82# Embassy
Oil on skin
A large image painted
across multiple skins, invisibly stitched.
The scene is
historically incoherent. Set within one
of the sunken stone forests of the Drow, lost long ago and known now only in
song. But featuring Knotsmen, whose origin
should lie after that event. The pale calcified trees of the forests forced
underground when the Drow were driven from the earth, shine, carved and
whetted, under the conflicting glows of multiple meeting courts.
A young Drow priestess
sits, naked, yet covered by the swirling forms of tortured geisha golems in
silk that halo her always, cursed never to be still and never quite to touch
her flesh. Ultraviolet butterflies form knots of blue-black light around her. Opposing
her, a Knotsman embassy, several of their Weeping Knights, a pair of fathers
and a Balif, horribly crooked and strewn with scrolls on a palanquin of naked
Usurers. They carry lanterns of burning magnesium and infra-red.
Crowded in the
background are nobles and chiefs of many cultures. Olm in their savage finery.
Duergar and cringing Derro. Illithid are not absent. A Beholder chats to a
Fungal Ambassodile and some slow drifting Archeans. The scene is thick with
cunning, the eyelines and body language of each person present sketch out a
story of deceit and secret advantage. But whose is not clear
83# A Star Map
Glass and magically
crystallised lead.
This antiwindow is a
weave of the bullet-point semi-luminescent slatwork resulting when lead is crystallised
at room temperature. Slivers of glass are carefully placed to highlight the darkness
of the negative space. The chiascuro shadowplay created by the lead and glass
contains encoded information. A map, through song, to an unknown constellation
of stars. The map uses darkness, not light at its waypoints.
It is designed for
extra-terrestrial travel, where the starlight is so bright and continuous that
the black nebulae that blot out the light are more visible than the lights
themselves. These dust-clouds are the frozen weave, the shards of glass are
time and tone to give the order and the depth.
84# Tunnel and Rider
Paper scraps glued
together with meal and spit.
This was painstakingly
drawn with broken pencil bits and colours from ground-up food rock dust and
blood. An eye-cramping clench-work of black lines is worked around the central
image of a frightened rider. The rider is being enclosed by some unknown force,
he stares directly out of the image, wide-eyed and helpless. Hidden in the
black lines is the Thing with Eyes on Its Back which seems to be moving towards
the rider. When carefully measured, the abstract curls of the thing give clues
to a secret entry to the city of Ganglia Moor
85# Rats Embargo.
Kinetic sculpture in
steel and tin
This hectic revolving
monster is powered by sourceless clockwork to no useful end. The blind gigantic
beast that makes its base turns slowly with audible clicks. On its back is a
counter-rotating multi-levelled pagoda-temple. Human figures powered by wires
race all over its walls and floors. Their actions are frantic and desperate yet
seem to serve no purpose. At the top and conclave of fat rat-men with lolling
tongues turn to each other and nod.
86# Philtre of the
Silent Saints.
Glass bottle with the
head of a snake.
This treasure is a scent.
Anyone who smells it will feel as if transported to a bioluminescent garden of
strange beauty. In the dark spaces between the fruiting bodies of the glowing
plants, the faces of strange enamelled gods peek through. Mirrored and surfaced
with shining glaze these house-sized twisted faces bring only calm. Anyone in
the garden feels utterly safe from any outside threat. The scent has no
physically protective qualities but does supress the effects of threatening
scrying, curses and any kind of remote magical attack.
87# Maeg Lome
Oil on Canvas
A couple embrace in a
city of blue stone lit only y flickering blue flames in cages of gold. Through
a window we see buildings, square set and storm-cell blue. In the room, the
walls are layered with white flowers on the blue tile. The silk of the sheets is white and the bed itself of
many colours. The male figure sits on the bed-edge, legs half crossed. The
woman stands, a sheet runs down her naked skin, she half-turns, back towards
the man.
NOT A RABBIT
ReplyDeleteAlso Rats embargo is lovely/horrible
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