16th Anniversary of Adalbert/ Xothique Blog

 Here we are -- today is the 16th anniversary of this blog, as we slither deeper into the third millennium. To mark today, I'll post a digital collage/ drawing -- Charleville Transmission -- which I concocted the other day. It's dedicated to the memory of blogger, and collage artist, Ray Wallis. #rimbaud  -JF 

New Story: Algernon Signals

 

15th Anniversary of Adalbert

 

This marks the 15th anniversary of my blog, Adalbert. Here's a recent digital collage/painting, of mine. -JF 💥

Anomalies of Surgery and Snake-Handling

Mixed-media work of mine (ink/collage), early-mid 1980s. 

 

Autumnal Empires (Super 8 Film)

Autumnal Empires is a film (made from combining two originally-untitled film reels), which had languished unviewed for decades. I only lately arranged for a digital conversion; having previously only seen it once or twice, via a movie projector; and experienced a curious sensation, of the resurrection of times past. The cut-up of bursts of television imagery, created a mini-story all its own. Atmospheric glimpses of a mostly long-vanished industrial past in northwest Portland, Oregon, charged past; along with juxtaposed objects and scenes partly inspired by surrealist and Dadaist films (I might have seen a handful of such by then, such as those made by Hans Richter, Maya Deren, and others). I filmed part of the first section at Crown Point, and on a snowy day at Oneonta Gorge. 

Below are some stills, which give a different perspective on the movie. Depicted, starting from the top down: Roman Scott, me, NW Portland (as visualized by Ted Serios), Todd Mecklem, NW Portland, eye. 

Trances of Twilight, & The Howler

Two stills from The Howler (with Roman Scott, wearing the beret, and me, below, encountering a wall); a Super 8 movie we made in 1987. The film originated with an H.P. Lovecraft poem, from his Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle.

Tate Modern

Yesterday I walked through the Tate Modern, paying considerable attention to the surrealist portion of the Poetry and Dream exhibition.  I also sighted the Thames for the first time.  Later, at night, I absorbed the crescent moon, the Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, the Shard, and St. Paul's from the center of the Millenium Bridge.

 

Collage by me. Photo of a portion of the Tate Modern, with St. Paul's in the distance; and Max Ernst's The Elephant Celebes and René Magritte's The Reckless Sleeper.

Unrealized Film

Roman and Dave Scott, Sandy Oregon, 1987. The photos (and a few others) are the only fragments remaining of the production of a Super 8 movie on which we worked. As I recall the camera malfunctioned, so little if any footage resulted from the shooting. The movie was to have been an exercise in rural independent surrealism. Photos by me.

And happy 2015!

Self-Portrait

 

Roman Scott -- Self Portrait MIB

Roman Scott posted this piercingly extraordinary painting on his blog (image retrieved from http://romanscottart.blogspot.no/2014/09/selfie.html ).

Skaldscape

A photograph I took in 1987.

Alexandrian's Surrealist Art (1970)

(

 "(De Chirico's) father, a Sicilian engineer who lived in Greece, had an aristocratic temperament and had fought several pistol duels.  His mother was romantically enough inclined to have had one of the bullets which had wounded her husband mounted in gold." 

Nyctalops 18 (1983) -- Clarence John Laughlin cover & Roman Scott Drawing

Illustration by Roman Scott, accompanying S.T. Joshi's essay On "The Book" (by H.P. Lovecraft)

I just ran across this copy (which I purchased in 1983) of Nyctalops 18 in my files.  Cover photograph by surrealist photographer Clarence John Laughlin (the issue contained his story The Cathedral of Evil as well).  Laughlin was STILL ALIVE at the time of this publication. Antiques Roadshow recently had a segment on the photographer.  The periodical (edited by Harry O. Morris, Jr.) gathered gothically surrealistic photography, art, collage, poetry and fiction.  Creators and critics represented included Thomas Ligotti, J.K. Potter (Google him and one gets a shitstorm of Harry Potter pages), Deborah Valentine, Richard L. Tierney, Billy Wolfenbarger, Sutton Breiding, Christine P. Morris, Ben P. Indick, Denise Dumars, and others.

Nyctalops also held a review of Oddities 3.  (I've posted all except one issue of Oddities on here):  

Calls itself metaphysical chaos and organicism.  Some comic strip format, but most of the pages are plastered with word-explosions that carom off at all angles, literally and figuratively.  Incomprehensible.

Nocturne, Autumn 1988

Symbolist, horror, and surrealist-infused magazine, which included work (some collaborative) by myself, Todd Mecklem, Denise Dumars, G. Sutton Breiding, Thomas Ligotti, Billy Wolfenbarger, i. arguelles, Bruce Boston, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Thomas Wiloch, and others. Edited and published by Michael J. Lotus and Vincent L. Michael.  Also published in its pages: an annotated translation of de Nerval's El Desdichado by Eric Basso.  The publication contained  photographs, collage, and various artwork as well.  The cover looks to be a vision from Gustav Meyrink's or Kafka's Prague.  I am in touch with a few of the writers and poets;  others have vanished.