[redacted] (series of 4)
by Kristin Ross

Mixed media art bookmarks with china marker, acrylic paint, original writing, duct tape, and glaze.

Based On:
“Valentines” by Shira Lipkin

For a tiny bit of introduction, I’m a freelance writer with a painting and crafting habit. I’ve been working with a lot of collage art lately, but Shira Lipkin’s story “Valentines” inspired these four pieces with all original components. The series of four bookmarks is called [redacted]. Lipkin’s story features a narrator desperately trying to catalogue information and my art centers around that idea, as well. I really connected with this theme; in our modern existence, we’re overwhelmed with information every waking moment and we’re constantly logging and processing it. In the bookmarks, the writing comes straight from my journal the day I put myself into the character’s shoes. The finished product represents the problems with memory Lipkin’s narrator struggles with and how both data and recollection can have a shattering effect on one’s identity.

Kristin Ross

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Still Standing
by Mia Nutick

Ceramic pendant, gold wash on gold.

Based On:
“Remembrance is Something Like a House” by Will Ludwigsen

Chimera Fancies are wearable poetry made of old recycled fairy tale books made into new art, my own chosen interstitial art form. For this auction I used an ARC of Interfictions 2, so the text on these pieces is both taken from and inspired by the stories themselves.

“Still Standing” is taken from Will Ludwigsen’s haunting story “Remembrance is Something Like a House,” a piece which spoke to me of persistence and redemption and the power of truth.

Mia Nutick

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1. Recipients of the anthologies promise to post a review of the book on their blogs/websites. It need not be a professional-level review, just tell the world what you think of the anthology as a whole, which are your favorite stories, that kind of thing.

2. Browse the images of art and jewelry we’re auctioning off and pick 1 – 3 favorites. They can be pieces whose auctions are going on right now, pieces that have already been won, or upcoming pieces. This set contains images of all the art, or you can browse by set here. Then share these favorites on your blog or social network of your choice. Tell your friends and family why you chose the pieces. Don’t forget to include a link back to IAFAuctions.com.

3. To enter, post one comment in this post for each of the places you mentioned your favorite pieces. So if you posted on your blog and on Twitter, make two comments. Blog and Twitter and FriendFeed? Three comments. Include links to the mentions so we can see and get excited. If you posted on Facebook and can’t link directly to it, just say so, we trust you! You get one entry for every mention, so the more you talk about the auction, the more chances you have to win. One week from today we’ll pick three winners via random number generator. Don’t forget to give us a valid email in the comment form. No one can see it but the admins and we’ll use it to contact you if you win.

Easy, right? So click here to find your favorite piece of art and spread it around!

The Child Empress of Mars
by C. Jane Washburn

15″ tall x 12″ long Art Doll – Mixed Media: wire, tape, polyclay, semi-precious stones, found objects, fur scraps, silk, acrylics.

Based On:
“The Child Empress of Mars” by Theodora Goss

I’m a doll artist blending natural and man-made materials to create mythic creatures. I loved this story and the way that making a piece of art for it stretched my boundaries (and hurt my brain! ouch). Making the Empress was both very fun and very challenging. I’m fascinated with seeing the ordinary as alien and the alien as ordinary in my art and this piece is a reflection of that as well as an illustration of a most excellent and thoroughly enjoyable story told from an alien point of view.

C. Jane Washburn

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First, take a look at all of the pieces we’ve recieved for the auction. Click the thumbnails for bigger pictures and descriptions or just hover for their titles:

It’s all very tempting, we know. The images in the gallery above are arranged in order of bidding start date, so it includes the few pieces whose auctions have ended. As to the others, we’ve listed the dates you can start bidding on them below. We may have a few extra pieces at the end, but this list represents the schedule of what we have on hand right now:

November 13: Still Standing by Mia Nutick
November 14: [redacted] (series of 4) by Kristin Ross
November 15: Dream of the Child Empress of Mars by Connie Toebe
November 16: Erzebet YellowBoy — Berry Moon, Bound
November 17: Lise Bernier — The Long and the Short of Long-Term Memory Book
November 18: Erica Olson — The Wildness Inside
November 19: Freddie Baer — A Drop of Raspberry
November 20: Sarah Evans — Party on the Moon
November 21: Ingrid Kallick — Untitled
November 22: M Panitch — Harmonium Mundi
November 23: Kate Schaefer — Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse
November 24: Ashly Nagrant — The Quiz
November 25: Sarah Evans — Valentines Jewelry Set
November 26: Laramie Sasseville — The Child Empress of Mars
November 27: Pam Noles — Berry Moon
November 28: Amanda Leetch — All Valentines Are One Valentine
November 29: Jonaya Kemper — A Chain of Memories
November 30: Kythryne Aisling — Valentines
December 1: Mia Nutick — What He Said

We hope you’re as excited about this art as we are. And we have a special surprise in store for next week’s auctions, so stay tuned and keep bidding!

Bee with Cleaver
by Lisa Bergin

7” needle-felted bee, made with wool.

Based On:
“To Set Before the King” by Genevieve Valentine

When I create sculptures out of wool, I usually let the wool inspire me. Creatures take shape out of wool roving as I poke and prod the cloud of fibers with a felting needle. The craft of needle-felting uses a barbed needle (like a bee’s barbed stinger) to enmesh loose wool fibers together into a structure. The more you stab, the tighter the fibers become, the more solid the creature.

This creature had a different genesis: the story “To Set Before the King,” by Genevieve Valentine. I read Valentine’s piece as a reflection on stepmothers; in it, a pivotal time in an au pair’s life is interwoven with a fairy tale about good maids and evil stepmothers, and a cook/butcher’s reflection on her/his work to turn a carcass into food. The language is spare and beautiful, the tale as bright and sharp as a thin needle, and then as moist and smooth as breathing. Reading it, I was especially struck by Valentine’s image of a golden dress, embroidered inside with bees: “When he zips the dress closed she can feel the bees spring to life inside the dress, a thousand tiny stings.”

In the sculpture inspired by this story, I’ve taken the bee image and merged it with the butcher’s thread of the short story. A bee stands with wings folded, one arm reaching behind her back to clasp a meat cleaver. When I turn her around, I chuckle at the irony of a bee with a cleaver, rather than a stinging point.

Lisa Bergin

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Heidi
by Sarah B. Evans

Glass beads and chain on braided black cords.

Based On:
“The Long and Short of Short-Term Memory” by Cecil Castellucci

As a student surrounded by people like Heidi everyday, she felt to me like a very real character who really deserved to be canonized in beads. The braided cord I used was for her particular hairstyle, which added quirk to her character and, I think, to the choker. The more colorful glass beads dotting the piece are for her memories, the things she so valued and that ultimately undid her: they’re colorful, vivid, and the faceted, chunky shapes of the glass were something I like here as not only a contrast to the darkness of the necklace, but to represent bits, fragments, of memory. The silver chain is for pretty, and in places, to represent Heidi’s memories tied to her mind, unable to forget anything. And the bit of frayed cord in the center is to represent the surgery, the severing of her hippocampus.

Sarah B. Evans

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The Animometer
by Carisa Swenson

Mixed media art made with antique pocket watch, acrylic paint, magnets, chain, steel wire, brad, jewelry bead, paper, illustration board.

Based On:
“The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper” by Jeffrey Ford

The inspiration for this piece arose from a short story within “The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper”- a woman realizes that her actions throughout the day directly influence whether the angelic or demonic army make headway in the eternal battle being played out daily on the walls of her bedroom. The woman eventually empathizes with the forces of Hell as they are reduced to occupying a tiny space of wall, facing annihilation at the point of angels’ spears, and begins doing little things each day to help the demons gain ground. Using a pocket watch shell seemed an appropriate fit for the piece, as it evokes the passage of time. Our thoughts, emotions and body are constantly changing, and what we idealized in our youth may be scoffed at or frowned upon with the advent of age, and vice versa. This piece does not advocate for one side or the other, but allows the owner to reflect upon the nature of our actions, and how often our decisions may appear clear to us, but upon closer inspection actually lead to consequences that are farther away from what we intended.

This piece is intended for display only, pocket watch does not close. The magnetized sides allow the needle to rest on one side or the other depending on how you’d like to display the piece. Please do not display near electronic equipment that may be sensitive to magnets!

Carisa Swenson

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Everybody Knows
by Emily Wagner

12 ounces of handspun yarn. Several kinds of wool, uncarded locks, mohair, silk, milk fiber, bamboo, cashmere, sparkle, and paper.

Based On:
“Valentines” by Shira Lipkin

When I read Shira’s story “Valentines” the image that immediately struck me was at the end, with the paper flying around the room in snowy drifts. I wanted to find a way to keep the protagonist’s observations together for her, and because I tend to think in fiber, yarn suggested itself to me. The more I thought about it the more I realized that this yarn had three sections, one for each of the Valentines, and from there I saw that the foods eaten at each place could be represented by the colors of the fiber. I gathered several different types of fiber, shredded several copies of the story, and carded them all together on a borrowed drum carder. I also hand wrote several of the lines from the notebook in the story and worked out how to spin these lengths of paper into and around the yarn. In a strange bit of synchronicity, the paper I chose for this piece of the yarn came from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which, Shira informed me, is strange, because she actually meant for the story to be set in Vegas, but decided not to make it obvious in the text. When I spun the yarn (single ply) bits of the story would fall and flutter and fly around my wheel, leaving my work space every bit as paper-covered as the character’s apartment at the end of the story. This yarn will change as you use it or wear it; the paper is going to continue to fall out a little at a time, much like memories.

Emily Wagner

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This week also marked the official publication date of the anthology we’re all here to celebrate: Interfictions 2 You can now buy the book from major retailers, discriminating indie bookstores, and online outfits like Amazon.com and Powells.com. If ebooks are your thing, head over to the publisher’s website to purchase an electronic copy.

Along with Interfictions 2: The Book! you can also read eight amazing interstitial stories in the Interfictions Annex (for free). Artists based their creations on stories from the book and the annex, so you should definitely check them out.

Now that the book is out, Interfictions authors are starting to give reading, including very odd and wonderful interstitial collaborations of words and music. Last night was the first. Check out this YouTube playlist of the performances:

To find out about Interfictions readings in your area, visit the IAF’s website.