Seattle: what I'm doing this weekend, a partial list

[foxtongue]

ANACHROTECHNOFETISHISM: artifacts by pioneers of american steampunk.
"Long before the age of the internet, and well before the cold efficiency of the assembly line, existed fantastic and terrible machines, run on hope, sweat, and steam.
It was a time in which form and function lived in sin, and everyman was a revolutionary.

We are 13 American artists united by broad geography and narrow aesthetic.

Marrying narrative and nostalgia to design and technology, we imagine the triumphs of the past overriding the failures of the present to create from the ruins and detritus a dazzling future-perfect."
From Eliza,

"Starring me and twelve other retropostapocalypticians, including Molly Porkshanks and Jake von Slatt, this show will feature insane amounts of designer teas and chocolates, a full set of my fine art prints, and a half-dozen original oil paintings that I have never shown in public, including Shine, Rustbutton Brass, the City, Afterglow, Twilight in the Roachfields (What I Did On My Summer Vacation), and most ridiculous of all, the Vacuum Traffic Controller: a 40 x 66″ collossus that I hope will dominate the room with his deep, slightly furrowed gaze."

September 12 - October 3, 2008
Opening Reception: September 12 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM
SUITE 100 GALLERY: 2222 2nd Ave Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 956.3900

::..::
She also has a second show opening this weekend in Seattle, a solo affair launching on Saturday the 13th at Lighthouse Roasters, (400 North 43rd Street), from 4pm - 7pm. "The flagship painting, an original oil on a 24 x 24″ circular board, is the Cardiographer: dark, slick, and glowing, a portrait of a ghost-muse spinning a pulse out from ectoplasm. Co-stars include brand new (as of yesterday) 12 x 12″ Flee, a silvered landscape with robot on the lam; the ever-popular Bat Smax, an extremely adorable collaboration with my partner in rape-and-pillage, Jhonen Vasquez; the complete set of original sketches for the Bee Commission (monsters, demons, and vespid whores); and a full host of fine art prints, including many that won’t be shown at the steampunk show because they simply are not steampunk. And of course, refreshments will be served. Which is really the only reason to show up to an art opening in the first place."

And, at my gentle nudging, it's been decided that after her coffeehouse show, we're all going to saunter over to Toren's The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets concert at The Funhouse, (206 5th Ave N), where they'll be calling up non-euclidean demons with BLOODHAG, ("Our mission is to spread the gospel of Edu-Core. Bang The Head That Does Not Read. Everyone Smarter Than Everyone Else. Use Heavy Metal music to promote literacy and vice versa. General Info: BloodHag play really short Heavy Metal songs about Science Fiction authors.") and The Keeper, ("D&Dish wizard rock. Our EP is called Twenty Sided DIE!."). Angel is a good friend of Jake, from BLOODHAG, and she warns us, "be prepared to be pelted with Sci fi books!"

Comments

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm going to alphabetize my comics this weekend. NOW who's jealous?

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Why not come on doooooooooooooooooooown?

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

The lovely and talented Mike Jackson turns 40 on Saturday and Sam is having a co-birthday with him. It's going to rock the hizzy. Or the hizzo. Whatever the kids are calling it these dizzays. I really can't miss that. God knows I love me some Thickets and that art show looks like the super-bomb but I've got to be Vancouver-centric this weekend.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

That's true enough. I keep not being in town for that party. Ah well. At least hit up the Fringe!

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

I'm crazy busy. I don't think I'll be able to. I have piano lessons and rehearsal for the new play tonight. Tomorrow night is the Evil Bastard Karaoke Experience's triumphant return to existence at the Biltmore (no cover, doors at nine). Wednesday is the Poetry Slam Committee's annual meeting and they want me there. Thursday is rehearsal again and Friday is Dances for a Small Stage followed by a huge burlesque show at the Cobalt. I might be able to do some sort of daytime thing on Saturday if any of the Fringe shows have matinees but I really have no idea what to go see. I'd like to see Jacques Lallondes piece but I think that's over before Saturday.
We'll see how things turn out.

[drcuriosity]

*peer* Say, that user icon. That's not cropped from the cover of the Shadowrun "Tir na nOg" sourcebook, is it? Not that I've seen the book in question for about five years or so, but it looks rather familiar indeed...

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

DUDE! FTW! You are dead right. It's a painting called Mabelleine (sp) by the artist Rick Berry before he went all digital. I think the painting itself is more like ten or fifteen years old. I think I first saw it on the cover of the Tir na nOg sourcebook in '94 or something when my room mate at the time (Mike Jackson, coincidentally) was doing drawings for RPG sourcebooks.
I found a lithograph of the painting and promised myself that I would buy it when I had amassed enough money. I did that back in 2001 or 2002. I got in mounted and framed. It's big. I also did that in Scotland. I live in Vancouver now. Framed prints that size are hard to ship. So the painting's still in Scotland.
I love the painting because she has eighties hair, twenties stocking, sort of a forties femme fatale skirt, giant shoulder pads in her leather jacket and a derringer from the wild west on her hip. Like someone immortal would pick up clothes as they needed them with zero idea of what's 'in' right now and eventually, they'd end up with a mish-mash of styles in their wardrobe. Plus, in the painting, it looks like she's catching fire and is only mildly curious about the fact.
Looking at it in detail later, it looks more like she's got some sort of 'smoke glove' or something but I prefer to see it the other way.
Either way, yeah, one of my favourite paintings ever.
Good eye!
Here it is.

http://www.roliste.com/couv/4210.jpg

and I think this may have been the same model.

http://www.rickberrystudio.com/images/pages/G7_2.html

And sorry to write a novel here Jhayne. Yikes. Yakkety yakkety yak.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Pfft. Don't apologize, your comments back and forth are exactly what I encourage.

[drcuriosity]

Wow, that's excellent :-) She does indeed look like the same model. I'm no artist, but the proportions are very similar - certainly more than simply artistic style.

Also, would you mind awfully if I enfriend you? I just noticed you're the same person whose fiction deathboy recommended and I enjoyed reading through the other day.

[skonen-blades.livejournal.com]

Dude, yes please. Climb aboard. There's room for everyone. Enfriend the hell out of me. : )

*grins*

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

David, meet Duncan. Duncan, meet David. You both work in video games and you're both excellent people to hug.

[drcuriosity]

Oh man. And I finally got to buy some Thickets CDs when I was at GenCon, too.

I guess I'm just going to have to move at some point.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

And here I'm, like, the worst friend ever, because the only Thicket's concert I've ever managed to go to so far, I was so enamoured with someone there that I couldn't tell you a thing about it, except that people were having a good time.

[drcuriosity]

Quite okay. I know other people who've been to their concerts before, and one guy who may have even played with them at some point.

On the other hand, my friend Trond has just arrived in Seattle to start his PhD at UW, so I'll pass through that event link to him and thus possibly live vicariously through two friends' concert-going experiences :-)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Trond??

Is Trond short for something? Is it a nickname?

[drcuriosity]

No, that's his actual name. He's of (mostly) Norwegian extraction. Given that we're from relatively nickname/pseudonym/alias-heavy social circles, it's not the first time someone's asked if it's a nickname :-)

Y'know how you know lots of game designers, photography enthusiasts, world-builders, weird culture enthusiasts, futurist/technologists and other generally interesting geeky folk? Yes, he's one of us. He's on LiveJournal as aigantighe, or you can find him at Meme Hazard.

Sadly he's going hiking that weekend, and can't make the concert.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Honest to goodness, someone I know was in some sort of WoW death-feud with a character named Trond, so I was somehow in the back of my mind worrying it was the same person.

Shame about the concert-missery. What about the art shows?

[drcuriosity]

That's what I forgot to do! I shall point him in the appropriate direction :-)

[coffeeman.livejournal.com]

I was just telling Kyle about the Thickets and I totally forgot to send him home with some of their stuff damnit!

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Whoops!

[a-dream-tiger.livejournal.com]

Now reading these post Lighthouse plans I feel almost regretful that my friend chose that night for her farewell dinner evening. I would have loved to go to that show.

And now, at the risk of answering your gentle nudging with some irritating noodging, I can't help but notice that there are some rather transformative umlauts missing from the name of the band BlöödHag. While I have yet to see them or hear them, I find their style, rhetoric and mission both amusing and impressive. I feel their umlauts should be respected. You must tell me how the show was.

Tony the Tiger