FRUITING BODIES

"Fruiting Bodies" by Troy's Work Table. Carport chalking for Friday 16 January 2015.

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Charcoal, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, Crayola neon sidewalk paint.

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Inspired by the descent into the "tower" in the opening pages of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.

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I took some liberties with what Jeff describes. This is an extreme closeup of a scene, pivotal to the rest of the novel (and to a lesser extent, the two novels that follow).

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The "tiny hands," "golden nodules," "spray of golden spores," and "curling filaments" are all as I picked them up off of the page and imagine them.

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The "meat and chaos" is mostly mine. It's an interpretation of what is happening to the biologist (the narrator of the novel) as she descends into the "topographical anomaly" that she calls "tower" and the others call "tunnel." For me, the "meat and chaos" is as physical as it is psychological. It is the tower walls. It is the later meetings with the anthropologist and the Crawler. It is experience and encounter.

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For more pictures of "Fruiting Bodies," please visit HERE.

SUNRISE

Trees. Clouds. Saturated colors. North Hill of Puyallup. Morning of Thursday 15 January 2015.

NEON PAINT

So...

My dad bought me this kid's neon paint kit for Christmas. It's intended to accompany sidewalk chalk. It contains three colors of (mostly) concrete-friendly paint (neon blue, neon yellow, neon pink), three sticks of sidewalk chalk, a paintbrush, a small roller, and a paint pan.

I'm looking forward to what I can do with these paints in the carport the next few weeks, as well as at Frost Park in late spring, when the weather dries out a bit!

FOG

Trees. Field. Fog. North Hill of Puyallup. Morning of Wednesday 14 January 2015.

FOG

Trees. Fog. North Hill of Puyallup. Morning of Tuesday 13 January 2015.

FOG

Trees. Fog. North Hill of Puyallup. Morning of Monday 12 January 2015.

CREEPY CHALK

"Dad, why does your chalking always have to be so creepy?"

—The Child, on viewing the latest carport chalk art.

INDIGO MAN

"Indigo Man" by Troy's Work Table. Carport chalking for Friday 09 January 2015.

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Like Anton, Indigo Man is a character in The Nightingale's Stone by David Mecklenburg. Unlike Anton, however, the Indigo Man is a human, although a human who has been battered and abused and marginalized. He has found his place in the world, even if it is a liminal zone—working as a dyer of cloth in a birch forest.

His world is one scented with the piss used to activate the indigo and one of loneliness. He has been cast aside in some sense, but he is no monster. The difficulty of drawing him was in drawing his "deformities," thrust upon him by an abusive father, while allowing him to maintain some dignity.

As I read the novel, Indigo Man feels wild to me, perhaps even mostly naked. Perhaps only wearing stained breeches. But there is actually nothing in the text to support such a conclusion. So, I decided to draw him in sixteenth-century peasant garb. I think it a nice counterpoint to his "ruined sockets," "mushroom nose," "broken jaw," "harelip," "scarred cheeks," "shredded drum-skin of his face," hand that dangles uselessly, and "bandy legs." For me, it makes him less monstrous. Or, as the novel has it: "He was no monster, but only the culmination of mankind." (134)

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You can view more pictures of Indigo Man HERE.

LEGACY OF CAIN

When is it that King Saul becomes as though Grendel?

When is it that his heart turns toward murder, his hand toward taking the life of the beloved?

When is it that he becomes the monster who will break his own laws with the witch of Endor, who through her (and against her wishes) will summon forth the moaning spirit of Samuel?

ANTON

"Anton" by Troy's Work Table. Carport chalking for Friday 02 January 2015.

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I've been thinking about the monstrous a lot lately. Monsters are everywhere.

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Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son. Picasso's Minotaur, in his various guises. Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. ("I am Groot!") The various indifferent amoebic jellies of the Cthulhu Mythos—Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, et cetera. The Deep Ones. The beasts of the Old Testament—Behemoth and Leviathan. The beasts of the New Testament—the Beasts, the Four Horsemen, the Dragon. Jormungandr, world serpent, and his brother Fenris the Wolf. Grendel. Polyphemus the Cyclops. And so on.

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Anton is a troll (for lack of a better term to describe him) from The Nightingale's Stone by David Mecklenburg (and featuring Ada Ludenow).

Anton is illustrated in the novel, by the author, but I still decided to try my hand at him (only by referring to the text).

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I like Anton's "old world" monstrousness. He isn't a monster of the modern age—infecting or irradiating or driving one mad. No, Anton is a monster of story and song and appetite. He wants to eat. He needs to feed. He wants to play with his food for a while before he eats it. He wants to stave off his loneliness, even if only momentarily.

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You can see more of "Anton" HERE.