finding more rabid fans with each new generation... my own five year old is in fact OBSESSED with it now too and we watch it together constantly.

Seriously, what's not to like? You have Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, The Wolfman, and even The Invisible Man (in a brief cameo!) And while the comedy stylings of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello might feel a bit dated to a more impatient, modern audience, their slapsticky, comedy team magic never fails to deliver to one film lover in particular-- me!

"Shipment #15-6-1948" is essentially this: portion of a crate that once contained either the remains of Frankenstein's Monster or Dracula himself! Nailed to this priceless hunk of aged, splintery wood are artifacts pertaining to their diabolic delivery to McDougal's House of Horror in La Mirada, Florida. (Click any image to ENLARGE!)

(Unlike the previous three Arcanifacts that rest atop the mantle in my living room, "Shipment #15-6-1948" hangs beautifully, and ominously, on the wall in my office!)

Detail: Vintage newspaper advertisement from McDougal's House of Horrors

Detail: Cargo manifesto signed by Wilbur Gray and Chick Young when accepting the monsterous shipment on that fateful day in 1948! NOTE: burned business card from Dr. Sandra Mornay at the top! It is rumored that she was once Count Dracula's lab assistant!

Detail: Urgent telegram from Lawrence Talbot (aka The Wolfman) sent from London, warning US Customs and Mr. McDougal not to open the crates!

Detail: McDougal's House of Horrors shipping label still on the side of crate.

Detail: Destination origin stickers from Ingolstadt and Transylvania, do these really need further explaination? (NOTE: The Wolf Brand Oranges sticker is an inside joke to those of you who know this film well!)

Thanks again to Scot Ryersson for capturing the spirit of this comedy/horror film classic, and producing another amazing Arcanifact for me to enjoy!

--Stephen Banes, St Louis MO

For more info on the hilariously spooky misadventures concerning Wilbur Gray and Chick Young (aka Abbott and Costello) please click HERE!

Slivers From The Morningside Mortuary's Shotgunned Silver Sentinel Sphere

2009-11-03T09:04:00.026-05:00

Morningside Mortuary vanished one night. The somber wake parlors, the embalming chamber, the crematorium, even the endless, maze-like, marble mausoleum halls that entombed the dead. Gone. The ominous, multi-level structure, that for well over a hundred years provided dedicated funeral service to a sleepy Southern California community, simply was not there anymore, leaving behind one very large, and very deep smoldering hole in the earth.

Morningside Mortuary (18??)

Strange rumors had persisted for nearly as long as Morningside was in business, most notably those involving the reclusive head funeral director Jebediah Morningside (aka "The Tall Man") who, not so oddly enough, also disappeared without a trace on that strange, fateful night. His secretive methods for preserving the dead are still in question today, as much so as the thousands of bodies of his deceased clients from the last century that still remain unaccounted for.

Jebediah Morningside (18??)

And now some thirty years later, the confused property ownership rights and legal red tape has been lifted and the land on which the mortuary once stood has finally been sold (and currently under development.) Public interest in this new project endeavor of course has re-awakened the puzzling “Morningside Myth” buzz and conspiracy theories in the local press, and needless to say, having been obsessed with these phantasmagorical tales for most of my life, I quickly assigned Arcanifact extraordinaire Scot D. Ryersson to acquire anything at all physical on the subject for me. And as always, with a mere handful of unearthed items in relation to Morningside and its shiver inducing, haunted history, Scot has exceeded all my expectations, with:

An amazing assortment of Morningside business cards, also a holiday card for cherished Morningside customers, and advertising clippings…

The most interesting of these ads comes from 1952 and contains an odd typo that says “MorningSTAR Funeral Home.” Could this have been some ironic slip-up from Jebediah himself when placing the ad? (FYI: One of the more curious conspiracy theories over the last few years is that “The Tall Man” was in fact some being from another planet and Morningside Funeral Home was actually his spacecraft that flew off on the night in question, for whatever reason.)

A stationery ledger heading (receipt?) showing funeral costs from 1920.

Eerie wake photos taken at Morningside of the deceased in their caskets.

Each photo contains a handwritten job number and is dated on the reverse. NOTE: further expanding on the “other world” conspiracy theories: strange, almost alien (cataloging?) symbols, see examples below.

The centerpiece of my Arcanifact contains a framed sampling of sharp, shattered, metallic fragments, as well as what appears to be a drill-bit stained with dried blood (?!!) Written on a toe tag (dated records show this tag was worn by one of Morningside’s last clients i.e.; Jody Pearson, in the weeks that led up to the disappearance of his body as well as Morningside itself) and labeled as “Slivers from the Morningside Mortuary’s shotgunned silver Sentinel Sphere.”

(Also interesting: while preparing my Arcanifact, Scot’s investigations into the actual definition of a “Sentinel Sphere”, led to a handful of peculiar theories stating these slivers are part of some form of “deadly airborne security system” designed by Jebediah Morningside himself?!!)

As you can see, these fragments are cleverly displayed inside the hollowed out pages of an antique, hardcover funeral home management book. Originating apparently from the private collection of Jebediah Morningside, this book was found, half-buried in the woods, about fifty yards from where the Morningside structure once stood. Note the dried, mustard-colored substance splashed across the book’s cover, subsequent forensic DNA examination results state: "Dried fluid of unknown, possibly alien origin.”

Once again I wish to thank Scot for assembling another jaw dropping Arcanifact for my collection, and providing us all with factual proof about Jebediah and his mortuary, forever laying to rest those lingering questions: “Did Morningside ever actually even exist? Or was it all just a dream?”

Stephen Banes, St. Louis MO

(Born: May 1st 1968 - Died: 20??)

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Disinter more about “The Tall Man” and the Phantasm Philms by clicking HERE.

Atlas Shrugged: A Distillation of Dagny Taggart's Determination

2009-08-06T22:08:00.008-04:00

Being in the design world for over forty-five years I have been fortunate to meet many talented people and see a lot of great art. But the gift Scot D. Ryersson gave to me is the most imaginative, ingenious piece I have ever seen. Having been asked by him who my favorite fictional female characters were, my first choice was Dagny Taggart, the independent heroine from Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged. Scot then set about and amazingly distilled Dagny's complete essence and personality into three-dimensions.

I'm sure Ayn Rand would be jealous and want this creative, elegant arcanifact Scot created for herself if she were alive today. I am honored and will always cherish this heartfelt token.

---Janice O’Brien, New Fairfield, CT

For more info on the life and works of novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, click HERE.

Hold the Olives: Splinters from Mame Dennis’ Martini Glass

2009-07-21T10:33:00.017-04:00

A bottle holds so much promise. A flask of perfume, a magnum of bubbly, each offers possibility—of expectations, aspirations, anticipations—with every pop of the top. A grand dame knows this intuitively, and Marion Tanner embraced life with such zing as to inspire her nephew Patrick Dennis to immortalize her as the incarnation Auntie Mame Dennis.

I received my Arcanifact on my 40th birthday. I’d been asked to name a heroine, and, above any other individual I could’ve or would’ve otherwise chosen, Rosalind Russell’s cinematic turn as Auntie Mame came to mind. I stopped myself from scrutinizing this pick, and ran with it. At the New York party at Indochine (versus my other two at home in L.A.; hey, a gal’s got to have fun), Mr. Ryersson presented me with a rectangular box packed in brown paper and rough twine. The wrapping was deliberate, I would learn, since the charming contents inside hailed from the Prohibition era, and required, at least in fantasy, such a prosaic disguise to get past the authorities.

The divine Miss M, in truth or fiction, had a joie de vivre and indefatigable pluck only rivaled (or is it enhanced?) by her utterly chic sense of interiors and fashion. Her young nephew’s recall of his aunt’s madcap life and times opens during the age of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the shards of her martini glass fill this heavy antique bootleg gin bottle like so many sparkling flecks of a Cartier wristband or a beaded sheath.

The drawn-out tassel of silver and black Czech crystal beads wrapped around the bottle’s neck suggest a jeweled sautoir, conjuring the magnificent Mame’s penchant for the exotic and ornate, even when she appears on screen most elegantly restrained in a tailored dark green velvet suit.

The bottle now appears in my dressing room, among my favorite objects I glance at daily, a reminder of Mame’s spirited bid to her secretary: “Live! Yes! Live! Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!”

It’s all here, a wax-sealed talisman filled with dreams ready to be raised in celebration of life and knocked back with pleasure. There are so many layers of story telling, so many messages in these Arcanifacts that Scot D. Ryersson crafts with insight, wit and grace.

---Rose Apodaca, style journalist & co-founder of A+R Store, Los Angeles, CA

Eucritta Melanolimnetes Branchia / Case No: X 9746 (The Gill-Man)

2009-07-10T16:04:00.024-04:00

Since I was a child, I have held a strange fascination with the legend of “The Gill-Man.” A half-man, half-fish creature that, according to the very most basic laws of nature should not exist, but does, or did anyway. Found only in the blackest and lagooniest corners of the Amazon, it is still unknown whether this fish that walked upright on hind legs was in fact a “one-of-a-kind” freak mutation, or the actual dawning of some fantastic new amphibious evolution.

Over the years I have collected every scrap of detail I could dredge up concerning “The Gill-Man,” from simple newspaper clippings sensationalizing its initial discovery by a research team in the mid-1950’s, to films and photographs of its capture and disastrous exhibition at an Oceanarium in Florida, etc... And despite the well documented, scientific cases surrounding all known encounters with “The Gill-Man” (least we forget the unfortunate experiments also performed upon it to remove its gills), various reports have shown that this deadly, vicious brute was also very much a sad, lonely, and incredibly misunderstood creature, quite possibly more human than fish.

“The Gill-Man” is a unique specimen, curiously lost in time, and regretfully now destroyed by man. But all is not lost! Thanks to Scot D. Ryersson and his unnatural ability to unearth rare, related objects and info about my fishy obsession, I am actually in possession of the only known, preserved remains left of the creature-- its gills! Scavenged from the wreckage of Ocean Harbor Oceanarium, the clear-view contents of the antique specimen jar are spine-chilling, while at the same remarkably enlightening. As a bonus, Scot has also found for me an original admission ticket (receipt), as well as a two-sided, full color brochure from “The Gill-Man’s” brief and horrific stint as a public attraction at Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in the mid-1950’s.

Thanks again Scot my friend, you have done it again!

---Stephen Banes (St. Louis, MO)

Click the banner below to learn more about “The Gill-Man” aka The Creature from the Black Lagoon!

Detritus from the Estate of Dr. Anton Phibes

2009-06-05T02:19:00.037-04:00

After seeing some of the Arcanifacts that Scot has uncovered for others, I knew that I had to see if any personal possessions of the great Dr. Anton Phibes could be acquired. After a few weeks of anxious waiting, I finally received word that Scot had uncovered some evidence from the Phibes homicide case, which had originally been conducted by Scotland Yard. I was extremely excited as I picked up my package at the post office. I also wondered if I would fall under scrutiny by the authorities for my high interest in a still unsolved investigation.

I could not have been more pleased with my Arcanifact! Upon opening the package, I immediately saw a Victrola speaker. The speaker was the type the good doctor used to communicate after his terrible accident. (ALSO NOTE: Victoria's white opera glove.)

Next, I found the embalming bottle, with traces of embalming fluid. Was this indeed one of the same bottles used in Anton's sleep chamber?

Then, I opened the real treasure trove of the collection, a mysterious, old, red box. The handle of the box was Egyptian in design, as Phibes' himself held a special interest in Egypt.

The mirror in the top of the box had the initials of Victoria Regina Phibes. Many of the objects inside were obviously very important to her; a hat pin...

...and a valentine card and poem from Anton.

Two photos of the beautiful Victoria...

...a bat cuff link, and dried rose.

A newspaper clipping announcing the "death" of Dr. Phibes...

One of my personal favorite documents is the original telegram, notifying him that his wife had taken ill...

A concert program of one of Dr. Phibes rare personal appearances as a world renown organist...

...spring and clockwork gears, perhaps leftover parts from a robotic snake?

A jar with a locust, paired with a Brussels sprout...

Finally, I opened a large manila envelope. It contained an ancient page, written in Hebrew, depicting the 10 plagues of Egypt...

The whole collection is detailed in the Scotland Yard evidence report, signed by Detective Inspector Trout himself (NOTE: Phibes' calling card still bearing traces of melted candle wax!)

I can't begin to describe how pleased I am with my Arcanifact. The attention to detail, such as dates, names and locations is incredible. Now my challenge is to display my Arcanifact in a way that is fitting for such a collection.

Thanks again, Scot!

-Mike Chapman (St. Louis, MO)

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For more about the wonderfully Abominable Dr. Phibes, click HERE!

WIZARD OF OZ: Wicked Witch of the West

2009-05-17T22:39:00.010-04:00

I am now the proud owner of my own Wicked Witch of the West Arcanifact. It was a gift which I received for my 50th birthday and one that I will treasure forever. Inside the antique glass bottle are bristles from the broomstick of the Wicked Witch used to torment Dorothy, scorched by the fire with which she tried to burn the Scarecrow. These bristles are imbedded in red sand from the Witch's shattered hour glass, which counted down the moments left before Dorothy perished. The bottle is topped with burlap reminiscent of the Scarecrow's costume and sealed with black wax that has dripped down the bottle’s sides, sealing it forever. Atop the bottle is a tiny pewter flying monkey standing guard. A black satin ribbon is tied around the bottle like the one that encircles the Witch’s pointed hat. And finishing off the piece is a blue feather hand painted by Mr. Ryersson, plucked from the wing of a flying monkey. Finally, at the base of the bottle, sits a poppy pod that surely has the power to make the most Cowardly Lion curl up in a field and declare, "Come to think of it, forty winks wouldn't be bad."

This Arcanifact is truly a unique treasure that I am so happy to own and is an incredible addition to my extensive Wizard of Oz collection.

–Tina Kirsimae (Oceanside, New York)

Click HERE for more about Wizard of Oz!

ALUCARDA: Ensanguined Tatters from Justine's Shroud

2009-05-13T16:41:00.016-04:00

In honour of my birthday (April 22nd), I received a very strange and unusual package...My pulse quickened, and my blood ran ice cold when I first laid eyes upon this most curious artifact. Fashioned in the image of the Blessed Virgin, this vessel once contained Holy Water. Now, it holds the "Ensanguined Tatters from Justine's shroud." An inverted cross dangles above the blood-soaked cloth within; a warning that the vessel's seal is never to be broken, lest the wrath of Alucarda's lover be awakened once again from her undead slumber. The fragrant sealing wax barely masks the pungent stench of the grave, and the vessel radiates a strange energy I have never before encountered.

I daren't even ponder the fiendish secrets that linger within, hungrily awaiting release...

The creator of this stunning piece of horror fancy is award-winning artist and author Scot D. Ryersson, the mastermind behind Arcanifacts which, loosely translated, means secret thing made. Ryersson set up shop in 2007 "to further explore his artistic obsessions with the arcane and phantasmagorical." After seeing photographs of the arcanifact Ryersson produced for Karswell based on Night of the Demon, I was excited to learn that THOIA's spooktacular host had commissioned one for me, as well. Eagerly I awaited my gift, knowing nothing about it other than the Alucarda theme, and that a portion of the piece had come from Guadalajara, Mexico. The ensanguined tatters from Justine's shroud now sit proudly beneath Alucarda's portrait, adding a touch more malevolence to my living room.

-Kitty LeClaw (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

The ensanguined, bottled tatters from Justine's shroud are now permanently housed in the private collection of Kitty LeClaw, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. May God have mercy on her soul...

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For more on the possessed perils of Justine, click HERE.

LOT 412: Antique Incense Burner

2009-04-27T12:24:00.017-04:00

When I first learned of Mr. Ryersson’s knack for unearthing unique and desirable “Arcanifacts,” I instantly realized that I must commission him for a piece to add to my own antiquarian collection. Having shared countless fascinating conversations with Scot through the years, many of our darkest whisperings inevitably led to continued speculations mired in the unfortunate events surrounding the demise of our late great friend and colleague, Dr. Julian Karswell. Whether actually struck by a train (as police reports have concluded), or destroyed by some terrible thing of his own design, it seemed only natural (or supernatural) that the first treasure for Scot to acquire for me should come from Karswell’s rightfully maligned, blackened estate.

-Stephen Banes (St Louis, MO)

Incense burner, instruction packet and matchbox

Burner opened to show incense grains and demon claw

Rune parchment found hidden in matchbox!

Lot 412 Instructions

Lot 412 catalog page from Karswell estate auction

Another page from Karswell estate auction catalog

(Lot 412 images taken from the private collection of the late Stephen Banes, who was found horribly mutilated on the morning of April 27th, 2009 and under mysterious circumstances, not at all unlike that of Dr. Julian Karswell.)

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An account of the final days of Dr. Julian Karswell can be found in the M. R. James’ short story, Casting the Runes (click HERE), and also made into a moving picture in 1957 called Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon.) More information can be found HERE.

Welcome to Arcanifacts

2009-04-06T09:27:00.017-04:00

Note: Scot D. Ryersson is now accepting private commissions. You may reach him via e-mail at: arcanifacts@gmail.com

Several choice examples of Ryersson’s Arcanifacts:

Bronze foot from the Bloody Countess’ bathtub

Shards from the Mad Hatter’s tea cup

Sweeney Todd’s shaving brush & Mrs. Lovett’s pastry crimper

Fourrure de Loup-garou