World Fantasy Con - Collaboration Happens

Here is what is now officially titled " The House Where Halloween Things Live When It Isn't Halloween"

This is a picture when it was still in front of Poppetropolis Proper.

(Poppetropolis is the area in NYC where the Embarrassed Embassy is based, it's like Chinatown, or Little Italy but where all the expats from Poppet Planet live).

The Embarrassed Embassy is not yet a year old - but it's 1st anniversary will be soon. Like many construction projects in many cities, it has undergone some changed scope and is behind schedule. It is part and parcel of my reaction to Lisa's art. Lisa and others have told me that my reaction to her work is art. I'm still struggling a little with that.

But it is what it is.

In September, when she asked if I would do something with her for Halloween, I said yes. I had an idea that didn't belong to Poppetropolis and it would be more fun to do it with her. Then later we decided to bring it to the World Fantasy Convention and debut it there. Which is really grand but a little scary because we hadn't met in the Meatworld.

And so we got to explore a little of the surreality of our relationship and reaction to each other. There is no question that we had a relationship, but it was in the new ether of the internet, which is not the same as in person. We were now collaborating cross country, but the first voice contact we had was a phone call to let her know I was at the hotel.

We had emailed and shipped and consulted, and had pictures of each other and, I think a place in each other's lives, ( unbalanced, but equally real) and yet we were still introducing ourselves to each other, but we do know things.

One of the things we knew, is that we were both people who had been involved with conventions before. This ended up being a very useful thing over the weekend. I helped with the set up, I was very happy to be useful. I am always happier when I'm useful.

We set up the art show together and talked while we did. Here are the pictures of most of it without the bid sheets - for posterity . .

The sculpture in the center of this shot is called Blackbirds, and I believe Lisa will be making an 8ft version of it in the next year.

I was not the only person who travelled from distant coasts however, Lisa met with a Poppet Collector from Australia, who asked for a picture of the Poppet that Has Travelled to Australia and Back and the Creator of Poppets.

She is a wonderful lady and an excellent dinner companion. She was actually Queen of Australia and New Zealand, so I was honored by her Poppet's acceptance of an invitation to visit The House Where Halloween Things Live. This marks the first Visiting Poppet to that House.

He is an Outside Steampunk Poppet.

Here he is being greeted by Elul, who made the trip out to show off the House along with two of the Jackos and about 10 other East Coast Expats.

The Australian Outside Steampunk Poppet converses with the Raven and peruses the House Where Halloween Things Live Library.

Of course there was Poe. The book on the table is The Purloined Letter.

Many things happened at World Fantasy Con, I'm still sorting a bunch of it out. I'll write about it while I'm processing it. I have funny anecdotes, and weird ones, and serious ones. I will probably not tell them all. I have anecdotes that involve food:

Anecdotes of Lisa and the Poppet who lives on her desk.

Our mutual love of coffee.

and what it means when people ask you questions like "What do you do?" or "Don't I know you" or "What do you want out of this."

And of course the big one "Why are you doing this"

I think I have begun to have an answer for that last one -

I used to process all the things I couldn't say through words, but I put the words aside. It stopped being safe.

I used to use all the things I felt to communicate, when I was wearing the skin of someone else, so the personal could become universal. It was like breathing, but I learned how to hold my breath and now I cannot exhale.

I used to build things to create small worlds or hold other worlds at bay. I'm still doing that.

The words are too complex, the feelings are too deep to show in someone else's skin, I may have spent to much time trapped in my own. I can't use the older tools I have to process what happens to me when I react to Lisa's art. So I'm building things to help me understand my own reactions. I'm building things to share and show what's going on on the inside.

I'm having trouble telling the story, so I'm building it instead.

It's a stealth story, I've hidden it inside things you might use to tell your own.

And if you see or play with something I've built, then you're wearing my skin, sharing my world which is all ajumble and full of art. So it shouldn't surprise me at all that there are Poppets there.

I am just a little (very!) surprised that other people like it too.

The thing is, I would make it anyway. I don't think I could not make it.

Maybe that makes it art after all.