More Images from G1988's "Fairy Tales: A Print Show"

Stitching Starflowers by Shannon Finch

Just a quickie post today, expanding on my previous entry HERE on this show at Gallery Nineteen Eighty-Eight...

What the Doormouse Saw by Misha

The Beast by Matt Kaufenberg

The Ugly Duckling by Marcus Marritt

I tracked down a few more illustrations from the G1988 (West) Fairy Tales print show. Apparently there were under 30 prints so this might just be the rest of them. (Kind of weird to have less than thirty pieces on a subject like fairy tales, no? You think they'd be hard pressed to narrow it to one hundred).

Jack and the Beanstalk by Marcus Marritt

 “The Golden Stair” by Jeremy Berkley

Hansel & Gretel by Marcus Marritt

I finally found - and updated - the missing credit from the last post - the graphic looking Sword in the Stone piece. It's titled The Once And Future King and is by Ryan Brinkerhoff. And Dave Quiggle's The White Stag which I liked so much, was apparently inspired by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Crane Wife (I only had the artist sneak-peek view before) by Deborah Bencosme (of castlepöp)

Oh - and did anyone notice the wolf in Red's cloak in the print that was also used for the poster? (See below.) I didn't till today... *rubs tired eyeballs*

Gregory Maguire Talks "Wicked", Teases Nutcracker... (Drosselmeyer!)

Broadway hit Wicked (which is nearing it's 10th anniversary!) heads to Manila this month, debuting on January 22nd with an Australian cast (you can see a slide show of the Australian production HERE).

As part of promoting the new production there, Gregory Maguire was recently e-interviewed (it's an official thing now) by Philippine newspaper The Star about, not only his thoughts on seeing his book head to the stage (and quickly become "a commotion"*), but also about his writing life and upcoming book plans.

Wicked Elphaba by Laura Mossop

The article also included an excerpt from the Auckland, NZ, show program for Wicked last year which, if you haven't read before is pretty wonderful:

...(Maguire) noted in the souvenir program for the Wicked run in Auckland, New Zealand (which The STAR covered late last year): “When Stephen Schwartz approached me with the notion of turning Wicked into a musical play, I needed much less persuading that I let on,” adding that “… from the opening anthem’s foreboding figure of notes… the score for Wicked respects the book’s tensions and ambiguities” making the figures who once lived solely in his head seem more real,” he added.

To have your book turned into another (professionally produced) art form is pretty fantastic but to feel that the people doing that understand your vision and "get" your work? That's on the rare side and completely thrilling.

Here are some excerpts from the recent e-interview:

Can you recall the exact moment when the idea of Wicked first came to you? 

“No. But I do remember the moment when I realized that the information we did have about the story was incomplete. In one of the songs from the MGM film (The Wizard of Oz), the Cowardly Lion sings, ‘What makes the Hottentot so hot?’ Even at the age of eight, I knew that Hottentots were from Africa, not from Oz: So how could the Cowardly Lion use such a reference? Similarly, when Dorothy sings to the Tin Man, ‘You could be another Lincoln…’ he doesn’t stop the song to ask, ‘What’s a Lincoln?’ They are not telling us the whole story, I said to myself, and scrunched closer to the TV to see what else was going on.” 

You’ve said in interviews that you don’t write anything that doesn’t ask big questions. What’s the biggest question and message readers will take away from Wicked? 

“What is the true nature of evil? Is evil determined by culture, by history, by God or by spirits, by the accident of birth or the behavior of individuals? I can’t say I provide an answer, but this is a question we do well to ask ourselves over and over. It is never an old question.” 

Wicked by Tim Shumate

What’s your daily writing life like? 

“I try to write about five pages a day when I am writing a new novel, and a first draft is usually done in a couple of months. The older I get, the more time I spend on revisions — my newest book has gone through eight drafts. It is out next year. (I’m working on) a book called Egg & Spoon, a fantasy set in Tsarist Russia about the time of Dr. Zhivago, more or less.”

(By the way - the projected date for that book's release is still "sometime during Fall 2014".)

And now for the news that had me probably more excited than I should be, especially since it's still in the "vague idea" stage:

If there’s another classic tale you’d want to give a “wicked” treatment, what would that be and why? 

“I have been playing with the idea of writing a book called Drosslemeyer, about the godfather who gives Klara the Nutcracker in the story of the same name. I don’t know why I would want to write that. Writing it would give me the answer.”

!!!!

Drosselmeyer by Artuš Scheiner

Nutcracker (and, in particular, the character of Drosselmeyer) has so much potential to me. Unfortunately it often feels like Clara (Klara?) reaches the Kingdom of Sweets and people fall into a sugary malaise of... nothing.

Only two (that I can think of) interpretations come to mind that attempt to mine Hoffman's story for retelling potential (remembering that this was a whole, literary work, by the way): one is Graeme Murphy's Nutcracker: The Story of Clara for the Australian Ballet, about a Russian dancer, migrating and growing older (available to view on DVD). The other (at almost the opposite end of the scale) is a video made for a college assignment by a student who used Britney Spears' song Toy Soldier (What? Yes - right there with you!) and blended the choreography with images and symbols from the traditional Nutcracker ballet in an attempt to empower girls instead of have them waiting to be rescued. It's actually more successful than it sounds. Yes I was surprised too. (You can click HERE to see it on YouTube if you'd like. It's a much better than average amateur video, especially once it gets started on the song/choreography portions.)

It's bizarre because I always thought Nutcracker could be quite epic. Drosselmeyer is a completely fascinating character, the music is wonderful and well known and it's a tradition for many people to go see Nutcracker at Christmas time so there's an audience already built in.

Nutcracker by Natasha Tabatchikova

But I digress.

You can read the whole fascinating interview HERE (note: sometimes the website has difficulty loading but keep trying, it's worth it). While it's not very lengthy, it packs a lot into a page.

What do you think of Maguire's next fairy tale-based novel consideration?

* Wicked fans will get my reference. :)

Pop Culture Print Exhibit: G1988 (West) "Fairy Tales"

The opening reception for Gallery 1988's newest exhibit "Fairy Tales: A Print Show" was held last night. I gather from the brief literature available that the exhibit is supposed to be more graphic (design) in nature rather than full illustrative or "art pieces". These are the images released via the affiliated Fire Wire Pop Culture Blog and various "leaks" here and there around Tumblr, personal blogs and Twitter.  Gallery 1988 has shown about half these on their website as well. I'm not sure how many works will be shown in total but Gallery Nineteen Eighty-Eight has promised to post more over the next few days.

Strollin... by Ridge Rooms

UPDATED with correct title & website link 1/12/14: Seven Wives by Nicole Rifkin

The Fairest of Them All by Eric Tan

Pied Piper by Kim Herbst

In Case of Great Fall by Dave Perillo

Born To Kill by Ross Proulx

As with pretty much all artwork, I would guess that seeing these in person would be very different from the online peeks we're getting (especially seeing as they're considerably low resolution) but at least, for those of us who can't get there to see it in person, we have an idea of what's trending in the print art scene in LA right now.

Red Riding Hood by Barry Blankenship

by Dave Quiggle

You Can Trust Me by JP Valderrama

Snow White by Glen Brogan

Enchanted Forest Product by Clark Orr

Little Red Riding Hood by Rocco Malatesta

UPDATED 1-12-14: “The Once And Future King” by Ryan Brinkerhoff

Although I'm not surprised to see a couple of different Red Riding Hoods it's interesting that Snow White is keeping a strong representation at the moment, especially considering these works have been created very recently, for this almost-New-Year exhibit. I would have thought Sleeping Beauty or Goldilocks might make an appearance.

Rapunzel poster by David Welker

Little Pig, Little Pig, Let Me Come In by Chris Brake

The Real Puss In Boots by Noël Ill

Snow White by Andrew Trabbold

Snow Queen by Priscilla Wilson (valorandvellum)

The Crane Wife by Deborah Bencosme (of castlepöp)

Being a "print show" I'm curious as to how they'll be presenting the works. For example wouldn't it be kind of cool (and memorable) to see a bushel of apples with those "Product of Enchanted Forest" stickers on them, under the print or "full label"/ad?

I also wonder if they'll be merchandising any of the images there? They're doing prints, perhaps obviously. From what I've seen on Twitter and more, artists have been getting their limited release prints ready and numbered for the opening, but I'm wondering if they're doing t-shirts, bags or other things. I do very much like the White Stag, Sneewittchen and Crane Wife works.

Pulitzer Prize Finalist (& Fairy Tale Author), Eowyn Ivey, to Receive Governor's Award

A big congratulations to Eowyn Ivey for all the recent recognition of her beautiful work in writing The Snow Child.

Not too long ago Ms. Ivey was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize and today (January 10th, 2014) it was announced that she will also be receiving recognition from the Governor for her artistic contribution to the US in 2013,  in the form of her novel.

The Snow Child - cabin concept (paper cutouts & Photoshop) by Aubrey Williams

The Snow Child by Dyana-M

Excerpt from AnchorageDailyNews:

Eowyn Ivey reads from her book

 A best-selling Alaska author and former state legislator are among the recipients of the 2014 Governor’s Awards for the Arts and Humanities announced on Jan. 10.  

Eowyn Ivey of Chickaloon, whose debut novel “The Snow Child” was a surprise best-seller overseas and continues to rank in the regional best-seller list for the Pacific Northwest, sill receive the Individual Artist Award. 

The Governor's Arts and Humanities Awards will be presented at... (a) Gala banquet on January 30, 2014.

     
 I'm including the following announcement which will be of interest to folklore and fairy tale people, should you happen to be in Anchorage, Alaska during the time.

Fireside Books - The Snow Child display window

ADN Announcement:  On Monday February 18, 2013 Professor Victoria Kononova will discuss the snow maiden fairy tale in Russian folklore, literature, music and art at the UAA Bookstore from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The Russian snow maiden fairy tale was the inspiration for Ivey's award winning book.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/01/10/3267354/governors-arts-awards-announced.html#storylink=cpy

Gosh I would love to sit in on that! It's rare to hear Russian fairy tales being discussed, let alone so specifically. Let's hope someone has the foresight (and generosity) to video it and share it on YouTube.

With the fantasy touch and being based on a fairy tale it's not too difficult to see pictures when you read The Snow Child. The initial marketing for the novel included a truly lovely and sensitive animation and the various book covers have been fascinating to see as well.

The Snow Child (setting) by Arandadill

Into the Mountains (The Snow Child) by Cachava

I do love it when people create good quality art out of love though, so it's wonderful to see art inspired by Ms. Ivey's work as well. A very brief search unearthed the included art (credits included in the corresponding captions).

The Snow Child by Amy Schmitt (I love this!)

The Snow Child by Cachava

The Snow Child (characters) by Arandadill
And how cool is this? In her many travels, finding fans all over the globe, Ms. Ivey visited Scotland where landscape painted Amy Marshall was able to show her the charcoal illustration she was inspired to do, full size (how awesome would that be to see as an author?!).

Eowyn Ivey (left) admires Amy Marshall's (on right) charcoal drawing for her book, The Snow Child

I'll finish with a book cover I hadn't seen until today. They're all so different but I would have easily guess this cover belonged with Ms. Ivey's novel. This is by professional illustrator and artist Matthew John Gordon. 

In the meantime, congrats again Eowyn! We love your book and are still talking about it. It's been one of the very few fairy tale novels I've been able to recommend to non-fairy tale people and have them enjoy it thoroughly as well.

Alternate book cover by Matthew John Gordon

"Where Your Destiny Awaits" by Annie Leibovitz

And here she is: Jessica Chastain as Merida for the Disney Dream Portraits series for Disney Parks, photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

I did a quick search to track down what movie-Merida looked like doing mounted archery and found these reference images:

Then I discovered there's already a real life Merida who does the real thing. She's a professional stunt woman and archery coordinator who specializes in recurve, compound, longbow, crossbow, barebow, horsebow and mounted archery. (Phew!) Her name is Virginia Hankins, she looks like this (yes, that's her own hair). and she's had no shortage of work since Brave.

She's also a free diver and does movie stunt work as a mermaid (see below). The woman is like a walking fairy tale heroine! (Can I be her when I grow up??)

But I digress..

As per usual, I got to wondering about stories with mounted archers and wondered where in the world they might make a regular appearance. Turns out Russian hunters used mounted archery a lot, Iranian peoples specialized (still do), Native Americans (both Northern and Southern), Mongols and Turks but it became a particularly honored tradition among the Samurai (called Yabusame). While it's on the rise again in European countries, including Britain, the Scots weren't listed among the world's fiercest in horse archery warfare in history as Japan and Iran were. Though they did use this technique, as the majority of ancient hunters with regular access to horses did, it doesn't seem they practiced specialized training as much.

Here's a photo of a modern female mounted archer from Oregon, Katie Stearns, with her horse, Magic, painted to match her own costume. I kind of love that she studied anthropology before going into her horse training full time.

Katie Stearns aka Morwen or The Flying Dutchess

While I haven't had time to do any serious research, there are quite a few fairy tales in which archery features, though not usually as the main feature. Robin Hood's legend grew up around his skill, of course, but the Firebird centers on 'the king's archer' who comes across a fiery feather, and there are some Japanese tales that feature archers as well.

Behind-the-scenes of "Where Your Destiny Awaits" shoot

But back to the reason for the post: what do you think of the official new Merida?