A Night to Conjure

It's Halloween, boys and girls. My favorite holiday, full of horror and charm. My black cat sleeps beside my desk. A jack-o-lantern casts a fiery glow over the room. And I write tonight about automatism and messages from beyond. Yes, I'm talkin' Ouija Boards.

Now, now, don't panic. This isn't The Exorcist's deleted scenes blog. Just pop some candy corn and relax.

Talking boards, as they are generically known, get a bad rap from the jittery classes these days. Some people have the notion that these mass-produced printed alphabet boards have the magical power to open doors through which nothing good will ever come, which idea itself is rather mystifying, and I could go on and on about it, but whatever.


There is another, and in my opinion, far more interesting use for these boards -- as a game of surrealist automatism, the practice of drawing creativity straight from the unconscious mind. There are lots of such "automatic" pastimes which stimulate the mind to break logical barriers, to find order in chaos, to make connections between ideas, many of which may have been stolen by art from the occult, or vice versa.

Automatic writing and drawing. Talking boards. Coulage (molten wax, lead, chocolate, etc. dripped into cold water to make shapes) and other liquid arts. Bibliomancy. Even Tristan Tzara's Cut-Up dada poetry technique (keep scrolling down that link till you find it), which works remarkably like a kind of casting of the runes.

Such things which frighten those who somehow manage to be over- and under-imaginative at the same time, are basic tools of the arts, the gymnasium training machines of creative minds.

So, to help you overcome your fear of the unknown this All Hallow's Eve, here are a few tricks to treat yourself with:


Play with Brainjar.com's virtual Ouija board, which has already assured me with a definite YES that there are spirits on the web waiting to answer your questions.

Just try not to ask anything dumb, says paranormal researcher, Stephen Wagner, in his About.com article on how to Use A Ouija Board. And in his article answering the question Is It Really Evil? (and who has not asked that about, oh, any number of things?), Mr. Wagner will explain all that to you, too.

Finally, if trademarked commercial toys are not your preferred avenue to the beyond within, knock your brains out with the random generators of WatchOut4Snakes, to which I just got addicted but good. Behold!

The random word generator wrote a poem:

She burked the raucous slaughterhouse
amid a disrupted paradigm.

The random sentence generator informed me that:

The wonderful music beats the feat over the obliging evidence, [and that]
A turned success dogs the witty midnight.

And the random paragraph generator, working only with the primary and secondary concepts of "surrealism" and "Ouija boards" realized:

The deprived affair catalogs surrealism next to the inconvenient muddle. Above, Ouija boards puzzle the token. Ouija boards wash an indirect novel over a differing search. Why can't the worship breathe outside a mass riot? Ouija boards degrade the unbelievable office.

Oh, I'm going to have fun with that site.

So, don't be afraid. Tonight is the night when shadows walk (actually, they always do that, don't they?), when dreams look back at you from the mirror (if you say their names three times), and when you know perfectly well you are going to watch movies full of gore and terror, and dress up as the dead, and feed candy eyeballs to your children. You may as well break out the old Ouija, too.

You might even conjure the ghost of Sigmund Freud.


Boo!

-- Jen

(note: images of talking boards and toys are from the Museum of Talking Boards, linked; Ouija is a proprietary trademark, but a Google search left me unsure whose.)

The Arting Life: The Slave Boasts of the Master

While I was researching The Ghosts of My Friends, I came across the blog How Now Brown Pau, whose author chronicles, among other things, the lounging habits of his cat, recorded photographically.

I admit, the image of that big white fur-ball splayed over all and sundry in that human's house aroused a competitive spirit in me. I am proud to declare myself a cat fancier, and even prouder to declare that no cat -- NO cat, I say, is more pampered, more honored, or better spoiled than my cat, Mr. Gomez Addams, the Astonishing Talking Cat of World Renown, pictured.

Note the fur. The ears. The whiskers. Those shocking chartreuse eyes. Note the lounging in the sun while still being indoors. He is velvet and knife blades. His purr is the voice of authority dictating my day to me, confident of obedience -- and with good reason.

I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul. ~Jean Cocteau

Cats are dada. They are to surrealism as dada was to the poetic egotists of the early surrealist movement -- a condemnation of the middle-class complacency that haunted their salons and happenings like their own warped shadows.

So too, a cat in the studio destroys the artist's delusion that she is not wasting her time. Like the belligerent nonsense of dada, cats destroy pretension and create laughter. What manages to get past them and out of the studio has been put through a rigorous test of the artist's vision and determination. A worth-the-effort screening.

A surrealist who has no cat, is not challenging herself.

I'm just saying.

There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. ~Dan Greenberg

-- J.

Ghosts of My Friends

Games and toys are an integral part of surrealism. As the artform that confirms rationality by shattering the rational, surrealism depends on the implicit and explicit perversities of play to open paths of expression. Thus, the tradition of surrealist pastimes.

One of the most charming, in my opinion, is The Ghosts of My Friends. A hybrid of keepsake and amusement, The Ghosts of My Friends produces distinctive and instinctive abstract inkblot images out of handwriting. One's friend writes his or her signature in a liquid ink, and the paper is folded over before the ink dries, revealing a psychologically suggestive "ghost" of the writer's personality in the blotted form.

I first came across The Ghosts of My Friends in A Book of Surrealist Games, Alistair Brotchie. Recently I learned that, in the early 20th century, the Frederick A. Stokes Company of New York produced a book especially for this game, a kind of diary of ghostly autographs. Copies of the book, usually partially filled, occasionally pop up at estate sales in Europe and are, apparently, prized collector's items. Design Sponge last year caused a bit of a fan-fluffle by posting an example.

See also this more recent posting from How Now Brown Pau, who offers some excellent photos and whose fat white cat is not as handsome as my fat black cat, and probably not so well and properly spoiled, either. I mean...jean shorts? Really?

Anyway, the point of bringing all this up, is that I'm making Ghost of My Friends books of my own this week. I have such fondness for the Ghosts that I want to encourage revival of the game, but there are technical challenges to address.

Obviously, first there is the question of blot-able ink. Modern inks, both for writing and drawing, typically have more efficient drying agents in them, making it difficult to get good blots. Members of the Fountain Pen Network discussed this very problem in response to Design Sponge's article in 2008.

Like them, in experimenting -- see sample of my signature, above -- I found that I got better results using a heavily loaded dip pen and calligraphy ink, but there is a fine line between enough ink and too much. To make the game accessible and user friendly, the old book's instructions will have to be rewritten to include how to use unfamiliar writing instruments and recommended techniques.

Next, is the issue of paper. As users of liquid ink pens or markers will know, many modern writing papers are rather absorbent, which is fine for fast drying inks, but causes bleed through and feathering with wetter inks. In regards to the Ghosts, the more absorbent the paper, the less of the ink will sit on the surface for blotting. In my experiments, I found that even calligraphy ink could become un-blot-able within a couple of seconds, just in the time it took to lay down the pen and fold the sheet.

So we want a less absorbent paper, but one that is not so stiff or brittle that it won't work with the binding I have in mind. An art paper will do the trick but I will need to experiment with weights.

I have my work cut out for me this weekend, and I guess I just gave a big hint of what everyone on my list will be getting for Christmas this year.

-- Jen.

PS: More on the subject of cats later.

The Arting Life: See it, Pinch it, Spend it (#1)

Inspiration is where you find it.

This past Saturday, I was walking down Cambridge Street in, appropriately, Cambridge, Mass., when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a box of discarded books by the curbside, and right on top, a damaged but complete copy of The Successful Stockman and Manual of Husbandry, circa 1899-1900, King-Richardson Co., Springfield, Mass.


A quick leaf-through on the street was all I needed to recognize the treasure. This handy guide is all-encompassing in its practical helpfulness, full of charts, formulas, engravings and -- best of all -- multi-layered, full-color "mannikins" of livestock anatomy. The covers of this copy are rotted, the spine exposed, the stitching loose, and the pages badly aged, but there is something rich and warm and aesthetically suggestive in both the book and its contents. I had found a relic from another life and another time, and there was no way I was not bringing it back to my studio.

Naturally, I also Googled this unusual find. I admit I was surprised to learn that The Successful Stockman was such a standard that it seems to be in the library of every college or university in the US that has ever offered any kind of agricultural or veterinary program. For example, I took special note of this mention in a 2001 article of the Fresno State News regarding the Fresno State University Library's one millionth acquisition:

"From the first book ever acquired for the Library, a 1900 copy of Andrew Gardenier's The Successful Stockman and Manual of Husbandry to the latest books on Internet commerce, materials collected for the Library have always mirrored the subjects taught in the classroom."

Google Books offers some excerpts from The Stockman, if you're curious to see what I'm so worked up about, though it barely scratches the surface. I am definitely going to have to copy the whole chapter on "Standard Receipts" before I make any art out of it, especially the recipes for pastes and glues.

As beaten up as this copy is, The Successful Stockman has yet successes to achieve, and I am looking forward to seeing if an artist at the start of the 21st century can make as much of it as a farmer at the start of the 20th.

Dear Readers, I will keep you posted.

-- Jen

PS: Thanks to GnI for the Arting Life's motto.

Instant Elixir Cures All!

Welcome to Instant Elixir, a (hopefully) regular account of the goings on in and around the surrealist studio of me, Jen Fries.

I’ve been building collages and constructions for nearly 30 years. I make art about and out of the way people relate to their world. I like to twist and tweak and challenge those relationships. Blur the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, between creativity and commerce, decoration and function, art and literature, etc., etc., etc.

Now I’ve decided to launch a Big New Experiment -- an artisan publishing company specializing in books of art, books as art, artists’ books. Also, stationery, games, and other things a publishing company might produce, especially a surrealist one. The goal is to promote a new way to bring art to the public by merging the methods of art and literature.

I have a list of book projects in development, about $75.00 in start-up capital, and the worst global recession of my life in which to work. Optimism!

With two or three posts per week (hopefully), Instant Elixir will give progress reports on the Big New Experiment, and cover other projects, such as:

• new artworks, exhibitions, and even the blog itself
• how-to’s of book binding, collage, construction, etc.
• surrealist issues in storytelling, games, lifestyles
• commentary on books, art, society, and the profession
• interesting things, people, and happenings
• interactions, conversations, maybe even arguments in response to your remarks, suggestions, objections, etc.

I hope this blog will amuse readers interested in surrealism, in books, in starting a small business, in being a professional artist in today’s world, or in looking at life through a prism of questions. Don’t hold back -- speak, question, criticize! Leave comments or email me. Encourage or predict disaster.

Maybe the Big New Experiment will go nowhere. Maybe it will crash and burn spectacularly. Maybe I’ll actually end up making something out of it.

Come along to see what happens.