News from Green Man Press

      This fall I’ll be appearing at two conventions: FaerieCon (Oct. 10 - 12) in Philidelphia and IlluXCon (Nov. 6 - 9) in Altoona Pa.

This is the second year for FaerieCon and the guest list is looking pretty spectacular: Alan Lee (and his wonderfully talented daughter Virginia), Brian and Wendy Froud, Ari Berk, Linda Ravenscroft, Kinuko Y. Craft, Michael Hague, Jessica Galbreth, Ruth Sanderson, Holly Black, John And Caitlin Matthews and veritable horde of great fairy artists and writers that there’s no room to mention right now will be there exhibiting their art and talking on panels. Robert Gould, the empresario of all things Fae wrote me with this great news:

FaerieCon is offering the Charles Vess / Green Man Press Community a 25% DISCOUNT on any ticket to FaerieCon International October 10-12 at Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. Don’t miss the chance to attend this amazing event, shop at the biggest collection of faerie themed products on the East Coast and meet Alan Lee, and all your favorite Faerie artists and authors.
OK, I WANT TO GO TO FAERIECON!  HOW CAN I GET THE 25% DISCOUNT?

Just visit our webstore now and use the following discount code on the final payment page to get 25% off on your passes! The code is:  fc2008cv

http://www.faeriecon.com/vess.html

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In November I’ll be back in Pennsylvania for a mammoth gathering of even more artists at the worlds first convention devoted to illustration. I will be presenting my lecture on Fantastic Art as well as participating on several panels as well as gabbing with more illustrators that I could imagine fitting into one room.

Here’s the link to this one:

http://www.illuxcon.com/

I hope that I’ll see some of you who drop by this board at opne or the other of these two events!

Best,

Charles

In mid July, Karen and I headed off for two weeks in Sweden and Finland. I’d been invited to be a GoH at FinnCon in Tampere, Finland over the last weekend in July so we took the opportunity to see a part of the world that neither one of us had ever been to before. Gorgeous weather throughout the trip made all our traveling easier. First we spent several days in Stockholm, a city filled with public art everywhere you looked.

Both high and low…

After several days exploring Sweden’s capitol we trained down to Jonkoping, the home of  The John Bauer Museum. Bauer is one of my favorite artists and huge inspiration in my own work. The museum itself is filled with room after room of finished paintings as well as drawers full of his sketches and preliminary drawings.

http://bauer.artpassions.net/

On our first day in Jonkoping we were met by artist and designer, Nicolas Krizan who showed us around the town and the lovely forested countryside where Bauer used to walk, always carrying his sketchpad. Here we are on ‘The John Bauer Trail’. I certainly would not have been surprised to see a troll or two hiding behind any one of these trees.

See what I mean?

We spent two nights at The John Bauer Hotel down the street from the museum where there were many delightful connections to the artist. Here I am on the carpet in the hallway woven with a replica of one of his most famous images.

Then we drove up to Sundborn, the home and studio of Carl Larsson which has been preserved much the way it was in his own time. Here I am at the gate ready to enter Larssonland when the battery on our camera ran out.

Its just as well, as they didn’t allow any photography taken within the house. Later, standing in his studio which was filled to the brim with his gorgeous artwork, I felt like I could almost reach out and touch the man himself.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Larsson

Then it was off to the Stockholm airport and a short flight over the sea that separates the two countries. We were met by Pasi, our congenial guide and companion for the next several days . Before attending FinnCon we were able to squeeze in a visit to yet another favorite artists studio and home, Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

His home is built on a dense, tree covered spit of land that juts out into a large lake. Huge timbers, many of them carved, tapestries of his own design and many, many examples of his art covered the walls of the house.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akseli_Gallen-Kallela

Even his private boat dock was personalized with a hand carved weather vane:

This carving was on the front door of a museum where we viewed more of Gallen-Kallela’s work as well as many other fine Finnish artists.

I want one of those!

Then we spent three delightful days at FinnCon. The convention was presided over by Marrianna, The Supreme Queen of Everything, her sister, Karoliina and Liisa (not pictured). On the right though is Pasi, without whom our stay there would not have been nearly as much fun.

The event, which is free to all, ran very smoothly with plenty of ‘down’ time to get to know some of the other guests, Farah Mendlesohn, Petri Hiltunen and M. John Harrison especially.

After several days of intense conversations, art presentations and newspaper interviews it was time to train down to Turku, the oldest city in Finland. Our host there, Tero, a pillar of Finnish fandam, showed us around his lovely city.

We were joined by Johanna for our day long tour. Karen is hiding behind the camera.

Soon though we were aboard a giant cruise ship that threaded its way back through the thousands of islands that dot the sea between Finland and Sweden.

And then we were heading home, not quite ready to start our lives back up again.

Best,

Charles

The Locus Magazine Awards were given out on Saturday and I was named ‘Best Artist’ of the year. I really wanted to be at the awards ceremony out in seattle but on-going work on the ‘Midsummer’ statue kept me close to home instead. At the very last moment I sent the lovely Amelia Beamer (editor of THE SF/Fantasy trade magazine) my acceptance speach. It was so very late that I don’t know yet if anyone managed to read it at the ceremony but here it is:

Anyways, such as it is, here’s my acceptance speech in absentia for my first Locus Award, for Artist of the Year (2007):

“As much as I wanted to be here today and share the good times and splendid conversations with you all, I just couldn’t manage to squeeze any time to do so out of my crazy schedule. As some of you may know, I’m deep into sculpting and pouring the bronze for a fountain installation based on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Right now my co-workers and I are wrestling with the nine foot figure of Titania, who is proving to be a very demanding Queen of the Faeries indeed.

Surprised doesn’t say half of what I feel right now. I’m humbled actually, to, at least metaphorically, be standing in the midst of the fine group of writers and artists that have won these current awards, as well as all those that have preceeded us.

Day after day every one of the nominated artists (and many more besides) face the same scary, blank sheet of paper that I do. We all struggle to scribe some sort of cohesive marks onto paper or canvas or whatever the chosen medium is. All of us have the same goal: that of translating our inner visions onto that surface and thus sharing it with you, the reader. Sometimes the artist that pursues that goal can be more successful than not. This year, judging by this gracious award, I’ve been having a very good time.

Thank you all very much.”

And here’s a link to the full list of winners:

http://www.locusmag.com/2008/Locus_Awards_Winners.html

Charles

After so long of a concentration on 3-D work it was fun last week to take a break and actually sit at my drawing board.

The opportunity arose because I was asked to be a part of a group effort to help raise needed funds for the ‘Totoro’s Forest’ project (more on that a bit later). I can still remember the magic of first viewing ‘My Neighbor Totoro’, so many years ago that it was only available on pirated Japanese language VHS tapes. The director’s art and story however completely transcended any language barrier there might have been. I thought then and I am even more certain now, that the world would be a better place if there were more minds like Mr. Miyazaki’s in it.

Sayama Forest, located outside of Tokyo, served as the inspiration for this exceptional film (my very favorite movie, animated or otherwise). Over the intervening years it has become encroached upon by housing developments. For many years now there has been an on-going effort from Mr, Miyazaki and the Totoro Forest Foundation that he established to purchase as much as possible of the acreage there and place it into a national trust.

Now, Pixar art director, Dice Tsutsumi has asked a group of artists to “paint their own personal Totoros”. Over a hundred artists, mostly from the animation field have responded. A exhibition of some 60 of these pieces will be held at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum this fall. A handsome art book will follow. All of the art will be auctioned and whatever profit is raised from those sales as well as the book will all go to the foundation and the purchase of more of that sublime landscape.

All the very amazing art for the  ‘Totoro Forest Project’ is now available to be viewed:

 http://totoroforestproject.org/

Do yourself a favor and go take a long look at all the lovely images over there!

I want to thank Dice and more importantly Mr. Miyazaki for letting me play in his lovely sandbox and hopefully give some of that magic back to the world.

The extensive website featuring most of this newly created and crazy good artwork will go live soon and I’ll provide a link to it then.

Enjoy,

Charles

Welcome back! In our last exciting installment the Titania figure had fallen over and two months worth of work was gone with the wind.

The next day the sculpture team started pulling the clay off and stripping the figure down to her not as substantial as we had hoped metal armature. Under all the damaged clay and wire we discovered that the central 2 inch steel supporting pipe had broken under the weight of the clay. This time around we welded additional steel support bars onto that pipe as well as the much more solidly constructed metal framework.

This was again covered in layers of rolled newspaper then shrink wrap and wax to prep it for the re-application of all that clay. This time our metal skeleton held up and after another two months of patient manipulation of clay Titania began to take shape. Again!

She’s looks sort of like an Alien Queen here, doesn’t she?

The only piece we had managed to save from her previous incarnation was Titania’s face which I reapplied to the figure. Now all she needs is a bit of hair to cover her brow…

Lordy, is that leg wrong! David Spence, my co-sculptor worked his artistic magic on that bit of anatomy and finally got it just right. Of course, we couldn’t have managed without the help of first assistant supreme Liam Wolverton, who knew just where to put that piece of clay!

Pretty soon, there she was, all 9 feet and 1,000 pounds of clay of her…

We convinced the proprietor of our local wine store, Cathy Rose, that her features would make for a most beautiful Fairy Queen. Working from several photographs of her I sculpted a face that was welcoming but with just a touch of the haughtiness that I associate with Her Majesty, Queen Titania.

Then, after a few last touches like the added garland of roses in her hair we were finished, at least with the fun part: the sculpting.

Next comes the mold …

Our Queen is then covered in layer after layer of truly vile smelling rubber mold. After that a layer of tin foil is pressed over that same form, followed by an additional layer of hard rubber. After all those elements have cured the segments that you see here will be carefully labeled and then cut apart. Each one of those segments will then have about a quarter inch of hot wax poured into it and allowed to cool and harden. Those wax sections are peeled off the rubber molds and then dipped into a liquid ceramic, multiple times. After those ceramic molds harden they will be placed into ovens where the wax is melted out, leaving room for the poured bronze to replace it. After all those sections of bronze are finished they will be welded together and then the joints left by that welding process will need to be ground down.

Its just as easy as that!

In my next post I’ll show a step by step of the bronze pouring process.

Enjoy,

Charles