A Magazine of Many Arts

The last installment…

They stopped to eat and sleep, when the crescent of the sun came to barely skim the horizon. The Northern sun never truly rose or set, knew Iliss, but in her wildness of heart, she had not kept proper track of the seasons, and was not sure if it was true Summer or Winter. It mattered little to her single-minded purpose.

“Who follows us?” Waevan said, as he fed the dog pack. “I don’t understand.”

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It’s been two months since I started this magazine.  In that time, we’ve posted four excellent pieces of short fiction and pointed you towards some interesting artists.  We’ve also tried to encourage some interesting works of new art, and I hope that will continue.  I’ve been busy trying to publicize the quilt challenge, and I hope I get a lot of takers on that.

Since I’ve started, I’ve been working on defining my vision for this page better.  You may notice that the wording in the sidebar has changed. (There is also a new dedication page that describes my goals in this project more.)  My goal is that same space as one of the better art shows at a science fiction convention — ideas, artwork, discussion and arguments sparking all around.  And of course, the artwork is grounded in the stories and books that created this literary genre. Often, it seems that fantastic artwork consists of illustrations, or even cover art created only to sell a book.  But there’s a lot more than that… you can find visions of other worlds in there, stories told without words.  Fiber artists, sculpters, and costume artists bring textured fantasy into the world around us for us to interact with.

In the two months since this has begun, there have been 17 entries.  We’re getting new registered users regularly.  In September, we averaged 250 page views a day and now we’re up to 450.  We’ve been linked to from Locus Magazine among others.  We have a Facebook page — we’d love to have more people link to it.  I’m particularly pleased that we’ve maintained a regular schedule.

We’ll be adding ads and merchandise soon — hopefully, for cool things that you will be happy to discover so it adds more than just some income to pay the writers (did I just say ‘just?’)  We have more publicity to go — now that we’ve got enough content to show what we’ve got we’re going to kick off a marketing campaign.  I’ll be pleased if you let me know when/where you see our name.  And, of course, we’re working on more art and stories.  Let me know of anything you’d like to see here.

continued from part II…

Iliss awoke to cold. It cut her like a bared nerve, the sense of weakling dawn, freezing cold in her nostrils, and a haunting monochrome whiteness that seeped in slowly from the outside. She lay in the pile of furs, unrestrained, and still nude, lay against another cold body, which she recognized as the man Waevan.

White skin, large rough features, carved like fjords of ice. And yet, he was like a young boy, a child asleep before her. And he had not touched her. She remembered vaguely how he had come in the night, silent, and bedded next to her in the furs as though she herself was but a dead animal skin.

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Many art materials and technologies are ageless.  Pottery is one of the oldest skills of mankind, pre-dating even writing by 6,000 years. Cavemen painted.  But it’s easy for us to forget how much technology has gone into these skills, from the development of paint beyond the egg tempera used in the Last Painting to pigments derived from petroleum products.  Our generation has polymer clays,  digital painting, computer animation, film and photography, and other new media that developed over the course of the last century.  So what is emerging now, and what will develop over the next century?

As primarily a fiber artist, I suddenly have an unprecedented urge to learn more electronics.  A lot more about electronics.  My inspiration has been projects like these:

Technically speaking, this is a present technology, since after all, these projects do exist.  However, it seems to me that this is relatively unexplored territory for fiber artists, and there’s a lot of room for great things in the future.  This gives an overview of smart materials that change color, give off sound and interact with their environment.  Another thing that excites me is the chapter on toymaking… sure, many of us grew up with dolls that cried or had other gimmicks, but can you imagine making your own original interactive art dolls with that kind of material?  My copy of the book now has big drool marks all over it.

What other technologies do you foresee having an influence on artwork in the future?  If any of you are working on something new, or are aware of something new, I would love to hear about it.

Clenching the reins and the girg with stiff fingers, Iliss was carried farther and farther along the barely perceptible trail. There were adequate supplies of grain and dried meat in the back of the sled, and extra warm blankets. The grain was for her own consumption — for since that dark day she had stopped eating flesh — while the meat was for the dogs.

One last point of honor Iliss refused to part with at the shelter-station. A long knife of finely honed iron she had kept close to her body, tied around her left upper thigh. This knife she had used when fighting for her life.

Her knife, first taken from her and plunged into beloved flesh, brother’s guts spewing… Her knife, regained too late while Naiass was broken — little smiling Naiass — her soft eyes agonized, then glassy… Screams, crackle of fire, her mother’s hands charred… Smoke, and Northerners with long pale hair, rose-skinned, shrieking, clawing at her, Trei, Trei, Trei, then bleeding, limbs severed under her slashing knife….

Her knife.

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There may not be much in the way of science quilts out there, but science jewelry is a different matter. I had a wonderful evening web browsing by searching for “science jewelry” on Etsy. Here is a small sample of some of my favorites:

Read on for information on these artists and pictures of more of their work. Remember that the next installment of Vera Nazarian’s story “The Slaying of Winter” will appear next week.

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Vera Nazarian immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages. She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose, followed by epic fantasy about a world without color, Lords of Rainbow. Her novella The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass from PS Publishing with an introduction by Charles de Lint made the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2005. Her collection Salt of the Air with an introduction by Gene Wolfe contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.” Recent work includes the baroque illustrated fantasy novella The Duke In His Castle, released in June 2008. In addition to being a writer and award-winning artist she is also the publisher of Norilana Books. This story was originally published in 2005 in the anthology Lords of Swords by Pitch-Black Books.
Official website: http://www.veranazarian.com/

Iliss moved through a dead world.

Snowflakes finer than dandelion seed floated down gently, sparsely, brushing against her face with feather lightness, while the tundra around whirled by. A solitary bird soared overhead — a Northern bird — and trained a strange look of its sharp eagle-eye on the being below.

Iliss huddled in the voluminous fur garment which she had bought back at the old roadside shelter-station. This peculiar cumbersome thing she wore as a beast wears its own skin came with a hood that left only her eyes and a slit of her face exposed, and it was unbelievably warm.

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I am proud to present the second issue of Polu Texni, with fiction by Adam Rurik and Michael A. Burstein, and the beginning of an exploration of science quilts. The costuming article will appear in October, along with fiction by Vera Nazarian.

After this issue, I am going to switch to smaller weekly updates. I wanted to start with enough content to really show what the site is about. Now that I’ve got enough here for a reader to sink their teeth into, I want to concentrate on adding new material frequently and keeping the site fresh.

Solar System Quilt, made in 1876 by Ella Harding Baker. Image from the National Museum of American History.

A Genome quilt by Beverly St. Clair. The artist uses quilt blocks to encode sequences of DNA.

Since I started working on this webzine, I’ve been looking for examples of the kind of art I want to showcase. I sat down and brainstormed the kinds of cross-genre art I’m interested in. One of the first things I thought of was science quilts, quilts made either to illustrate a point in science or using a scientific concept as inspiration. After all, quilts are tesselations of the plane, divisions of space in a regular way, and so essentially a mathematical concept to begin with. And another thing that I want to do in this magazine is find people who are out there doing interesting things outside of the mainstream. So I thought that I’d go to some of the big craft sites and look for science quilts.

Ebay: nothing.

Etsy: nothing.

Deviant Art: not really.

I started thinking of SF art shows that I’ve been to… surely, there were some quilts there. I know there are a lot of textile artists in the SF community. Surely, some of those quilts did not feature unicorns or fairies. I found a very small number of examples of what I was looking for… two of them are the lovely quilts pictured above. Then I thought that if I want to see them, perhaps I need to ask for them. I would like quilters to send me pictures of any science related quilt along with a brief bio. I’ll put the best ones together into a gallery with your info. I will pick the one that interests me the most, and that person will win $100, and I will profile them on the site. I don’t care about the size of the original quilt since I’m only interested in a picture. The quilt doesn’t have to be made for this search. I will take entries until the end of 2008. Then, in January, I will post the results.

Send photos or contact me with questions at dawnwich at yahoo.com.

(continued from last week. This week, the warning about language is joined by one for over the top violence, pardon the spoiler if it is one.)

“Stephen, you promised you’d be quiet.” Wounded voice.

I’m starting to hyperventilate.

“I WANT TO DRAIN MY BLADDAR!”

Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, I’m going over!

“I WANT TO DRAIN MY BLADDAR! I WANT TO DRAIN MY BLADDAR! I WANT TO DRAIN MY BLADDAR! I WANT TO DRAIN MY BLADDDDDAAARRR!!!!”

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