less terrifying than Krampus

A hilarious tale of Christmas horror by Ryan Iverson, inspired by Warner Herzog. {via bioephemera, via iO9}.

The Snow Queen

illustration by Miss Clara for La Reine des glaces Hans Christian Andersen, ed. Gautier-Languereau


Andersen, Hans Christian. Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. Milo Winter, illustrator. Valdemar Paulsen, translator. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, [c1916].


The Snow Queen by Debra McFarlane
The Pink Fairy Book
etching with aquatint
190mmx140mm


Art direction by Marcel Wanders and photography by Nicole Marnati. (via)


Illustration by Edmund Dulac for The Snow Queen By Hans Christian Andersen

You can read an annotated version of the Snow Queen Fairytale on Sur La Lune Fairytales. I watched Black Swan recently, which made me wonder about why the Snow Queen is depicted with geese (not swans?). Perhaps it was the deceptive mirrors which reminded me of the Snow Queen. I was thinking about her connection to the White Queen in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The White Queen, who has a wintry realm (as the Snow Queen), also drives a sleigh and kidnaps a boy. In the Narnia books, she is later revealed as a descendant of Adam's first wife Lilith, made from earth like him, rather than a rib. Lilith claimed to be his equal and refused to submit to him. She appears in Jewish mythology. Her history is messy (from ancient Sumeria, through the Pre-Rafealites, wiccans, to modern feminist theory), debated and beyond my ken. Some claim her to be a daimon, succubus, a night spirit, screech owl or a conversely subverted mother goddess. C.S. Lewis' Lilith is half-djinn half-giantess. Like Lilith, the White Queen is the first to rebel, which makes for a particularly interesting, if loaded villain.

A young girl must travel to Svalbard (like The Snow Queen's Spitsbergen) to rescue a kidnapped boy, as in The Snow Queen, in The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights) by Philip Pullman. Incidentally, Pullman was no fan of the Narnia books. He lambastes him for sexism, racism, manipulative use of Christian imagery and rejection of sexuality (particularly in women like Susan, the adolescent who wants to grow up, but this ties clearly to Lilith as well). I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia seven times before the age of 12, and while I did think Lewis a good story teller - in fact, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was what first inspired me to read in English - as I grew older I did think that some of Lewis' ideas and theology insidiously seeped into my subconscious while I was unaware. The idea of not allowing a young woman to mature, or to embrace her sexuality, brings us full circle back to Black Swan. I wonder if I would have been a different sort of young person had I read His Dark Materials, rather than The Chronicles of Narnia.

One of the things that does attract me to The Snow Queen, is that for once, a little girl rescues a little boy.

Girl with Owl

Michael Shapcott
The Girl and the Owl
24” x 30”
Graphite / Acrylic / Oil on Canvas



Lauren Carney
Entangled
Artliner Pen and Watercolour on 300gsm Watercolour Card


Audrey Kawasaki
Owakare
Oil on canvas 30x22
'Ephemera' @ Nucleus Gallery
2007
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Dilka Bear
New Moon


Dilka Bear
Emily and the Owl

Glass Wunderkammer

Danish artist Steffen Dam works wonders in glass to create masterful, luminuous art, like glass wunderkammer (or cabinets of curiousity). His subject matter are precisely what every wunderkammer collector would want: botanicals, bottled marine creatures including jellyfish, fossils, egg specimens, though these specimens have been gathered from within his own mind, inspired but not dictated by natural history. This creative area where art meets science is where I want to live. They make me wish I knew how to work in glass.


Biological Panel, blue. 2009.


The secret life of plants. 2006.


SMALL BOX 2. 2010.
glass/wood/lighting fixture
12 X 12 X 9 in. (30.48 X 30.48 X 22.86 cm)


12 JARS. 2009.
glass/wood
14 3/4 X 41 X 9 3/4 inches


Marine Group. Commision for The Museum of Art and Design. New York, NY, USA.


FOSSIL PANEL. 2009.
glass/metal
19 X 35 X 8 in. (48.26 X 88.9 X 20.32 cm)


EGG BLOCK. 2010.
glass
8 1/2 X 14 X 1 1/2 in. (21.59 X 35.56 X 3.81 cm)

Find more wonderous things at his site or at theHeller Gallery {via Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosities}