{illustrators} – Page 132

The art of Alia Penner

Kenneth Anger poster (2009).

Alia Penner, like Arik Roper, is another talented member of the omniversal Arthur posse as well as being an illustrator, designer and photographer in her own right. Her title designs opened the Missoni promotional film which Kenneth Anger directed earlier this year, and her work on paper follows a distinctly psychedelic path. The new piece below reminds me a little of Wilfried Sätty’s colour collages with its spots and eggs and butterflies. There’s more gorgeous work to be seen here.

Somewhere (2010).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Arik Roper relaunched
• Wilfried Sätty: Artist of the occult
• Missoni by Kenneth Anger

Weekend links 36

Mervyn Peake’s Caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland finds itself used to promote High Society, an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection devoted to the long history of human drug-taking. There’s more about the exhibition here and also an accompanying book by Mike Jay from Thames & Hudson. Related: The Most Dangerous Drug:

A group of British drug experts gathered by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) rated alcohol higher than most or all of the other drugs for health damage, mortality, impairment of mental functioning, accidental injury, economic cost, loss of relationships, and negative impact on community.

• Unless the magazine Man, Myth & Magic was advertised on TV in 1970 (and I suspect it would have been) Austin Osman Spare’s work has never been seen on British television, certainly not in any detail or with a credit to the artist. This week the BBC finally paid him some attention with a brief spot on The Culture Show as a result of the Fallen Visionary exhibition which is still running (until November 14) in London. Alan Moore, Fulgur‘s Robert Ansell and others attempt to summarise Spare’s career in seven minutes.

Neil Fujita designs: Mingus Ah Um (1959) and The Godfather (1969).

• RIP graphic designer Neil Fujita. Related:

“By taking the “G” and extending it to the “D,” I created a house for “God.” The way the word was designed was part of the logo and so was the type design. So when Paramount Pictures does a film version or Random House, which bought out the book from Putnam, does another Godfather book, I still get a design credit. In fact, before the first Godfather film opened in New York I saw a huge billboard going up in Times Square with my design on it. I actually got them to stop work on it until we were able to come to an agreement.” Waxing Chromatic: An Interview with S. Neil Fujita

• French SF illustration. Related: Where did science fiction come from? A primer on the pulps, a feature by Jess Nevins with some of the craziest covers you’ll see this month.

• Gay-bashers in 1970s San Francisco had to beware the wrath of the Lavender Panthers.

• More Marian Bantjes as she discusses her work in an audio interview.

• Music from Saharan cellphones.

• Origami Beauty Shots.

• Krautrock.com

• Better Git It In Your Soul (1959) by Charles Mingus.

Arik Roper relaunched

Cover art for Howlin Rain by Howlin Rain (2006).

Artist Arik Roper was in touch this week with news that his website—showcasing album cover art, book illustration and graphic designs—has been relaunched. A world of psychotropic fungi and luscious ink-stained visions awaits you here.

Cover art for Magnificent Fiend by Howlin Rain (2008).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Arik Roper

Steampunk Reloaded

Cover design by Ann Monn. Cover image by Dan Jones / Tinkerbots.

Here at last is the steampunk anthology I mentioned back in September and whose interiors I designed. This is another Tachyon publication, and also another anthology edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. I went further with the design for this than I have done for other Tachyon books, partly because if there’s one thing steampunk lends itself to, it’s decoration but also because the book includes illustrations from Ramona Szczerba, Eric Orchard, and others, plus a comic strip by Sydney Padua; adding extra spot illustrations stopped the pictorial material from seeming too isolated.

Title spread. The illustration on the left is one I created last year.

This is a sequel to an earlier steampunk anthology by the same editors but the contents are just as strong as the first collection with excellent stories throughout. (For a review, see here.) By coincidence the book is published in the wake of a recent (and inevitable) backlash against steampunk as science fiction sub-genre and cultural phenomenon. This collection can serve as a repudiation to some of the lazier accusations that writers are ignoring the moral and physical squalor of the Victorian era and the legacies of imperialism; several stories in Steampunk Reloaded address those very issues. For my part I’ve read Friedrich Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England, Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, and Kellow Chesney’s The Victorian Underworld so I don’t feel in urgent need of a lecture on the iniquities of the 19th century, thank you very much.

While we’re on the subject, the cover of The Steampunk Bible, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and SJ Chambers, has been revealed here. Abrams will be publishing this next year and having seen some of the interior pages it’s going to be a splendid book. More about that later. Further pages from Steampunk Reloaded follow.

Update: A couple more reviews here and here.

Contents spread.

A detail of one of the page footers.

Title page for A Secret History of Steampunk, a self-contained section within the body of the book.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk overloaded!
• Skeleton clocks
• Vickers Airship Catalogue
• The Air Ship
• Dirigibles
• More Steampunk and the Crawling Chaos
• The art of François Schuiten
• Steampunk Redux
• Steampunk framed
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

Weekend links: the Halloween edition

Goddem with Attendants (1924) by Harry Clarke.

• Some of Harry Clarke’s extraordinary illustrations from Goethe’s Faust can be seen at A Journey Round My Skull. And a reminder for anyone who missed them, Clarke’s Poe illustrations at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

• HP Lovecraft – Audio Books, Radio Plays, & Audio Documentaries. Out-of-print recordings and (no doubt) pirate copies of more recent things. I found this page by accident so it was a surprise to see my 1999 Lovecraft portrait used there. I used to own the David McCallum Dunwich Horror, an album with a singularly appalling sleeve illustration.

• Better album sleeves can be found here: Prospective 21e Siècle, a collection of foil designs from 1967. Some of the very challenging music within can be downloaded at the Avant Garde Project archive. Related: Have an electroacoustic Halloween with İlhan Mimaroğlu’s Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe (1964) and Wings of the Delirious Demon (1969).

Star Trails and the Captain’s Ghost, a photo by Chris Kotsiopoulos at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

• “The horror industry is totally male dominated from its directors to its slashers, and even its bloggers…and I think that needs to change.” Day of the Woman, a blog for the feminine side of fear.

• 6 of the Scariest Queer Horror Books Ever. I think I’d agree with the commenter in picking The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

• Designer Jonathan Barnbrook (pictured in a graveyard by the looks of things) is interviewed at MyFonts.

• A Weird and Scratching Beauty: The Art of John Coulthart and Call of Cthulhu.

• Is the Royal Masonic School for Boys the scariest building in Britain?

• 50-million-year-old insect trove found in Indian amber.

• The Café Kaput Samhain 2010 mixtape.

• The Groovy Age of Horror.

• Monster Mash (1962) by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers.