Chris Mom Feldman is a rock painter. She’s also a bicycle rider, Rotarian, business owner and tireless volunteer for various charities and events in her community. Mom’s all about community. I didn’t end up being a Head Candy Corn of Gothtober out of nowhere. Mom shows me all the time how reaching out to people and involving them in all kinds of cockamamie schemes is FUN and also extremely good for the well-being of people, and society in general.
Awhile ago I told Mom that maybe some rocks might look good on Gothtober, and she said she could make some pumpkin ones. Boy did she ever! I have never been so happy to receive a box of rocks via post! Mom says about the rocks:
“Some of them
have a personality, some scary and mean,
but all of them are silly at heart.”
Every one of Mom’s rocks was handpicked by her in places like Patrick’s Point up north, Goat Rock in Sonoma county and some river rocks. She noted that they are so smooth from being tossed around by the sea and river flow.
Mom and I decided to pick the Gothtober date of October 14th for her rocks to go public, for a very special occasion, for a great guy.
This little Gothtober film was made by family for my FrankenBrother, James Parr, as today is his birthday.
Glorious weirdness greets you for Gothtober DAY 13 (the book titled Witchful Thinking) from Canadian superstar animator, Amy Lockhart! She lives in Guelph. where its very fall – like canada style – crisp/cold and rainy. This piece was made on Amiga Emulator with Dpaint software that was used in old animations – atari style (80s) giving it that good ol’ 8-bit tiny squares of goodness feeling from the days of Rubiks Cubes and magnetic cassette tapes. About this awesome animation, Amy says:
I was visiting LA, at Paul and Lecie and Francis’s place. The Wallers came over – Henry seemed a little shy, they mentioned the idea – maybe Trixy was there too – she told Henry he should ask me to animate it, ha. Anyways – I wanted to pretend it was a Hollywood meeting (ok maybe just a joke in my head) so I showed Henry some of my boobmilk, peeing and pooing animations to see if he wanted to work with me, he was into it then I storyboarded it.
Amy is considering providing a new service to the world, working with kids and making animations of their perverse visions. Gothtober couldn’t agree more. The voices of children are often ignored or homogenized into commercial versions of the originals that feel more comfortable or marketable to grownups, who don’t want to think that kids can have wild and crazy ideas. We’re so thrilled that this one is out in the world, we hope it inspires more collaborations with kids, art, artists, parents, and artists-to-be.
PinkScary is the place for you, if you enjoy exotic or uh… alarming toppings for your indeterminate yogurt-like substance desserts! Click on Gothtober DAY 12 (The Book titled War and Pieces) and enter into this first person P.O.V. gastronomic experience with the Waller Kids!
The infamous “Pink Slime” has nothing on PinkScary. And what of PinkBerry?
Well no one knows what that’s made of either, but it’s just not as tasty as what the the PinkScary franchise has developed. I mean it really does appear to be an artisan situation with all those hard-to-get ingredients. We hope you’ll be able to try some soon, but get over there before the lines get too long, its popularity is growing.
Look no further for your Nero and Haiku-themed word games, as well as a bonus coloring page featuring a photo bombing crocodile!
Gothtober’s DAY 9 (The book on the shelf titled Wuthering Frights) will help you download these hand-illustrated goodies by artist and illustrator, Stephanie Abler.
The name MAD LIBS is legally registered, and for lack of a better word, that’s what we’ll use here, but people have been playing this word game for eons, you don’t have to buy them at the store, you can make your own! Stephanie took matters into her own hands and made some for us. Here’s what she had to say about it:
I remember at least a couple of family gatherings from my childhood when my mom wrote mad libs for us, and we did them and just laughed hysterically. The absurd ideas that mad libs produce really delight me.
It’s hard to come up with something that weird on purpose because we naturally make connections that make sense. It takes a situation with an unknown context, like a mad lib, to come up with an idea that’s truly random.
I also love mad libs because they show how imaginative people are; when we listen to a mad lib, our minds will make meaning out of totally unreal statements.
Stephanie lives in Walnut Creek, California, where it is indeed getting cooler:
It’s been in the 80’s and 90’s in Walnut Creek. Hotter than I expected for this time of year. But since the leaves are changing and the angle of the sunlight is shifting, you can still tell it’s fall.
Billy makes stuff out of felt, thread, stuffing and whatever else feels appropriate for subjects like giant swordfish, stripmall pillows, football trading cards, and even stuffed hunting rifles for babies (yes, you read that correctly.) Anything you ever heard about felt appliques and what’s supposed to happen with them is pretty much blown out of the water by Mr. Kheel. The things he makes are full of contradictions, from the fact that he’s a bearded dude, not your great great Aunt, and he’s sewing precious collectible items out of everyday things, or making extraordinary versions of items we take for granted or tend to not see. His sport-oriented works are especially unique, an unexplored way to show love for franchised pro performance competition.
The felt works of Mr. Kheel are irresistible. When you come upon one of his pieces, you want to stare at it, touch it to make sure it’s really fabric, take it home, and then cuddle with it… even if it’s a giant foot from the Silverlake Foot Clinic sign on Sunset Blvd.
If you want to own an original Kheel, it’s not hard, just visit Billy’s Etsy Page, he’s got many items for sale at reasonable prices in many ranges and subjects: something for everyone! And check his site to see when he’s exhibiting and teaching workshops on how to sew your own fabric creations.
Now, get your pattern and materials, follow the pattern and make your blood moon so you can howl like the rest of us!
Gothtober DAY 7 (The Book titled Jane Weyre) brings us a chilling, thrilling and exquisite florescent light adventure with voice work by the Gump siblings, Arrow and Pixie Gump!
Arrow Gump supplies the harrowing narration, Pixie Gump supplies the voice of the Monster Baby, and PapaWapa Gump staged and animated all of the beautiful hand made props and scenery to form a heck of a family project! Put together with the expert editing stylistics of Brandon Minton, and man, have we got THE MONSTER’S GRAAAAAVE!!!!
Enjoy what will become a seasonal favorite for years to come, and if you see an angry green baby marching your way: Run!!!! (and then call us, because we need to know what happens next.)
Want to see some other amazing things from Michael and Brandon, respectively?
Have you been feeling okay? Visit Gothtober.com and click on Book 6, the one titled Tom Slayer. If you’re not feeling quite right, you might want to check out this informational pamphlet that gives you some useful tips on the symptoms you are experiencing this Halloween.
Saida Staudenmaier has quite the touch with the makeup brush, her site has some other Gothtoberesque photos on it, plus stuff from many of her other professional endeavors, check it out! Saida is quite fond of zombie makeup, she actually did a series of portraits based on the dearly departed, everyone looks a tad “stale” in an alluring yet repelling way that only Saida could truly master.
Hat’s off also to Jennifer Wenzlaff, the “main zombie” in this piece. Gothtober is powered by SparkleBlob, a multidisciplinary arts and performance collective, your Head Candy Corn is Executive Director. Jen is on the SparkleBlob Board of Directors, and we think that this photo of her really shows you what SparkleBlob is all about, doesn’t she look great? Most importantly, she looks like she’s recently eaten brains, so we can breathe easy… for now.
Castle Leibenstien, where Christy and family came up with the idea of making home made German Tarock cards!
If you’re a Gothtober Crafter, you certainly have your work cut out for you now for Gothtober DAY 5 (Click the book titled Of Lice and Men). We gave you a needlepoint project, then we showed you how to carve and dry apple heads and now here’s another fun assignment! All the way from Germany comes a pack of cards you can print, cut out, glue sides together and you then have your very own Tarot Deck!
Germany is getting darker and colder by the day, but fall there (called Herbst in German) is beautiful.
We have a Gothtober correspondent who can verify this information for us, she lives there! Yesterday was German unification day and The Chambers family will probably celebrate their long weekend by taking a walk in their local forest to photograph mushrooms (yes, the red ones with white spots featured in the cards).
The entire deck is hand illustrated by Christy Chambers. Yes, we’re talking ALL 78 cards, proving yet again that Gothtober contributors are a pretty dedicated and crazy lot, of which we are quite thankful. What inspired this ambitious project? Here’s her answer:
The crazy idea for the cards came from a short vacation at Castle Leibenstien this summer. When sleeping in a castle, there is no TV or Internet…. This can be alarming to a modern 10 yr old. So since we were unprepared for an unplugged evening, my mother and I started to make simple cards to entertain everyone. How fun it would be to have a fancy detailed deck made by our family! I started to research German traditional card games and found that the most popular game Tarock, is played with the 78 card tarot deck. The only problem is that everyone plays with different rules depending on which part of Germany you are from. Honestly, the game is so complicated I can’t even understand some of the rules!!! Anyway, I guess I will have to stick to fortune telling. Who knew that that would be the less complicated part. I started painting, and well, here are the cards!
You’ll notice also on Ms. Chambers’ Gothtober piece, a devil doll in the background. Naturally, we wanted to know more, here’s what Christy had to say about the little devil:
The Devil is a family heirloom from Brian’s side. We have no information about him but we love him. He seems to like playing cards, Nigel says he cheats, but I think one should expect that from the little Devil.Today at the flea-market or “Flomart” in German, we almost came home with a creepy gnome with an axe but the pair of them together would have clearly been trouble.
Click on DAY 5 Gothtober 2014 to get your set of Beautifully Illustrated Tarot cards by Christy Chambers!
Upon asking Professor D.M. Chadwick about this year’s Gothtober Apple project, she sent back a very analytic and scholarly stream-of-conscious email that said some great things about Pomme de Terre, as they are fondly known as in fancy France.
Apples are lovely, apples are nice…
I always thought it was strange that apples have this perception of being the most wholesome of fruits, and yet it was the APPLE that led to Adam and Eve’s downfall. So…there’s something kind of appropriate in turning the deceptively wholesome apple into a crinkly, creepy ornament. I’m not sure why shrunken apple heads had their zenith of popularity in the 1970s, but with the DIY aesthetic that’s been booming for awhile now (I’m looking at you, Etsy), I figured the time was ripe for a tutorial for the Gothtober masses. Start now and you can have oodles of tiny, devious faces looking at you from every corner of your house by Halloween. I taught a class on making shrunken apple heads this summer at ScareLA in Los Angeles and one attendee told me she was planning to make a wreath-like necklace of shrunken heads. I can’t even begin to imagine how fantastic that is going to look!
The Gothtober masses couldn’t be happier with this opportunity to dehydrate as many “heads” as possible, thanks, Professor Chadwick!
