Pregame, Day One, Day Two! In which I talk about background, travel details, my experiences & expectations. Orquevaux residencies seem to come in three durations, depending on the year’s schedule: two weeks, three weeks, or one month. Each curated group is called a cohort. I’ve estimated Orquevaux hosts at least 240 artists per year, with…
Read More My time in Orquevaux, pt2Now that my art residency is over, I feel comfortable posting about it. This will actually be a series of posts, launched as I can get to them. The residency at Chateau d’Orquevaux *can* be a career advancing, life changing experience for the right creative person. At the very least, for what you pay, it’s…
Read More My time in Orquevaux, pt1Because I absolutely cannot post stuff in order or on time, apparently. Halloween 2024 seems like a thousand years ago now. But I did some cool stuff, and I want to share it with the largely uncaring universe. The front yard ofrenda with its table of lanterns, silk flowers, candy, and glowsticks was *the best…
Read More A look back at Halloween 2024More than a few folks are pointing out that 2025 should be the year of the website. You should have a website *you* control, not just a social media presence you can get kicked off of at any moment by the next billionaire who buys it. Because it will happen. I left what Twitter became…
Read More Happy Freakin’ New Year!The US elections have come and gone, sadly exactly as I suspected: too many of my fellow Americans are lazy and stupid. So the next pandemics are brewing. Climate change is happening. Techbro oligarchs and Christian Theocrats are trying to rebrand the US into their own fiefdoms. Now is the time to rebuild on our…
Read More Autumn MusingsTl:dr… This book no longer exists in its previous form. It may never exist again. How that happened is a lesson in online manners and performative fragility (and one that my readers can look up, because a lot more people have dissected it since December 2023.) It may be that the original publisher Del Rey…
Read More I read Cait Corrain’s ‘Crown of Starlight’Disclosure: I’ve been accepted into one of the Spring 2025 art residency cohorts at the Chateau d’Orquevaux. I’m deep into planning what I want to make and write there. That entails my usual obsessive research. I came across this enchanting little self-published book by well-known illustration artist Christina Wald. Château d’Orquevaux, A Travelogue distills Wald’s…
Read More Review: Chateau d’Orquevaux, A TravelogueWiser heads and a month of planning have prevailed: I’m saving the ‘big’ projects for later grants applications here in the States. The Chateau in a typical March is just not set up for projects the size & complexity of ‘Crystal Curtain’ or ‘Sky Tent’. Then add to that the rigors of shipping from Arizona…
Read More Art Residency 2025: Chateau d’Orquevaux, part 2Go into a thrift store, any thrift store. Keep your eyes open: not necessarily for treasures, but for *stories*. Chances are, if you are alert, you’ll stumble across items that seem to resonate with questions, half-guessed histories, and unfinished quests. In February of 2024, I wandered by a shelf of carpentry tools in a local…
Read More ‘Winter Tree Egg’, by M. J. Moye(Me, trying on the larger-scale art installation hat. I like this hat.) (Also, because last fall was eventful enough that I forgot to post my Halloween yard installation when it happened.) For the last few years I’ve been gathering Halloween and Dia de los Muertos (they are not the same) decor from thrift stores. A…
Read More Halloween 2023 Yard InstallationLong post! TL:dr… I’m going to France for an art residency next year. At this place, Chateau d’ Orquevaux. Yep. I’m doing this. I applied on a semi-whim in December 2023, knowing that odds of being accepted were somewhere between 20% and never. I make a habit of applying every couple of years to *big*…
Read More Art Residency 2025: Chateau d’Orquevaux, part 1Come back to the Birdverse with this unforgettable tale about despair, hope, self-care, and friendship! Words shape thoughts and cultures. Fantasy is uniquely suited to reveal this in subtle, entertaining ways that sneak in high-level concepts on the sly. R. B. Lemberg’s YOKE OF STARS is a remarkable novella. It could only come from a…
Read More Review: YOKE OF STARS, by R.B. LembergThe ribbons got finished, delivered, and (by the accounts I’ve heard) the winning artists were happy! For Spring 2024, the TFA and I did our usual riffing off the Featured Artist’s work. This time, the Festival showcased the work of a family of extraordinary weavers: Mel Mendez, whose family has been weaving for a century…
Read More Spring Award Ribbons, Tempe Festival of the ArtsFirst off, the cover is gorgeous. Kudos, Mark. The artists you found did *right* by Pawly and that scene. Anyway, off to the actual review of WERECATS RESURGENT. “‘Mission Impossible’ grows fangs and claws! For lynx werecat Pawlina Katczynski and her loved ones, meeting their isolated Forest Brethren cousins in eastern Poland was both liberating…
Read More Review: Werecats Resurgent, by Mark J. EngelsAfter the suspiciously-fast progress of ‘Sun Bird’, I started thinking about more book art sculptures with carved-wood bird spines. Lo, I found the Second Bird! Hailing from Bisbee AZ but made who-knows-where, of two-toned mesquite or another desert wood, and very woodpecker-like…this 11″ long sculpture has a flat back that will be ideal to support…
Read More The Second and Third BirdsWERECATS CONVERGENT, the second novel in Mark J. Engels’ The Forest Exiles Saga, starts off with a bang and doesn’t let up for a single page. Honestly, look at this cover! (I had nothing to do with making it, I just love it and how close it comes to the feel of this book.) Tormented…
Read More Review: WERECATS CONVERGENT by Mark J. EngelsTl;dr…if you aren’t a fabric craft geek, this post will just bore you. That’s okay. I’m taking aim at a beloved part of recent Fashion History and dissecting it. For the 2017-18 fashion season, Dior released a now legendary Tarot-inspired fabric coat. If you don’t know much about embroidery, this mix of fabric pieces and…
Read More Cheat Codes of the Dior Tarot CoatWhat’s a Wonderwall? Okay, yes, it’s an angsty 1995 ballad from Oasis. I take my meaning from the original songwriters: a wall in their childhood home where they posted photos & quotes that inspired them. In their case, mostly football (soccer to Americans). The Women-With-Studios meme shows off some incredibly creative wonderwalls on Instagram and…
Read More The WonderwallThis is a very long post! Scroll to the end to see a finished book art sculpture! A month ago I found this carved wooden bird in a plastic bag (with some other oddities) hanging on a wall hook at Goodwill. $3.49 for the whole bag. Stupidly, I walked away and left the bag on…
Read More A Bird, a Dream, a BookTldr: WERECATS EMERGENT is a great book if you like military adventure fantasy and kickass heroines coming of age, with *shapeshifting* feline humans. The author’s homepage is here: mark-engels.com The book’s main Amazon page is here. Look at this cover. It’s subtle but it gets the point across. I had nothing to do with this…
Read More Review: WERECATS EMERGENT by Mark J. Engels