A Magazine of Many Arts

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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The day that I lost my funding for my solar observation project was the same day I first noticed that the universe had begun to contract.

The director of the observatory, Dr. Patricia Remini, came into my office herself to break the news to me about my National Science Foundation application. The letter from Washington, D.C., had finally crossed the Pacific to Hawaii, and the news was not good.

“They said that your proposal just wasn’t significant enough to warrant funding, especially given all the cutbacks in science. I’m sorry.”

I sat there for a minute, just staring into space. It was difficult for me to accept that this was happening.

“Look, Jack,” she continued. “The observatory can still afford to pay your way for at least another year. You’re doing fine work on classifying new binaries with that team from Georgia State, and you’re good with the graduate students.”

“What happens if I can’t come up with alternate funding for next year?” I asked.

“We’ll worry about that then. In the meantime, why don’t you forget about your own work for a while? Go home early; spend some time with your wife and kid. Or help out Daniel Kelly. What was that you got him working on?”

“Spectral analysis,” I replied. “He’s been practicing techniques by taking the spectra of galaxies. You know, checking the Hubble constant.”

She nodded. “Good. It’s especially important given the recent results from the Hubble Space Telescope. If the universe really is younger than we thought, perhaps you might find a clue in his data.”

She walked to the door, and then took one last look back at me. “You okay?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

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Michael A. Burstein, photo by Nomi S. Burstein

Michael A. Burstein, winner of the 1997 Campbell Award for Best New Writer, has earned ten Hugo nominations and three Nebula nominations for his short fiction, which appears mostly in Analog. Burstein lives with his wife Nomi in the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is an elected Town Meeting Member and Library Trustee. When not writing, he edits middle and high school Science textbooks. He has two degrees in Physics and attended the Clarion Workshop. The story that appears here is quite unlike the hard SF that he’s known for, although in my opinion, it is also hard SF in its own way.

1) I know that you went to Clarion. We also were in a writer’s workshop together years ago, and you were involved in online writer’s workshops. Can you say something about the time when you were getting started? Did you write much before you became active in the writer’s community? What kinds of things did you find helpful or unhelpful?

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