HOME | DD | Gallery | Favourites | RSS
| cwicseolfor
cwicseolfor
♀️
[2773226]
[2006-06-28 09:45:19 +0000 UTC]
"A maskmaker in love with the art"
(United States)
# Statistics
Favourites: 117; Deviations: 31; Watchers: 138
Watching: 42; Pageviews: 22202; Comments Made: 1546; Friends: 42
# Interests
Favorite visual artist: I've been following her for over fifteen years but I still want to grow up to be Ursula Vernon.Favorite movies: Visuals and psychology dominate. Burton, Henson, Froud, Besson, Del Toro, et al.
Favorite bands / musical artists: I like a range, narrow focus at a time, and it varies with my mood. I am easily won with rapid, plaintive piano-strings pairings.
Favorite books: This is a remarkably unfair question.
Favorite writers: That's vastly worse than picking a favorite artist.
Favorite games: Legend of Zelda series, hands-down. But I have a very very soft spot for Dragon Age - Origins, at least, having not yet completed the series.
Favorite gaming platform: This is such a retro concept. I have a visceral loyalty to Nintendo and I like Sony's controllers better than Microsoft's. I have never had a gaming-ready computer.
Tools of the Trade: Mech pencils, cheap sketchbooks, my tablet. Cowhide & acrylics. Knives. Sleep deprivation.
Other Interests: In short: everything. I'm usually good at spinning a conversation from most anything.
# About me
I was, and am, and will be again, an artist, working in leather and paper and pixels. My life became a little too hectic for me to keep up from my maskmaking binge 2005-2008 - I've been intermittently in hiding from 2009-2014 as I deal with the ramifications of the economic recession on both the clientele of my studio business and my own personal situation as a post-student with loans to pay - but there are slow signs of picking back up the artwork as a personal endeavour, and resuming the studio for commissions at a later date.I am often unresponsive on deviantArt, but I'm still out there and I'm still dreaming.
# Comments
Comments: 189
I'll be tickled pink if you are around here again. Best.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I talk about you far more than to you. All good things and praise, of course, as The People Have a Right to Know, but it's still a pity. I'm sorely behind on your life and art although catchup on said was one of the things I've most looked forward to in getting everything else under control. All well and flourishing there, I hope?
(I turned stockbroker, too, so I can't even sell my work anymore without advance notice and approval, but that's the price of a paycheck nowadays. Before in sales it was just noncompete agreements....)
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thank you for the faves. Also, your masks are beautiful.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
excuse me madam, but i have seens your masks and i must say they look well made, if it isn't too much trouble you'd please tell me how to make a simple columbina mask? i would appreciate if you would also list out the materials
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I figured we should take this off Pika's comments.
I actually am Taiwanese, born and...well, partly bred.... DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN.
Well, if you look at Asian myths, there are less examples of mystical creatures stealing children. There are virtually no goblins, so I'm inclined to view them as a purely Western concept, originating largely in Northern Europe. However, there is a large tradition of half-animal, half-human creatures that eat children. Much of this might a result of the geographical differences in Asia and Northern Europe as well as cultural differences. Being more acquainted with China and Chinese legends, I'm basing most of these hypotheses on China, of course. Also we have to take into consideration that China has warmer climates and milder winters, with its population more heavily concentrated in the southern half. It's harder to imagine Winter as its own minor deity, even though elemental forces such as Thunder and Lightning have concrete forms.
It also bears nothing that Chinese myth/belief is a hodge podge of local beliefs, ancestor worship, deification of spirits, and Buddhism. Also a point of interest is the lack of magic in Chinese superstition. Actually, this is a gross overstatement. But have you noticed that Asian conceptions of magic is inherently different from Western magic? It's much more... spiritual and tied in with the flow of energy than an ability to twist reality.
Also I want to point out that the Snow Queen is a Hans Christian Andersen story. I love how his stories have been accepted as fairy tales on the same level as the Brothers Grimm's, but they're really not the same thing at all. The Brothers Grimm went around collecting folk tales, many of which had magical elements. Hans Christian Andersen made up his own stories, even though he borrowed heavily from local folk legends.
As for the parallelism between the Snow Queen and Jareth, well, it's purely subjective, I think. The beauty of fairy tales is the ability of the reader to project their own understanding and identity onto them. At first, I saw the similarity between their roles -- a stolen child, hidden in a faraway castle, and the heroine must travel through dangers unknown and hardship unnumbered to reach the castle. So I should say that I saw the similarities between Gerda and Sarah first. Then the stories began to merge together. The Snow Queen and Jareth would be two rather unwilling villains, acting not so much out of malice than ammorality (not to be confused with immorality) and their very natures. It is the Snow Queen's nature to be cold and unfeeling, and the Goblin King's obligation to steal children, any child. At the end of the story, Kai is able to leave when he manages to spell out the right word in the ice puzzle, and Sarah defeats Jareth with her right words.
Okay, I'm going to stop here, because I'm becoming increasingly incoherent, I think.
PS. I love your masks!
👍: 0 ⏩: 3
I forgot to mention, Jareth is completely a vampire sort of creature, in that he can only come when he's invited or summoned. The way that Sarah defeats him by declaring her autonomy magnifies this perspective.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thanks for redirecting me back to this thread. It'd completely slipped my mind.
As for your knowledge of East Asian folklore, I am completely blown away. I haven't read any local folklore since I was child, so my own knowledge is a little shoddy. I will however agree with you about the matriarchal threat to little girls, particularly the story of the tigress-aunt. The fact that the story of Little Red Riding Hood may have originated in Asia is particularly interesting, considering how the wolf is actually also interpreted as a metaphor for Jews. Some theories also postulate that Little Red Riding Hood might be a prostitute, focusing on the prominence of her red cape.
I suppose in my original argument, I meant to point that children are rarely stolen in East Asian myths. They are eaten, but rarely stolen. The changelings, as you point out, work in reverse -- the acceptance of supernatural creatures into the household that bring good fortune -- which often preach that curiosity leads to the protagonists' downfalls.
As for the goblins in East Asian mythology, I'm still arguing that Asian 惡魔 and 妖怪 are more akin to demons than goblins. Of course, as you pointed out, this might depend on our personal definition of goblins. Goblin is actually a derivative of the word kobold, and traces its origins to the concept of mischievous sprites, whose actions may or may not be helpful or harmful. They might even be malicious, although I've often interpreted that to be in the manner that children are malicious -- without consideration. However, as in my experience, the Chinese 魔鬼 is vindictive by nature, existing to eat and pillage and wreck destruction. Naturally, the details of their nature may be influenced by environment, whether they live in woods or in rocky caverns.
I also still maintain the difference in Eastern and Western magic, differences that also may be shaped by history and culture and perceptions of the world. Even if the Eastern explanation of magic can be found in Western magic, Western magic is still more visible than Eastern magic. Eastern magic functions more as the acceleration of natural forces, although there are instances of conjuring money and magical items that defy the rules of nature, such as the money tree, which grows money as its leaves. But in these instances, the magic is not so much wielded as harvested. Whereas Western magic has the ability to defy nature and its laws. Even the creation of an illusion defies physics and suggests tampering with a third person's perception.
You point out something very true about the Brothers Grimms. But despite all their fabrications to fill up the blank spaces, the basis of their stories were founded in existing folklore.
I'm not sure sure I see Baba Yaga in the make-up of Sarah's character.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Though I saved the original reply I was working on, life suddenly got complicated with moving 300 miles and frantic job applications and that sort of thing, so my sincerest apologies for dropping entirely out like that. I'll rewrite and (believe it or not) condense it here. And thanks for moving the discussion to my page, I tend to get carried away….
Thanks very much as regards the masks, I was glad then and now to hear you enjoyed them. ^-^
I think the geographic determinism angle has a lot of relevance in the particulars of myth - the entities and locations that figure - but I think the storylines often are fairly universal. Where a wolf in France is an ogress in Russia and a tigress-aunt in China, they all threaten a little girl from a position of matriarchal power. (Most scholarly works I've read on Little Red Riding Hood seem to agree that her story originated in China. I honestly think it's more likely that the themes of most of our stories are truly universal - memes diffuse across civilizations, but we've probably been telling the same sorts of stories since we developed language.) As another example of this, Japan's climate is more similar to Europe's than China's is, and while Japanese myths feature the same notions of the laws of existence as Chinese myths do, because they adopted their cosmology from the mainland, many of the particular creatures are more analogous to European ones. Kitsune in particular act rather a lot like British fairies.
I'd say certain man-made objects, where they occur, are the exception to the rule that 'details' are less universal than themes - artifacts like swords, mirrors, masks etc. have a magical, miraculous quality in myth that corresponds to the immense power they hold to alter the experienced world when they are invented. They crop up an awful lot in myth and magical stories, probably because the ability to see the world doubled, or to hide or change one's basic individual characteristics, or what-have-you, is just as shocking and amazing to one culture as to another. Spilling grain as a way to distract the dead, or crossing running water to escape them - these things will have to do with whether your culture has been agricultural for a long time, or has built heavily atop rivers. Killing a man or beast you feel to be threatening with a single stroke of a magic stick - that is, a blade - is pretty universal. Containers - sacks, boxes, bowls, whatever - come up a lot, too.
A note on Andersen, Grimm and authenticity - it seemed to me that Andersen was writing the equivalent of "modern" fantasy. His tales have a fairy-tale formula but they're contemporary in their flavor. The funny thing is that the brothers Grimm weren't doing things all so differently - they fabricated a lot of details and tried to create cohesive stories out of various conflicting versions; their scholarship was admirable in its aims, but in execution was the sort of thing that earns disgrace in the modern community. Of course, it was its own step in the evolution of the stories - it just wasn't factual historical documentation.
As for whether there are goblins in China - well, I'd say it depends on your definition. 魔鬼 is often translated "goblin"; all a goblin really needs to be is a nonhuman creature with a dangerous or mischievous nature. Since changeling stories are as likely to feature beautiful fairies as ugly trolls, their function in Labyrinth isn't specific to what they are; the notion of a goblin probably applies to some beast or other in a number of cultures. In Chinese Buddhist myth I know of a few things that might be translated "goblin" as well as "demon" or "devil."
As for changeling stories in Asia, well, I'd say it often works in the reverse - unnatural children, or supernatural lovers, are taken into human families. Often the children/ lovers (usu. wives) manifest supernatural powers which they use to the benefit of their families, but investigation into their gifts exposes them and they must return to their own people or rightful place. The Moon/ Bamboo Princess, Crane Wife of Japan, myriad fox spirits throughout East Asia, and White Snake in China all exemplify this type. (Oftentimes there is concern, when the wife is exposed, that she will steal their children away when she leaves, which also parallels the changeling.) In the West, the story follows the same pattern but the supernatural lover is more often a male - as in Greece's Eros & Psyche, which became the model for Beauty & the Beast.
I think the East Asian concept of magic as an uncommon use of natural life force dovetails reasonably well into the European take. Frequently European magic doesn't so much twist reality as just redirect energy or human perceptions - as if energy and matter were finite. Vampirism is a great example because there's some spin on it just about anywhere, and you are dealing with life force, after all. Witches get their strange power from the strange objects they employ. Fairies practically never create from nothing, they spin glamours over extant things, a pumpkin to a coach, straw to gold. This tendency to create glamours and illusions shows up in human-impersonation stories like White Snake and various fox myths a lot.
I'd say your initial impression of Labyrinth's similarity to the Snow Queen story was dead on - the dynamic of brother and sister against some supernatural foe with dangerous intentions. (I'm also delighted that you specifically distinguished amorality and immorality. I feel like I have to do that all the time because people always confound them.) This dynamic crops up in Hansel & Gretel, too. Labyrinth, being a good eighty minutes longer than the average fairy tale as we receive them, is made up of a patchwork of countless other stories. Considering Jareth, you could draw parallels between Labyrinth and all sorts of stories featuring a supernatural dangerous entity - the Elf-king and myriad other fairy beings, vampires, death personifications. Looking at Sarah, we're inclined to see Gretel, Gerda, Little Red Riding Hood, Vasilissa (Baba Yaga), Alice (of Wonderland), Dorothy (of Oz) - and yes, even Persephone - a rescuer who shall in turn become the prey, and even the seduced, like Belle gone to save her father from his mistake. (Notice the girls always rescue a male?) Labyrinth incorporates both the changeling-child and snatched-away-youth under the eyes of its King of the Underground, so on to Toby - from his angle, there again is the Elf-king's prey, Hansel, Kai - and also a certain measure of a new sort of story, where a very little boy goes away to play with magic for a while and then comes home, without a whole lot of message except "the world is there to be seen." This is cropping up more and more often in modern fantasy for children - think Where the Wild Things Are. I think that it actually will have some importance in time, but since I haven't figured much out about that yet, I'll have to leave off.
Many thanks for all the ideas and sorry again for my belated reply!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Eh, freakin' tired. I've been preparing to move out and I'm jobhunting for something to pay the bills until I can find something more bilingual-oriented (damn recession.) Not been doing much in the way of art or anything. Taiwan was fun for me but fairly extreme as goes the natural disasters (four earthquakes and at least as many typhoons, there was a fire down the block, etc.) So real life is sort of overwhelming for the time being.
How are you? Your journal's not been much but roleplay ^-^ I suppose that means things on at least one front are good. And where are you, now? I'm not up to date X.x
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Wow! Sounds like quite an adventure. Glad you're ok. I'm in the UK right now, applying for film school, finally! I'm surprised though because there's hardly any rain so far. Was really looking forward to it lol. After spending lovely long weekends in Oxford, Canterbury, and in the country hills of Northumberland (to only name a few), Chris and I are having a nice, quiet weekend at the homestead. We're in the middle of trying to apply for a visa, so fingers crossed!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
UGH. Lucky. Go to Taiwan if you want rain - I had a week straight of nonstop rain from one of the typhoons plus some local thunderstorming alone, let alone all the other occasions. Seriously - East Asia has a monsoon season. You are RIDICULOUSLY lucky to be able to spend time outside x.x
Although I imagine that'll change soon, given the early sunsets and increasing cold. Will you be there for the holidays?
Good luck with your student visa, I've no idea how difficult the process is in the UK but Taiwan's more than a bit tricky on that front!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I'm going back for the holidays in December but Thanksgiving, Chris and his folks are apparently 'surprising' me and having a thankgiving roast
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
In that case you'll probably get some decent snow... I demand pictures! Old world snow and 4pm sunsets FTW ^-^
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ha ha and omg go to bed! XD
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Heh, sorry I didn't comment. All your work is lovely and I was hoping to come back and leave a note on something that wasn't Labyrinth-related, but the image and the masks were so vivid, and it had such a nice atmosphere. Masks six and seven from the left are wonderful, but that third one struck me in particular - along with the whole of that figure's pose and expression, and the child holding to her robe, of course...
In any case, it's nice now and then to see something inspiring, and have a reminder of the potential in what I'm doing. Hope you'll be keeping up the art, both Labyrinth-touched and original ^-^
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
haha, no worries! I know how busy people are.
I'm particularly fond of that third mask as well, and the little girl.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
You're welcome! I was actually looking for a mask that might go along with the story I'm writing, sort of like a visual reference. I don't even know yet what I'm actually looking for, but I have a vague idea. Keep up the good work.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thanks (belatedly!) very much! I'm glad you've enjoyed it ^-^
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Hey. You! Think you all should road trip up here and we have dinner friday night xD When are you off school?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Sorry, I royally suck. Life's been crazy busy; I finished finals today but still have some stuff I need to submit.
I'm behind on the art, too. Shinies that need to go up, things that need to be made. What's your schedule like in the near future? I have no car at the moment - muffler laying on the asphalt - so I wouldn't have been able to visit anyway... I graduate Saturday and then Sunday it's back North.
Ducks have invaded our fountain. There were three drake mallards and a hen, but then two of the drakes went away. The hen and remaining drake waddle over promptly every time I sit down, it's adorable... but I hope they don't try to nest, 'cause the cats'd be eating eggs or ducklings once they found 'em.
One other thing - my fanfilmmakers are releasing it on the sixth. I'm not sure how to feel...
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
So what've you been up to? I've been crazy busy, as per usual, and have absolutely no desire to work even though I've got tons to do and am unlikely to sleep before class tomorrow.
Been trying to catch up on Zelda lately - my stress levels have been higher than the usual semester for a variety of reasons, and when I'm stressed, I play games. I'm terrified fanart will ensue, unless it's the Wolf Link mask I really wanted to do th'other year...
You gonna be in town anytime? And when're you departing for the other side anyway? There may be a Scarborough Faire trip the weekend of May 23 that might be relatively well-attended, but it'll depend on how much organizing (catherding) I can do beforehand...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
lol at the moment I'm making honest money at a daycare, have pinkeye AGAIN at the moment though not as bad. Chris and I are trying to make enough money to qualify for an Ireland visa hense the working because I can't get a UK visa before the marriage visa. We're also looking at the moment for cruise ship jobs because they pay like $800 a week, which is more than we're both making at the mo and we would be together. Things are pretty day in day out at the mo. Don't know if I'll make it back to SA before I leave but you should all take a road trip up here some weekend 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Cruise money sounds attractive. Hope the pinkeye settled down quickly. And good luck with the Isles...
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
You had me so many kind words,you got me speechless!
Thank you so much once more,it's been really nice talking to you,my friend
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Wow,thank you so much for your kind words!
About my signature,it's meant to look like a chinese character,but it's actually a big I at the center,and Ching written along side this I,as for Igor Ching.
Unfortunately,I never learned chinese,but I came up with this signature because of chinese ancestrals
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It's truly ridiculously gorgeous work that I'll be plugging to my friends, so I ought to be thanking you for the pleasure. I also ought to thank you for introducing me to soft sculpey - I didn't know they had a bake-soft version, and several times the knowledge might have done me good.
I finally did figure out your signature, but it took me a couple of minutes; the first of your images where I saw it was one of the most abstracted signings and low-contrast. If I'd seen one of the copies where you used a lot of stylus pressure I might have caught it sooner - uniform thickness in the strokes disguised the stroke order, which is important in writing. Because you've managed to capture lots of little pieces of proper characters in it, the experience was a lot like trying to decipher someone's semi-calligraphic cursive. If you ever did learn Chinese you'd evolve your own style quite rapidly - you might give it a shot. It's certainly a fun language for visual learners.
Again, though, gorgeous work - I'm also quite partial to that papercut raven, but I'll try to comment there, rather than here. ^-^ Very nice speaking to you!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Plz come visit. And see my art! (U don't have to) ^-^ Thx
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thanks much! Sorry to be so long in reply - long year...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
i think i could relate. peace!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
::waves::
I found you through Adam, and thought I say hello. Your masks are neat. : )
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Hi! Sorry I suck about replies. Semester has been less than fun. I checked out your gallery a few months back when I finally got back to the U.S. and enjoyed your Nara deer shots a great deal - just never seemed to have a chance to comment x.x Thanks a lot, anyway!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Aimee, thank you so much for the very generous 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Wow. These are gorgeous masks. I saw that you visited my page and I got curious. I'm glad that I was.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks much! (I'll actually really LOOK at your gallery sometime soonish, I haven't had time to comment. Cute stuff!) I found you in the (apparently controversial, from her blog) comments on *ursulav 's St. Snargus, and was sort of trying to figure out your angle on the very relevant issue of capybara consumption. ^-^
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Well, that comment about Catholics can eat capybara during Lent threw me. They never covered that while I was in Sunday school. Then again, not many capybaras are running around in the US, so I guess that never really came up until recently.
And, judging some of the comments over there, it's apparent that we're still pretty easy targets, which was probably not ursulav's intent.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I just now noticed your webcam image. XD Was that our room from the year before the one we just had? Er... 2006-2007?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That was... erm... January? I believe it was January. ^-^ It's mirrored, 'cause it was a webcam shot, so I see why you'd've thought that (although that's awfully perceptive, I can't even tell Gamecube LoZ:TP from the Wii version without the controls onscreen...)
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
just wondering if i wanted to commission you to create a black long nosed venetian mask and leaving all the rest of the detailed up to you about how much would you want for you craft.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
X.x Nothing, though, 's as good as the opacity cats. (Teeheeheehee.)
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Hey, thanks a lot for the comment you made on my mask. I was really honored after checking out your gallery. Your masks kick the proverbial butt of my mask. Ah well, it's a fun process. I hope to be better at it one day.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
| Next =>