the best of storytellers

this man will forever be one of my all time favorites.
for more Nick Cave and the Death of Bunny Munro.

artist of interest - danny treacy*

in the throws of costume making insanity, i stumble across this brilliant reminder.... a costume can be made from just about anything. found objects and a little ingenuity are all you really need. these refashioned, recovered clothes pieced together and photographed by Danny Treacy are prime examples.

isolation + the sea*

photo from Undergroundkent

wish i was here [right now] .... in an abandoned sea fort off the coast of england.

information on the maunsell army sea forts may be found on Atlas Obscura [my new favorite online haunt], + Undergroundkent. also of interest is steven turner's Seafort Project, "an artistic exploration of isolation".

Crossville Treehouse

i always dreamed of living in the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse when i was a kid... that or the Addams Family house, or perhaps on 1313 Mockingbird Lane with the Munsters.... or in a lighthouse like shirley temple in Captain Jaunary. i still want to live in a lighthouse, or pretty much any of the aforementioned residencies.

...but back to treehouses.
if you adore treehouses + are in the tennessee/nashville area, be sure to make your way to crossville. in crossville you'll find Horace Burgess's 97 foot, ten story, dream of all my dreams, behemoth of a treehouse. i don't care how far out to your way it is, it's more than worth the trip. i will defintely make it back there someday. i especially love what i like to call the tornado staircase [because it looks like hundreds of wood scraps frozen in a tornado, devouring the side of a giant treehouse].

you may find directions + reviews at roadside america.

more photos may be found here.

artist of interest - madge gill*

this is madge gill. she was a self taught artist who began obsessively drawing mediumistic works after the death of her daughter in 1919. for the next 40 years she completed over 4,000 drawings. according to wikipedia...

She claimed to be guided by a spirit she called "Myrninerest" (my inner rest) and often signed her works in this name. The figure of a young woman in intricate dress appeared thousands of times in her work, and is often thought to be a representation of herself or her lost daughter. She drew this woman in various moods and appearances, almost never showing her entire body, and with her clothes interwoven into the surrounding complex of lines and patterns.

unfortunately i couldn't find much information on her, but i intend to continue searching. i did mange to find random images of her work throughout the internet, some of which are still being auctioned off to this day. according to one biography i read, she rarely sold or even displayed her works. she attributed them to Myrninerest and considered them belonging to her.

additional biographies may be found here, here, here, + here.

of interest*

i know i've been quite neglectful of my wee little craft blog as of late. no worries, my momentum has taken shape + loads of craftiness is on the way. in the mean time, here's the first of what will become an added element here on *baking with medusa* ....the of interest* post. consider it a source of random favorites, poignant research + for lack of a better word... inspiration.

today's selection is Cake Wrecks, when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong. i stumbled across this blog a few months back. for some reason, most likely insanity, i forgot all about it. luckily i was re-reminded of it's awesomeness [thanks natalia]. i think i might actually start going to baby showers again, if it meant experiencing the hilarious absurdity of a darth vader - it's a girl cake. the world seems like a much better place, just knowing that a cake like this even existed.

be sure to read the cake wrecks commentary here.