Film Review: Mother Mary

A song is a prayer is a spell is a confession is an exorcism is a spectacle is a revelation is a birth

From time to time, horror writer Gabino Iglesias reposts this litany on his Bluesky profile:

Many people have a book in them,
but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness,
cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain,
find the Blade of No One Made You Do This,
and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

Such is the view of art that permeates David Lowery’s film Mother Mary. The story sounds deceptively simple: Mary, a dance/pop diva in the middle of a creative crisis, returns to the workshop of her former costume designer, Sam, to apologize for breaking their professional partnership and beg for a new dress. Most of the film consists of this single conversation, like a one-act play that reveals entire inner lives as the two lead characters tear down their barriers and take off their veils. Within the space of a small interpersonal drama of wounded trust and unspeakable regrets, Mother Mary weaves its statement about what it takes to produce any genuine art.

Anne Hathaway’s performance as Mary, which includes providing her own voice for all the songs, balances, on one hand, an irresistible scenic presence capable of commanding the adoration of masses of fans (her character is presented as a world-class star on the level of Lady Gaga or Beyoncé), and on the other hand, when she’s off stage, a consuming sorrow that overwhelms her words and movements. Both facets of this character convey the same vulnerability, but it’s fascinating to see how differently she expresses it before a full stadium versus in private conversation with her artistic collaborator. Sam, as played by Michaela Coel, is like a bird with a broken wing, but a bird of prey with eyes that miss nothing and a deadly beak. She takes delight in the return of her muse, but can’t just shake off the years of hurt. This creation is going to be personally costly for both of them.

I often say on this blog that the best stories are those about stories. Mother Mary is something very close: art about art—barely a story, more a portrait that’s being painted as you watch. The emotional bond between Mary and Sam is kept tight, on the verge of snapping, under looks of compassion that shoot daggers and poisoned recriminations coated with sweetness. Mother Mary isn’t trying to convince you that artistic creation has to hurt; it just assumes that it already does. So it’s fitting that Mary shows up on a Thursday to request a dress for the Sunday: the exact timeframe for a full Via Crucis and resurrection.

In a film like this, filled to the brim with Catholic imagery, the fashion designer’s name, Sam Anselm, has to be read as an allusion to the 11th-century Burgundian monk and philosopher St. Anselm, whose method of theology put faith before reason: in his system, you first assent to the revealed truth and then seek to understand it. That’s how you’re meant to experience a film like Mother Mary. It defies logical analysis unless you first accept it on its terms. Instead of arguing for a point, what it’s doing is push out a raw feeling through a scream drowned in sobs.

The connections between the religious experience and the mass ecstasy of pop music have been noticed since before “Madonna” became a stage name. In keeping with the theme of death coming before resurrection, Mother Mary links the act of creation to a demand for bloody sacrifice, an interchange of equally sincere love and hate (think Black Swan, Farinelli, Amadeus). This pain is physically inscribed on the two protagonists: when she’s not performing, Mary is shown with plain, shoulder-length hair, evoking the image of a suffering Jesus, while Sam wears her hair in rigid, pointed locks, arranged like a crown of thorns. The turning point of clarity, when the nature and shape of the new dress is revealed, arrives by a succession of stigmata, confession, forgiveness, and angelic visitation. The film opens with a song about a burial and closes with a song about a cradle, in a moment marked visually on the screen by a line that literally goes full circle.

But then, the end credits conclude with a puzzling statement: a shot of a human skull on a shelf, a common motif in Western painting that retroactively casts the whole film as a vanitas piece. The traditional function of this motif is to remind the viewer that eternity outweighs worldly pursuits, and ultimately anything we build here turns to dust. And yet, Mother Mary exists. It’s a complete experience of rhythmic beats and color and dance moves and ritual and brightness, as if defying the verdict of time. All is dust, but some of that dust is glitter.

To the extent that Mother Mary is articulating someting, as opposed to inviting you to feel it, its verbalizable content is dressed in swirling, uncut drapes of black and crimson. Image here is paramount, which makes it easy for viewers more inclined toward tangible substance to dismiss this film as too enamored with its own aesthetic. Meanwhile, in the real world, Madonna has just released a new album, Confessions II, whose third song, “One Step Away,” contains this spoken monologue:

People think that dance music is superficial. But they’ve got it all wrong.
The dance floor is not just a place. It’s a threshold,
a ritualistic space where movement replaces language.

So go into Mother Mary as you go into a holy ceremony. You have my blessing.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Book Review: Self-Portrait with Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka

Of all the versions of you in all universes, can you live with being this one?

College teacher Pepper Rafferty has a reasonably satisfying life: a loving duo of adoptive mothers, a kind husband with a sophisticated sense of humor, an important job cataloging bones as a forensic anthropologist. The only piece missing from her happiness is the unknown reasons her biological mother could have had for leaving her. Over the years, that old wound has receded from her attention. But it hasn’t closed. And all the messy feelings Pepper has spent her life ignoring jump back to the surface when she receives the news that her biological mother, who happens to be the world-famous artist Ula Frost, has been reported missing, and now there’s a big tangle of legal questions concerning who will become the owner of her paintings.

It’s not just that Ula’s paintings are worth a fortune: urban legend has it that Ula developed a form of magic in her art, a secret technique that opened links to other universes. According to the rumors, every time she made a portrait of someone, the version of that person represented on the image was dragged into existence in this universe. It goes without saying that that kind of power would draw the attention of a certain secret elite organization with plans about the improvement of reality. All that stands in its way is poor clueless Pepper.

There’s a symbolic level at which the novel Self-Portrait with Nothing succeeds at expressing the disquieting mix of emotions associated with lifelong grief. Pepper tells herself that she’s made peace with Ula’s unexplained choices, but the truth is she’s been living in unresolved grief about the family life she never knew. Now, to be fair, her adoptive mothers couldn’t be more perfect; she has nothing to complain about on that front. But still, that unanswered what if remains. Other possible lives were closed off to her. She never met Ula face to face, so she’s imagined her in many different ways, without knowing which one was true in this universe. Pepper’s search for answers after learning of Ula’s disappearance is told with a profound empathy for the feeling of a truth that eludes definition. Later in the plot, when we discover that Ula made a series of self-portraits that summoned alternate versions of herself, Pepper’s interaction with those other Ulas mirrors the confusing real-life experience of an adoptee figuring out which of the imagined profiles of their biological mother matches the real one.

While the novel does a good job at this purely symbolic level, the nuts and bolts of the narrative craft are handled less well. The omniscient narrator takes too long to reveal to the reader that Pepper already knew who her biological mother is, which diminishes the impact of this news when other characters are surprised by it. The second half of the plot, where Pepper travels to Ula’s hometown to find more clues, is held together by an unbroken succession of bad luck incidents that strain credulity to ridiculous extremes.

In particular there’s a writerly tic that reoccurs dozens of times throughout the text and gets tiresome quickly. Whenever Pepper is pushed into a corner by circumstances, she tends to imagine herself in other universes, dealing with her problem more competently, or having avoided it due to wiser choices, or utterly unaffected by it. So the reader has to endure interminable repetitions of “In a different universe, Pepper was…” Yes, we get it, this is a story about multiverse variants of the same person; we don’t need to be reminded of the book’s gimmick every five minutes. These asides have no consequence on the actual events we follow and make Pepper come off, at best, as an indecisive person habituated to maladaptive daydreaming, and at worst, as a mediocre substitute for more interesting Peppers we could be reading about instead. This Pepper ends the novel having realized that she rather likes the universe she happens to inhabit, but the inner process that led to that key moment of growth is obscured from the reader.

A big reason why Pepper can make it through her investigation with her sanity in one piece is her strong bond with her husband. Even in the second half, where their communication is limited to text messages, she gets invaluable support from his gentle words and his unwavering optimism. This was a consistently enjoyable character to read. Under a barrage of revelations that shake Pepper’s entire understanding of reality, her husband’s love provides an anchor to an aspect of the universe she wouldn’t want to change.

The sinister organization that is pursuing Pepper to get its hands on the paintings is not so successfully written. Those scenes try to give the vibe of a spy thriller, but the prose is firmly stuck in personal psychodrama mode, and the mismatch is too evident. The story in general works better when Pepper is processing her emotional turmoil than when she tries to be an international woman of mystery. A specially cringeworthy scene has Pepper list all the ways she’s unqualified to pull off a museum heist, right at the moment she’s attempting said heist.

Self-Portrait with Nothing is an uneven mix of, on one hand, complex emotions that would have been better served by a more detailed exploration, and on the other hand, dangerous adventures in spy land that often run in circles and get nowhere. How effectively you find it allegorizes the disorientation of a motherless child will depend on how much tolerance you have for vaguely mentioned conspiracies that add to the story less than the extensive space they fill on the page.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Reference: Pokwatka, Aimee. Self-Portrait with Nothing [Tor, 2022].

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Book Review: The Estate by Sarah Jost

A version of the story of a famous sculptor’s relationship with an even more famous one, using an art buyer’s ability to enter the worlds of art as her genre hook

Camille Leray has a special ability, one invaluable to her work as an art historian and seller. Not that many would believe her, even if she told her secret, but she can go into a demiplane of the artwork she studies. She can get a real psychological and social sense of what the artist was thinking and doing and trying to convey, by means of the interiority of their worlds. But when her gift goes badly wrong, and she is forced to take a job at an estate in Brittany, her gift unlocks the secret and mystery of her favorite, underappreciated artist... but at a heavy personal cost.

This is the story of Sarah Jost’s The Estate.

The novel revolves around several interesting, interlocking axes. We have Camille, whose personal history, and her gift and her need for money after a disaster at the auction, leads her to the titular Estate where she spent some time during her childhood. Camille’s time there, as well as her relationship, in various meters with Maxime Foucault, the head of the estate, past and present, drive a lot of the social and psychological heft of the novel. Camille is more than a little in love with Max, and the working out of that relationship, and how it relates to her gift and her interests, is a lot of what you are going to find here. This does move the novel somewhat out of pure genre fiction (although the elements to be discussed below certainly are). A comp mentioned in the publicity materials, and what occurred to me as being a good one as I read this book, is Peng Shepherd’s The Cartographers. This novel does try to do with art history and art appreciation what that novel did with maps.

In keeping with the weight of the novel, and following that parallel, the mimetic elements really are strong here. We get a good third-person close POV look at Camille’s life, as her trip to the titular Estate brings up some good and some very bad memories in the process. There is an uncovering and unearthing process in the novel as we learn more about Camille even as we learn more about Maxime, his family in general, and more importantly their relationship with Constance Sorel, the focus of Camille’s artistic interest. Camille is a conflicted, interesting and engaging protagonist for most of the book (there is a later reversal that doesn’t seem well set up or paid for in advance that annoyed me). Besides Camille, a lot of the effort is put on Max, as well as his girlfriend Lila. The Camille-Lila relationship, as the novel goes on, becomes more and more central and important¹ to the culmination and denouement of the book.

So I should discuss the genre elements here. Camille’s ability to enter demiplanes that represent the interiority of an artwork and the mind of the artist is something that she herself does not quite understand and does not (as Maxime sees it) use to its fullest potential. The book begins with Camille thinking that it is idiosyncratic and singular; the inciting incident above that goes badly wrong is that she brings someone else into the demiplane with her by accident. As the novel proceeds, she finds out inch by inch that her ability is greater than she realizes. The exploration of this power is a secondary concern, and always takes a back seat to the mimetic elements and storyline.

There is a technique to determine whether a novel or story is fantasy or science fiction, and that is simply: if you remove the genre elements completely, does it still work as a story? By that test, The Estate very nearly succeeds. You’d have to make some alterations to make the plot work, get Camille to the Estate, and propel the rest of the narrative and why Maxime is so interested in her. So, without alteration, no, the work doesn’t quite succeed, but with some adaptation, it probably could. So The Estate sits inside the porous barrier between genre and non-genre work² but it is within the line. It’s just not a very *strong* genre-focused work. It was a bit frustrating to me in that regard, in that Camille is not only afraid to extend her ability, but she seems absolutely terrified, without any backing information, to actually explore it deeply.³

There is a lesser and somewhat underutilized genre element here, and that is Arthuriana. What some casual fans of the Arthurian romances may not know is that much of the work of the early versions of the Romances were composed and set in Brittany and not England at all. The forest of Broceliande was inspired if not taken to be Paimont Forest in Brittany, and to this day there are things like monuments and sculptures devoted to the French romance tradition of the Arthurian legends throughout the forest.

This gives a good grounding for Jost to use Arthuriana both in the demiplanes of Constance Sorel and in the works themselves. There is a definite theme of things such as the relationship between Vivaine and Merlin that come up time and again in the novel. A real appreciation for those early French versions of the stories infuses the work that Sorel does, and throughout the novel as Leray engages with that work at the Estate. There are intimations and not-quite-fully-formed ideas about mapping some of that Arthuriana onto Leray’s own life, but I don’t think the novel *quite* gets to where it is pushing for in that regard.

I’ve waited to this point to discuss the focus of Camille’s interest, Constance Sorel, in more detail. Aside from the original focus for her for Arthuriana, Constance’s is not imaginary at all, but is rather an alternate version of a real artist, Camille Claudel (the fact that Camille Leray has the same first name as her is, I think, absolutely no accident). Camille Claudel had an intense and tragic relationship with an artist you most definitely have heard of: Auguste Rodin (yes, the Thinker guy). Claudel was an artist in her own right, but her relationship with Rodin and her eventual confinement in a mental institution consumed the last decades of her life. Much of her work has been destroyed, part of it by herself. Hers is a tragic, heartbreaking story that recontexualized, when I first found out about it, my love of Rodin’s work.

In the world of The Estate, Constance Sorel had a relationship with an artist named “Boisseau” and the lines of that relationship are very clear: Boisseau is the better-known artist, a rockstar of sculpture. This relationship ended badly, and Sorel, like her model, wound up first in exile in Brittany, in the very estate that is the center of the novel, and then finally in an asylum.

The novel missteps with this, I think. We mostly get stories of the Boisseau-Sorel relationship and the power of their art. But the novel doesn’t seem to know whether or not these are an alternate Rodin and Claudel or not, and that hurts the story. We get a mention of Rodin once by name (Leray says she sold a Rodin not long before the start of the book), as well as a mention of The Thinker and jokingly “The Gates of Whatnot” (clearly The Gates of Hell). But I am still not convinced that the Rodin sale line isn’t a typo and that it's supposed to be Boisseau and that Boisseau in this world is Rodin and therefore, Sorel is Claudel.

The reason why this matters is that Rodin and Claudel’s relationship is never mentioned, even if Boisseau and Sorel’s relationship rhymes with it. If Rodin and Claudel existed in this world, for real, they would be a touchstone, a reference point, something for Camille Leray to hang her hat on and use. “Constance Sorel, as denied in her time just as Camille Claudel was, another woman deemed the mistress of a Great Man and whose art was denigrated and denied.” It’d be an obvious thing to mention and to think about. But this never happens, and with just one named reference to Rodin... it remains frustratingly unclear. And I think that is a real misstep.

My theory is that the Rodin line is a typo, and Rodin and Claudel don’t exist in the world of this book, but Sorel and Boisseau do.

The novel does additionally suffer, I think, for trying to fit Camille Claudel a.k.a. Constance Sorel onto the life and final fate of our heroine Camille herself. For all that we go through this journey of discovery of an artist’s true power, on top of all this, the novel seems to want to cast Camille Leray as a latter-day Constance Sorel, and Camille Claudel in the same breath, to the point of echoing Constance’s life and trying to give herself a better ending. Constance has a lifelong friendship that falls apart due to Constance being institutionalized (just as Camille Claudel was), but Camille Leray seems to be reaching for the same sort of friendship with Lila and succeeds. Instead of being pleased by the echoes and resonances, they instead seem to be an ill-suited frame fo Camille Leray’s life and fate that did not, for me, satisfy.⁴

I can hope that the book will bring more attention to Camille Claudel through her fictionalized version as Constance Sorel in the book, since her story is a tragedy (and sadly she destroyed much of her work). The thesis of the book, that Constance Sorel was an unsung genius of sculpture, appears to be the author talking about Camille Claudel’s work and place in history, and one that I can agree with. In the end, this book attempts to recapture and bring Claudel back to prominence through her fictionalized version and Camille Leray’s story.

So, if you are interested especially in art, particularly Rodin and Claudel, and don’t mind some not-always-well-used genre elements in a work that’s really about rehabilitating Claudel more than anything else, this is the book for you.

Side note: The Getty Museum and Art Institute of Chicago did a retrospective of Claudel’s work at the end of 2023. I wish I had known about it; it would have been worth a trip to Chicago to see.

Also side note: I did a Six Books with Sarah Jost in 2023, in connection with her book Five First Chances.

Highlights:

• Strong story about a fictionalized version of an underappreciated artist.

• Passionate and deep mimetic story about an art historian and her gift.

• Not as genre as it might be, and not as effectively as it might be.

Reference: Jost, Sarah. The Estate [Sourcebooks Landmark, 2024].

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

1. I should emphatically note that it is not a queer relationship in any way, although, given my reading habits and expectations lately in reading a lot of queer-friendly genre work, I was *expecting* the slow-build intensification of Lila and Camille to go that way... but it does not. 

2. People like the esteemed Gary K. Wolfe would say that there is no such barrier, having written articles and even a book on the subject. I’d love to know his take on this book in that spirit. 

3. To take an idea from this. Suppose you had a door in your wardrobe to another world, be it C. S. Lewis, Seanan McGuire, or multiverse style. Would you poke your head through it, look at the world of the other side but never go further than a few feet from the portal, and yet still keep coming back and just repeating that same process? That’s how Camille feels like she has a relationship with her power. She doesn’t reject it outright, but seems to really limit any idea of trying other things for a lot of her life and a lot of the book.

4. So the Camille-Lila relationship is clearly meant to be an echo of Constance-Anne. The latter one is clearly platonic, and thus, as per footnote 1, the Camille-Lila remains strictly platonic, even if I read it coding as being potentially queer.

Interview: Elise Matthesen

Congratulations to Elise Matthesen, for her Hugo nomination for best Fan Artist!

Matthesen's artwork leans primarily towards jewelry and wrapped wire work.  With inspirations that include everything from Art Nouveau,  dragons, SFF fandom,  the natural world, and the Fibonacci sequence,  her artwork is whimsical and complex, often incorporation natural materials and unexpected accents.  Regardless of the specific inspirations, you can't help but want to tell a story when looking at her artwork, especially her wrapped wire pendants. Her "Wandering Wire" style pendants and artwork has become so popular that she recently funded a Kickstarter to make a series of videos about hand wrapped wire artwork.

Matthesen has been part of fandom and the SFF community for decades, speaking  and presenting at a number of events on topics such as fandom, self-esteem, bisexuality, polyamory, and body acceptance.  In 2009 she received a World Fantasy nominee for the Special Award - Non Professional for a decade of serving as an inspiration for SFF fiction and poetry.

She sells her artwork primarily through her Etsy site, and for those of you who are on Twitter, Matthesen posted an excellent "2019 Retrospective" thread.  Fair warning on that Retrospective thread - you will want to buy everything!

Matthesen and I had an extensive email conversation on everything from her favorite pieces of 2019, to her Kickstarter, to her favorite metals and stones to work with, and more.

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: What media do you typically work in? How did you first get started working with these materials?

Elise Matthesen: I work with sterling silver wire and gold filled wire, which I hand-form into sculptural wearable art and sometimes small sculptures, which is why my business is called "Lioness: art for people and places." I was once commissioned to make a necklace for a lamp. That was fun. Usually my work involves beads as well as wire, and the materials of those beads ranges from meteorites to vintage plastic Mardi Gras beads to dinosaur bone to opals to coprolites to Czech pressed glass. If it's got a hole in it I probably want to make wire art with it. Sometimes even if it doesn't have a hole in it, I will make art with it; I love doing pendants and sculptures using tektites, particularly indochinite.

I got started making things with beads when I was a little kid. I didn't start doing wirework until I was an adult and went to a Upper Midwest Bead Society weekend retreat with my friend who is also my mother-in-law. Someone at our table taught me how to start with wrapped wire loops, and I dove in and never stopped.

NOAF: How would you describe your art style?

EM: Asymmetrical wirework heavily influenced by botanical illustration, fibonacci series, the curves that happen when work-hardening wire in certain ways, Art Nouveau, the Arts and Crafts movement (I have a pile of old copies of The Studio magazine, and find great inspiration in the advertising typefaces as well as the articles and accompanying illustrations), and weird spooky assemblages. I made a necklace once that Jo Walton couldn't sleep in the same room with (she was visiting, and the spare bed was in my workshop) until we put a cover over it. Mostly what I have called it is "wandering wire," since that gets at the asymmetrical aspects. It's wirework that has moods, and that often points at the beads and says, "This! See? See what this rock is doing?" It's fierce stuff, and often fiercely whimsical. It's easier to show it than describe it.

"What We Hold Dear"

NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?

EM: I am one, so part of it was talking to my friends, including the friends I hadn't met yet, and part of it was talking to myself. Much of my life is inside the genre, and I'm in my head there a lot of the time too, so it makes sense that what comes out will speak to some of the fans I hang around.

When some unakite showed up with some oddly placed inclusions that were strongly reminiscent of a certain artist's style, a piece resulted called "Conversations with a Thomas Canty Angel." I've done pieces inspired by books, as well as pieces that have helped inspire books, because books are among my true homes, books in the genre especially. So is convention fandom.The tradition of fierce punning on panels at local conventions meant that pieces like "Caddis and Harmony" and "Clotho, Lachesis, and Octopus" found a good reception. Getting cackling laughs is one of the great joys of making and sharing that kind of joke.

There's a necklace I made for Lois McMaster Bujold when she asked me to put all of her award nominee pins into some kind of wearable art. Every now and then Lois shows up with the necklace and a handful of new award nominee pins for me to add. I keep joking that if she gets any more Hugo nominations, we're going to have to start adding them as fringe.

Necklace made for Lois McMaster Bujold

NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?

EM: There are two that are good examples of how influences braid together in what I do. The first one is the pair of earrings called "Live from the Room of the Lilies" made with Swarovski crystal, vintage lampwork glass, and sterling silver. In the info sheet that accompanies the images in the voter packet, I wrote about being inspired by the way the lines made by molten glass in the lampwork beads resembled the wall fresco in Room Delta 2 at Akrotiri, Thera, in Greece, specifically the stamens of the lilies and the birds in flight. Reading science fiction involves the delight of recognizing references and new bits of data, juxtaposing and considering them, and enjoying the expansion of comprehension. It's a rush. The best stories have the kind of worldbuilding where a small detail opens up a sudden new understanding of how these pieces fit together to make a living place, a living culture, that we see a little bit of in the course of a paragraph. That's how those lines on the vintage lampwork glass beads were, bringing me a sudden clear memory of marveling at the wall frescos in a book about the excavations. (I'd love to see them in person someday, but that's probably not in the cards.)

"Live from the Room of the Lilies"

The second is "The Doctor in Arcadia (after Poussin)", which is a stone and sterling silver pendant I made from a very large bead made of dendritic agate. It seemed to have a landscape on it, which is not unusual for dendritic agates and jaspers. This one, though, looked so familiar. I realized that it looked like the setting of a painting that's been referenced in various... hmm, rollicking conspiracy novelizations of reassembled history, I guess one could say. Before Dan Whatshisname and the Da Vinci Code, there were Baigent and Leigh with their Holy Blood, Holy Grail book, where they lined up as many mysterious correspondences and arcane possibilities as they could, and then sent it spinning like a ride at Disneyland. Poussin's painting of the shepherds of Arcadia had been reproduced in Baigent and Leigh's work, and here was a piece of rock that strongly resembled the wild setting and the ancient stone tomb, minus the shepherds of the painting. Looking at the stone, I suddenly realized that the whole thing made a lot more sense if you added the Doctor to the whole thing. So yeah, Doctor Who crossing over with any grand conspiracy yarn always makes it better, in my opinion.

"The Doctor in Arcadia"

NOAF: Convention running, editing, writing, filking, fantasy inspired jewelry (and jewelry inspired fantasy!), if it is a thing done by lovers of science fiction and fantasy, you've done it! And you've done it for a long time. How has the science fiction and fantasy community changed over the years, in your opinion? What types of events and activities are happening now that wouldn't have been possible years ago, and is there anything you miss from earlier in your career, that for whatever reason isn't possible now?

EM: How has it changed? It's a lot bigger, for one thing. A person used to be able to read most of the new books that came out in a year, and see all the movies even tentatively connected to science fiction and fantasy. And there were only a few things on TV that counted. Now there are so many worlds to discover. The material is fractal. There's endless stuff to discover no matter where you go. And it's too big for any one person to navigate. I think the role of fan friendships in our lives is bigger than ever now, because we point each other to places we might love.

This year at WisCon, which was held virtually, I got to do something I hadn't ever been able to make time for before. Since I had no dealers' room work and no Haiku Earring Party to host this year, I finally got to check out the Vid Party. It was SO GOOD. I'm going to make a point of seeking out more vids, because there are some seriously talented and passionate people making them. I'm late to the party, but delighted to finally get there!

One thing that's still true for fandom, or fandoms, or whichever way feels right for you to describe it: There's still the same joyful feeling of "Yay, here are some people who will know what I'm talking about and who will have knowledge and new thoughts to share with me!" when joining a group of fans, whether that's at a convention or in a discussion group online or on Twitter or tumblr or wherever. (Personally, I love all the text-based stuff on line because I'm hard of hearing, and it makes so much accessible to me. The internet gave me back group conversations, which are very difficult in person for me. So the fact that we live in the future, in a scientifictional future with a lot of text-based options for communication, has made my life better than I could have imagined. With the current situation, those connections are more important than ever, too. In face-to-face situations I lip-read, and masks are moving me from hard of hearing to functionally deaf... so I'm appreciating FaceTime and Jitsii and all the other options when my friends and I want to see each other's faces in a way that still protects us. I'm very high risk for COVID-19 so I'm not having much in-person contact with anyone outside my household for the foreseeable future.)

What I miss most at the moment is singing with people and laughing with people at conventions, the things that aren't safe right now. We'll see how things go. Meantime, I should probably be writing some filk, or laying down some Garage Band tracks to trade with people or something.

What else I miss is some people who aren't here any more, but that's the price of knowing wonderful people; someday you'll probably be missing some of them. There are a lot of new wonderful people around, which is a consolation. A consolation and a triumph, really, because there are so many people doing interesting work, and the field is broader and deeper than it has ever been.

"When We Rise"

NOAF: Congratulations on your funded Wandering Wire jewelry videos Kickstarter! What's this all about, and what do you hope people will get out of the videos?

EM: I love teaching people wirework and encouraging them as they discover their own style, and recently I got some strong incentive to put my lessons on video as soon as I can. (Hand and arm troubles and vision losses.) Kickstarter was the best way to get this carpe diem project going and we funded and then went on to add more. We're doing video lessons plus a mini-documentary of all the stories that don't fit in the lessons.

The intent is for the video lessons to eventually be free to anyone who wants to learn. Kickstarter backers at any level get a year of early access to each video as it is finished, and a year later it will be made available to all. I love that we can do this, and that one dollar backers and one thousand dollar backers all get the early access.

My videographer Neville also did a just-in-case Hugo awards speech-of-gratitude which the CoNZealand folks requested from all of us nominees. Eeeee! I'm looking forward to taping the lessons, because I was a little nervous for the speech but I'm never nervous when teaching, because the beads and the metal are fascinating to work with and it's not about me, so there's nothing to be nervous about. Anyhow, because of the current situation we adapted the original plan of taping a series of classes in August in Minneapolis, and now we're rearranging everything to be videos in my workshop. My Kickstarter backers overwhelmingly requested that I show my workshop in all of its fertile chaotic glory rather than unnaturally tidy (well, unnatural for me, anyhow), so the lessons will also offer cameraderie and support to other artists whose work grows in chaos, as well as a window into our world for artists who do it differently. (Let a thousand methods bloom, yah?)

NOAF: Thank you so much Elise!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Sara Felix

Congratulations to Sara Felix, on her Hugo nomination for best fan artist!

If you've looked closely at recent Hugo Award bases, you've seen Felix's artwork! She designed the 2016 base, and co-designed the 2018 base with Vincent Villafranca. Currently the president of the ASFA (Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists),  she was also the Art Director for the Dublin2019 Worldcon. Felix has curated art shows, designed multiple awards bases, and volunteered at, presented at, and sold artwork and jewelry at many a scifi convention.  If you enjoy abstract artwork where colors blend into nebulae and cosmic dreams, Felix is the artist for you.   

For more information about the 2018 Hugo Award base,  check out Felix's blog post about how she and Villafranca first started talking about the base, their inspirations, and their design collaboration. You can of course, see much more of her artwork at her website, sarafelix.com.


Felix was kind enough to let me pick her brain about all things fan art - the joys of using different media, her experiences designing Hugo bases, the work she did with Dublin2019, and most importantly (at least to me), how she makes those gorgeous cosmic eggs.

Let's get to the interview!


NOAF: What media do you typically work in?

Sara Felix: I mostly work in alcohol inks, resin and acrylic paint. Mostly alcohol ink with a bit of acrylic as accent. So yeah, mixed media.

I started working in inks about a year and a half ago. Well, seriously at least.... before I dabbled not really knowing what to do with them. Then I took a class at a local craft place in Austin and fell in love. Mostly it was because I got to try out all the colors and see how they worked together. To me they are like space in a bottle. It is the sort of art that you can't control and really just need to relax and let the inks do what they want.

My resin work started years ago. My first big piece was about 20 years ago I made a table covered in my favorite comic book characters. A few years later I started making pendants. I went from using it as a way to seal in other art to an actual stand alone medium. Once I realized I could mix pigment powders into the resin I was hooked.

But overall I am really a bit of a dabbler. I like to play with different mediums and use them together. I have experimented with so much in the past I can now add in different mediums to get the effects I want.

NOAF: How would you describe your art style?

SF: Abstract. Space-y. I know that is very technical art term. I tend to like in my ink art an element of science fiction that is almost subtle. You look closely to see the stars.

NOAF: What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?

SF: I have been working on science fiction conventions since 1999. I started making silly polymer clay figures and someone said to me you should put those in the art show. So I did.

I am a big geek myself and so I create art that I want to surround myself with. At first it was just silly, but now I have a few different styles that I sell at conventions that seem to speak to the different sides of my personality.

NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?

SF: I think my piece for the Progress Report # 5 for Dublin was especially meaningful to me last year. I had worked on Dublin for so long and PR#5 was the last thing we released before the convention to the members. I had just started creating the portal series and that piece just worked. The colors fit Dublin, the logo fit perfectly in the center, and to me it felt like we have arrived and Dublin is now here.

But I really enjoyed all the pieces I made this year. I wish I had put in one of my more lighthearted sculptures but I really didn't get to do that much of that last year with all my convention work.

NOAF: Among other awards you've designed, You designed two Hugo base for 2016 and co-designed the 2018 base with Vincent Villafranca, Wow! What was that like, to be involved in the Hugo award design, and how did you go about designing them? Do they give you a mock-rocket to use in the prep-work?

SF: Both award experiences were so very different. 2016 was overwhelming. I sent in a drawing to the awards administrator and they chose to use it. They did send me a rocket yes, but there is also a great specifications sheet on the Hugo website. I worked with a company in Dallas that laser cut the wood while I created the rings and poured the resin and then I sent it back for them to finish the pieces, to pour a clear coat of resin and to add the acrylic on top. I based the design loosely on those fantastic tabletops people make with resin where it looks like a stream running through the wood. With the laser cutting available these days I thought creating planets in the wood would be a nice stylized look. The copper rings around the planets served as a way to keep the resin in place but also was a nod to the copper used in a lot of art deco jewelry pieces and is a prominent architecture style in Kansas City.

In contrast working with Vincent on 2018 was a dream. Vincent and I both were originally from California in the San Jose area so we presented to the worldcon team the idea of us doing the base for that year. The final idea was based on the Lick observatory in San Jose. For a few years I sculpted robots out of polymer clay that I sold at conventions and Vincent had also done a few robots so fit with both our styles to have robots at the observatory using telescopes to look off into space. Once we locked in the concept then Vincent came to my place to sculpt one afternoon and to discuss the base under the robots. A few weeks later I sent off my finished pieces to him and he did the bronze pouring. When they were almost done one weekend I went out to his ranch and we shot a video to show at the convention during the ceremony.

NOAF: Speaking of Hugos, you were the Art Director for the Dublin Worldcon. What was that experience like? How was it different (if at all) from what you expected?

SF: It is amazing. Iain Clark did such wonderful work for the convention it was fun to show it off. There is so much that the art director touches at a convention that the average congoer doesn't realize! From the Hugo stage props to the badges everything needs to keep a consistent look. But the convention team was wonderful to work with and they let me run with a lot of different ideas. For example I have always wanted to feature art that was not just two dimensional in the advertising of the convention. On two of the progress report covers I was able to use paper craft as the focal point of the cover. That made it more fun to me to interject my own style into the convention.

NOAF: Your Cosmic Egg and Dragon Eggs are incredible, there is a whole universe in there! What can you tell us about how these were made?

SF: Ah yes the eggs are really fun to create. I take a balloon and fill it with quick set concrete and blow it up to make the shape and then sit around rotating the balloon while I watch tv. When the balloon pops there is a fragile shell of concrete left behind. I use a coarse texture gel to make the scales and paint the inside gold. The outside is painted in acrylics and the inside gets a coating of alcohol ink to create the universe. The balloon/concrete step can be a bit temperamental. I can't even count the number of times that the egg shell imploded once the balloon was popped. But that is part of the excitement of the process. There was much rejoicing the first time I was able to make a concrete egg.

NOAF: Thank you so much! 

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Iain J. Clark

Congratulations to Iain J Clark, for your Hugo Nomination for best fan artist! 

If you were at the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin, you've seen Iain J. Clark's artwork.  He created a lot of the promotional artwork for that Worldcon, including the Souvenir Book.  If you enjoy fan art of franchises such as Doctor Who, Star Trek, and The Expanse, oh boy are you gonna have a great time at Clark's website, IainJClarkArt.com!  You can also follow Iain on twitter, @IainJClark.

On top of all the SFNal artwork he does, Clark is also involved with creating artwork for the Professor Howe parody books, which raise money for BBC Children in Need. He has also been a film and TV reviewer for Strange Horizons.  At home, Clark works hard to make sure his young daughters are raised on a proper diet of Doctor Who and other SFF.

Clark was kind enough to answer my questions about the promotional artwork he did for Dublin2019 and the souvenir book,  blending digital and traditional media,  the wonderful fantasy he grew up reading, and much more.

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: What media do you typically work in? (paints, pen and ink, digital, mixed media, etc) How did you first get started working with these materials?

Iain J. Clark: There are a lot of really good artists out there. I mean, really good. Inferiority-complex-inducingly good. For years I shied away from painting because I was constantly measuring myself up to those people, professionals and fans alike. I think it's because I'm mainly self-taught and painting felt worryingly like something that "proper" artists did. Pencils and Inks were my comfort zone, and I was working exclusively in those until 2015, when everything changed.

It started when my friend Emma England asked me to draw a picture of a Kraken attacking the Samuel Beckett bridge for the Dublin 2019 Worldcon bid. I duly created an ink drawing which they loved (phew!), and because they wanted to use it in adverts I had a go at colourising it in Photoshop. (I used the comic book technique of 'flats' to mask areas of the image and apply colour and texture to them.) I was still determined to avoid the TERROR of proper painting so I created acrylic washes and paint splatters on watercolour paper, scanned them in and blended them onto my art digitally. I still prefer the black and white version of that drawing but those textures were my first tentative step towards painting.

Dublin didn't know how to get rid of me after that. I kept chucking more and more pieces of art at them and they kept politely accepting them until they gradually disappeared under a big heap of unsolicited art. Gradually the painted parts of my work became more and more substantial. It was a critical mass of increasing confidence and becoming frustrated with how long it was taking me to photoshop everything together. I remember I'd done an ink drawing of a Kraken tentacle grabbing a Dublin banner (Jurassic Park style) and ended up repainting the entire tentacle in acrylics, and I suddenly thought "maybe a full painting is something I'm ready to do. . ." I've never looked back. Not all of them have been great by any means. I still feel like I'm learning constantly, with plenty of false starts, trial and error, but that journey culminated with the painted cover to the Dublin 2019 Souvenir Guide which is an opportunity I grabbed with both hands and something I'm very proud of.

These days I work mainly in acrylic paints and acrylic inks with occasional forays into oil paints, but I still keep my hand in on the pencils and inks though. In fact I just did an inked piece for use in a colouring competition run by the Glasgow bid.

NOAF: How would you describe your art style?

I.J.K.: I'm still metaphorically and also literally throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I'm slowly starting to find what works for me in each medium, settling on approaches that I like. For example I've been gravitating towards very dilute acrylics and acrylic inks in washes, using acrylics almost like watercolour. I’ve participated in the online Inktober event for the last couple of years which forces you to work quickly in a lot of different styles and I've found that quite creatively helpful, although I never make it much past halfway through the month before I get burned out! I also do plenty of fan art in all types of media, and that’s great because it lets me just do whatever I'm feeling, lots of smaller pieces where I can try things out.

I find have an instinctive tendency towards adding detail, which is not always where I would like to be artistically. Like many artists, the stuff I admire is often the stuff I'm bad at. I'm wary of making art that's too 'stiff'. I admire economy of style, the ability to deftly convey detail without slavishly recreating it. I don't think I’m ever going to be 100% that artist, but it's an aspiration in my head, and I've been enjoying working more loosely.

NOAF:  What led you to create art that speaks to science fiction and fantasy fans?

I.J.C.: I grew up with science fiction and fantasy. I can't really remember it not being there. I learned to read for pleasure with the Doctor Who Target novelisations from the local library. As a teenager it was Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Arthur C Clarke, Barbara Hambly, Bob Shaw, David Eddings, Jennifer Roberson, Raymond Feist . . . I gulped them all down.

Some of my earliest artistic inspirations were the covers to those old Doctor Who books; I used to dream of following in the footsteps of people like Chris Achilleos and Andrew Skilleter. I also remember being in awe of John Ridgway's stunning work on the Doctor Who comics, Tim Bradstreet's art for the Vampire: The Masquerade role playing game and Vertigo's Hellblazer comic, and Jerome Moore’s covers for Star Trek: The Next Generation comics. The earliest art of mine that I still own is my Doctor Who fan art as a teenager - mostly not very good! I did a lot of Star Trek art in my late teens, some of which has been declared sufficiently not embarrassing to find its way onto my website. Later I worked on art for my University's roleplaying society. I think it’s fair to say I was a nerd. Okay, am a nerd.

NOAF: Do you have a piece or grouping of pieces in your Hugo voter packet that is especially meaningful to you? Can you tell us the story behind it?

I.J.C: Apart from the Dublin souvenir cover which I’ll talk about later I’m very fond of the 'Girder Dragon' image for the Glasgow In 2024. I was asked by the Chair, Esther McCallum-Stewart, for an iconic image to use on banners and flyers and I was drawn to Scotland's distinctive blend of mythology and industrial heritage. I ended up creating a dragon (or Nessie if you prefer!) out of twisted girders against a vivid sunset. The girders were quite complex to visualise, so much so that I ended up making a 3D model out of foam which I glued together and then twisted and contorted until I found the right shapes. That was a new approach for me! The sky is based on a photo I took but it was originally going to be a much more conventional painting of sunlit clouds and it just wasn’t working. In frustration I started playing around with great dollops of acrylic ink in vivid colour, swirling them around so they flowed into each other. It felt a little bit heart-in-mouth, working more or less on instinct before the paint dried, but it was one of those magical times when you hit on something that works and it carries you through to the end. I don't know if it’s my best painting or not but it was very satisfying to create.

NOAF: You created a lot of promotional artwork for the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin. Did the convention give you any prompts or suggestions for what images they were looking for?

I.J.C.: In the main, no. I mentioned the Kraken piece which got everything started but otherwise they were very hands off. They did brainstorm a lot of ideas, many of which I took on board, but they were kind enough to let me follow my instincts in what I produced. That’s the advantage of working on a volunteer-run endeavour!

I was very conscious of not being Irish myself and feeling like a bit of an English interloper (culturally at any rate; I still consider myself more European at heart!) I was cautious about blundering into something horribly stereotypical and "oirish", which I have hopefully avoided. There is such a rich mythological heritage in Ireland as well as the more concrete imagery of Dublin. I did Selkie, Sidhe, the Morrigan, the Salmon of Knowledge, Neolithic monuments, various Dublin landmarks, and I still barely scratched the surface!

NOAF: I love the Souvenir Book cover you created for Dublin 2019, how did you decide on the final design? What can you tell us about the uniquely Irish imagery that is this painting?

I.J.C.: Thank you! I'd used a lot of mythological images from Ireland in the course of my virtual 'residency' with them and since this was to be the cover of the main convention guide it felt like it had to encapsulate all of that somehow in one image. I worked with Sara Felix to narrow down ideas and the concentric circle design came from a desire to produce almost a collage of different aspects of Irish culture. The concept is of moving outward from the convention centre, the CCD, where the Worldcon was held, to the River Liffey beside it, out into Dublin with the stunning library at Trinity College, out again to the Neolithic carvings at Newgrange, then the ocean, the island of Ireland and the curve of the Earth, and on to the moon and deep space. In and amongst those circles are a raven, a Selkie (a seal that can shed its skin to become a woman), and a dragon. I originally had more creatures, including the Salmon of Knowledge again, but it was becoming far too busy!

NOAF: Among the other galleries on your website is a Doctor Who artwork gallery, my favourites are Inktober 2019: Time Lord and Spirit of Adventure. Do you have a favourite Doctor, or favorite character from the show? Are there any Doctor Who characters who were especially challenging to paint?

I.J.C.: While it's not quite true that there's no bad Doctor Who I do sort of love it all. I've painted or drawn most of the Doctors and many of the companions at this point. I grew up with Tom Baker's Doctor, but my favourite Doctors are probably Patrick Troughton and Matt Smith. In terms of art, Peter Capaldi is one I've returned to quite often and he’s such a pleasure to draw. I'm also a fan of Jodie Whittaker and the current era is always going to get some artistic love. It did take me a few goes to get her face right though: Capaldi's face is a craggy map full of landmarks and hers is more subtle, but also really expressive. I think she really clicked for me when I stopped trying to channel all the serene promo images and just painted her mid-"Scronch", nose all wrinkled, giving it some attitude. I love mixing her up with the classic show; there’s the one you reference with the 'badass' Time Lord collar, and I've also pitted her against Ice Warriors on Peladon and the Giant Robot K-1.

I'm also a huge fan of The Expanse and I've done several fan paintings for that, which were exhibited (with lots of other talented people's) at the Season 4 fan launch party.

NOAF: Thank you so much! 

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Microreview [book]: The World of Ice & Fire by George R.R. Martin, Elio M. Garcia, J.R., and Linda Antonsson

Don't judge a book by its...

This book has been on my radar ever since the folks over at Westeros first announced it many years ago. It was my longest pre-order on amazon ever, clocking in at almost two years (20 months to be exact). Initial discussions pinned WoIaF as a coffee table book to serve as a sort of encyclopedia of the ASoIaF world. Perhaps talks of the cover initially described it as a world map, perhaps I made that up in my own head, but for years I was expecting this book to have an ornate, front to back cover adorned with a decorative map of the Known World. Needless to say, when they released the official cover (which you see here) I was pretty disappointed. I understand that they designed it this way to stylistically match the current ASoIaF run. I also understand that it is supposed to look like a leather book. Maybe my design expectations were too high, but when I finally received this book after years and years of waiting, my initial reaction was...meh. I appreciate that the price was so affordable at $25 but I was expecting to, and gladly would have paid three times that for a more appealing, artistic cover, or a more genuine binding.

BUT! Once you open this book it is phenomenal. The artwork gave me chills. It is astounding. I mean, just look:

And thats not even the half of it. There is so much artwork in this book it is incredible. Oh yeah, and there are words too. Lots of them. I haven't read the whole thing front to back yet, because its not really that type of book. It's one you pick up, read a section or two, and then put down and pick up again later. Its written as if by a Maester and at times you feel like you are reading The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, with Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children by Grand Maester Malleon. Well, not exactly that dry, perhaps more like A Dance with Dragons, A True Telling by Grand Maester Munkin. I guess what's fun about this approach is that, as we know, Maesters tend to be unreliable narrators, so there is still some room for interpretation by the reader. 

I love fake history, and art, so to me the concept of this book is awesome. Its just that, I am a little disappointed in the execution. But perhaps that is because my expectations were so high. While it is incredibly refreshing to see so much published ASoIaF artwork that doesn't feature HBO actors, the book still seems a tad more commercialized than I would prefer. But with the success of the series, I guess it would be silly to expect less. I want to love this book more than I think I actually do, so I am having a hard time rating it. But one thing thats for certain, A World of Ice and Fire is not going to be put out on display like I had originally planned.

The Math

Baseline assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for fantastically chilling original artwork 

Penalties: -1 for the cover, -1 for being a tough read at times

Nerd coefficient: 7/10 “an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws”

--Tia 

Reference: Martin, George R.R., Elio M. Garcia, J.R., and Linda Antonsson. The World of Ice and Fire [Bantam, 2014]

Exhibit: 'The History of Space Photography'

Readers who live in the LA area, as well as those passing through sometime between now and May 6, might want to head to Pasadena, and specifically to the Art Center for Design for an exhibit on 'The History of Space Photography.'  The LA Times has a nice review of the exhibit.

If you go, you can see stuff like this 1882 photo of a comet:

Or this 2008 photo of a black hole:

More photos here.  Details on the exhibit here.