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.

Witching Hour is coming . . . Fear My Attic

When I started the House collaboration with Lisa I wasn't sure that I would be able to pull off one specific thing I wanted to do. I REALLY wanted and arcane workroom in the attic. All of the best stuff happens in attics. I wasn't sure that I could get the right vibe between my childhood attic workshop fantasies and poppets but I'm pretty happy with this. It's 85% done - Lisa is making a wallpaper for it.

There are two attic spaces in the house and they both represent things about Time.

But I did it! And I'm pretty happy with it.

I only have 5 days left to my original 40 day project plan. I'm going to make it on the stuff that is house oriented by I'm probably not going to finish the box by the 19th.

I'll be making a box that goes under the house that can hold all of the loose pieces so the house can be displayed closed and empty ( it's easier to lift that way) with landscaping. It would be like one of those Thomas the tank engine sets where all the train pieces are in the inside.

I'm really torn though - I'd love to use an real wooden box for the base but that would add about another 70% of the original cost to the materials budget, and possibly about an additional 3 days of work.

The other solution stays well within the "Play" sensibility of the piece and would be handled with a lot of decoupage but it would be a cardboard base.

Torn, torn, torn, torn, torn . . . . . . .

Work is continuing- Let the Music Play!

This week I've been working on the Music Room for the house I'm working on with Lisa.

I'm really quite happy with what I've got going so far. There are approximately 83 seperate peices for the House so far and I'm at that point of the project where it looks so close to finished that other people think it's mostly done, and I know that there are miles to go before I sleep - or declare it done.

I take photos with the Poppets that live in the House to make sure that everything still makes sense when Poppets are in it, after all it's for them.

Here is the more finished version of one area of the music room:

A lot more work has been done in the room since the picture with the Poppets in it - I've painted the piano, and the phonograph, made a vase instead of the red bottle, figured out a way to make the piano bigger on the inside than the out and I'm going to use my own fireplace to do the finish work on the Poppet Fireplace.

But I think it's coming along nicely. My deadline date is Oct 19th and after todays's work on the Arcane Attic Workroom, I'm pretty comfortable we're going to make it.

I did have one bit of weirdness this week though, I posted this picture on the Flickr slide show:

And it got a couple of dozen hits more than any of my other pictures on Flickr. Very odd! I wonder if someone used it to illustrate some blog post about the anniversary of Poe.

I mean - I'm quite proud of it and all - I made the table from scratch but it's a minature living room that's completely out of context and it seemed to have been running around the internet all on it's own, building up it's own fanbase.

It doesn't even have a clever name. The picture is labeled "living room with bookshelf facing".

Oh well, more power to it. It's meant to have a life of it's own in someone else's home anyway, it might as well get a head start.

Here's a picture of the music room with a full sized Poppet in it.

Enough chit-chat, back to work for me!

The Secret is OUT

I've been working with Lisa, we are collaborating on a House Where Poppets Live.

When this is done we will also be making smaller houses, they will be for sharing. This house is meant to leave and go out into the world too.

I've never built anything that intentionally was going to be outside my house for the Poppets so I'm being very careful to make sure that the materials can withstand being played with by grown ups.

I've wondered why I keep building little Rooms of Their Own. Poppets are observers and visitors and adventurers, it's their very nature to be in new spaces and where Poppets live is probably very different than the spaces I make for them, but then I realized that deep down it's about something very important.

It's about the Poppets and Lisa and me, things we know we might have in common and things that we probably don't know at all.

Lisa's writing about it on her blog.

I'm not sure how much to explain, it's all in there. Nothing in the house is by accident, it's all thought out, including the materials we're using to make things.

I'm not sure what to do about the "behind the scenes of it all." I share a bunch of "how to's" on the Embarrassed Embassy forums for Poppetropolis but I haven't been as methodical with recording the step-by-steps on this - because it's a Very Ambitious Project which we're trying to complete in 40 days.

I'm 26 days in.

So if you have questions I think you can ask me here. I check every day. I'll post any really new techniques or discoveries on the Poppetplanet Embarrassed Embassy Forum, and Lisa linked to the Flickr album we're using to collaborate over the two coasts.

So I'll answer questions where ever you want to ask them.

There's lots of other interesting things and people all over the Poppet Planet Forums, so it's worth checking out if you've got some downtime. Lisa and others share all sorts of information about photography and mulitmedia and inspiration and such.

Not everyone who wanders is lost, but they still might like a comfy chair of their own and a nice cup of hot cocoa.

Poppet Sale on Saturday, March 28!! And Sunday!!

The Poppets are cleaning up the store, the artist is clearing out her space.

Strange Studios,where Lisa Snellings houses Poppet Planet, is clearing out the studio to get ready for new and different projects.

Thus there will be a clearance sale on Saturday.

If you're one of the people who uses this blog just to check and see if I'm alive and you've never seen any of Lisa's art besides my Poppets you should check out some of her other work here and here.

I love the poppets, but her larger scale work is the first good, completely selfish reason I've ever had to become independently wealthy and have a gallery. 

The link to Poppet Planet proper is on the sidebar but it is also here.

The Sale will be through her ebay store here.  Saturday  March 28th. She is promising to put up a lot of older stuff. I'm personally hoping that she has one of these still:

She probably doesn't, but I'm warning you if she does, and there's just one, it is SOOOO mine. 

We will of course try to attempt to show some restraint but I for one am fascinated by the idea of "older stuff".

There are Poppets I might not even know about and maybe they will be there.

There are Poppets that might need to come to Poppetropolis and the Embarrassed Embassy.

There might be a version of a Poppet that Got Away.

There might be Brains.

In my head it's a little like Willie Wonka having a yard sale. 

We will be there (virtually of course, and after sundown).  We suggest you be there too. 

We already have a strategy  . . . . . We are prepared. 

To summarize 

Poppet Sale 

Saturday, March 28th 

Be there.

It's here.