Emilie Autumn is a singer-songwriter, poet, violinist and an artist. She loves tea, leeches and the Victorian era. She is a descendant from the Liddell family (as in Alice Liddell, the real Alice in Wonderland) on her mother's side. Her father was a German circus performer. She began learning the violin at the age of four and left regular school five years later with the goal of becoming a world-class violinist; she practiced eight or nine hours a day and read a wide range of literature. She began writing her own music and poetry at age thirteen or fourteen. A classically trained musician, Autumn draws influence from plays, novels, and history, particularly the Victorian era. She incorporates sounds resembling Victorian machinery such as locomotives, which she noted was "sort of a steampunk thing". Autumn describes her music and style as "Psychotic Vaudeville Burlesque." She alternatively labels her music and style as "Victoriandustrial", a term she coined, and glam rock because of her use of glitter onstage. She incorporates handmade costumes, fire tricks, theatrics, and a female backing band.
I created the "What is Goth" website as resource for Goths and anyone wanting to know more about the Goth culture. I was inspired to create the website after looking for Goth information sites and finding that what was out there - was not what I had in mind. The sites were ugly, miss-informed and dated with limited information. As I Goth myself, I knew a fair bit about the culture but, that being said - I still ended up doing heaps of research for the site. I wanted to have examples of every type of Goth fashion, music, home decor, art and movies with lots of pictures and links. Making the site was very time consuming but it was something I was passionate about and driven to do. Viewing the sites statistics and getting emails from people about the site makes it all worth it. I am glad the site has become so popular and that people are enjoying it. The sites popularity has inspired my to create this blog with articles and reviews about the things that Goths love. I hope you enjoy this blog and feel free to become a part of it!
David Firth is a film maker, animator and musician who was born in Doncaster, UK in 1983. He started making animations after he was given a camcorder when he was 13. You might have heard of his Flash animation Salad Fingers. Salad Fingers is one of my favourite Flash animations. This cartoon became widely noticed when it was posted on the front page of a Flash animations site called Newgrounds. David Firth created Salad Fingers in 2004 and in 2005 it ranked in “top ten” for the pop culture phenomena for that year.
David is a surrealist and his creations are mostly based on dreams and mental illness. He prefers to create when he is tired as he says that tiredness helps to bring on random thoughts.
There are a number of websites that try to dissect the meaning of each and every episode of Salad Fingers. Most of the websites state the obvious. They talk about how Salad Fingers is green and has long salad-like fingers which he uses to fondle various objects because he likes there textures and how he derives pleasure from pain. They also say that he is mentally ill and talks to and names inanimate objects. One website goes so far as to say that Salad Fingers was the victim of the “Great War” and lives in a post-nuclear world where the trees are dead and there are few survivors.
Salad Fingers is what Firth is most famous for, but he also creates music as a member of several bands. Two of the bands are The Grape Digging Sharon Fruits and Locust Toybox. He describes his music from Locust Toybox as“electronic music that's melodic, fun and sometimes quite ambient.” He has made four albums with this band and they can be downloaded for free from the band’s website http://www.locusttoybox.co.uk/.
Firth also makes stop motion animations, but I much prefer his Flash works. Funnily enough, although most of his works are created in Flash, David has said that he doesn’t really like Flash because he doesn’t like the “Flash look”. He prefers the look of Macromedia Director. He says he uses Flash because it’s quick and has a small download size. Another Flash animation of his that I like is Spoilsbury Toast Boy. Have a look at an episode of it at: http://www.fat-pie.com/spoilsminus2.htm.
I like the visual style and mood of Firth’s animations. I love the different dream-like worlds that he creates. Most videos and animations have a strong basis in reality, where as Firth is not ashamed to completely dive into the subconscious realities that, like in dreams - accept the abnormal as if it were the norm. In that way his works may be compared to those of other surrealist artists such a Salvidor Dali. I like Firth’s animations because they deal with subjects you don’t normally see people touch on. I also like the way he uses the sound for his animations. He draws inspiration from the feeling of a particular song and tries to create an animation to accompany it – sort of like a music video. This elevates the sound to a central feature of the animation rather than just background noise. He creates some of the music himself and also uses music from bands such as Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. I think his animations are very creative and funny. I find surrealist works that deal with the subconscious and feelings to be an inspiration to me.
Ray Caesar is a 3D digital artist. Although his works are created in the same way movies like Shrek are – his works look more like strange and wonderful oil paintings of bygone eras (from Georgian to Victorian to the 1950s). That is one thing that sets this artist a part from others. - you can't tell how his art is made. He not only creates beautifully creepy other-wordly scenes that look like paintings but he actually creates mini worlds with hidden secrets in them that only he knows. For instance, the furniture in the scenes has drawers and inside those drawers are secret objects that the viewer is not always given permission to see. And underneath the beautiful dresses that adorn his characters, are stitches and scars and anatomically correct bits.
If you were to read his biography on his website you will find that he, as he says 'much to his parent's surprise' was born a dog in London on October 26th 1958. His family later moved to Canada where he still lives. He went to art school and had various jobs such as (and in his own words) 'designing horrible buildings in architectural studios, working in medical art facilities, digital service bureaus, suspicious casino computer game companies, eventually working at computer modeling, digital animation and visual effects for television and film.'
The job that haunts his subconcious and influences his art and life though - was working in a children's hospital. For 17 years he did various jobs for the hospital such as 'working in the photographic department that documented such things as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, all manner of abnormalities in children and how they progress as they grow, he drew medical drawings of dogs and sheep in animal research facilities in the research center and over the many years worked with all the strange and unusual things one finds in such a place. One day he might have been working on an animation of the cryogenic removal of a tumor… another day he would have helped build a board game for a brain damaged child to asses the severity.' It is evident in his work how deeply this period in his life has affected him. Most of his works are of children often wearing bat or cat costumes and with over-sized heads and strange appendages. He says about the worlds that he creates, that he is creating a safe haven for these souls and their appendages and objects that come with them are a part of who these souls are. They are divine child-like creatures and their appendages are sort of like badges of honour like angel's wings that are there to protect them.
I think it is also interesting to note that Ray is a spiritual person who says that he has conversations with his deceased mother, sister and others. He has also had precognitive dreams and has had out of body experiences. Here is a recount of one of his experiences: 'When I was a child there was a lady who sat on a chair in the corner of my room. I never saw her come and go but she was often there when I was frightened or worried. She was kind and told me soft stories of things that are difficult to remember. I think she was always doing something with her hands like embroidery. My parents and family never spoke of her and sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and she would still be sitting there in the dark. I think I would like to meet her again one day when I am very very old and had enough of this world.'
Elizabeth McGrath is a sculptor, painter and a singer who was born in Hollywood, California. Her work is classified as Pop Surrealism.
She was raised a Catholic by very religious parents – her mom wanted to be a nun and her father wanted to be a priest. But of course she wasn't the little angel mummy and daddy had hoped for – she was a typical rebelious teenager who considered herself 'Punk Rock'. She was kicked out of seventh grade. On her thirteenth birthday her parents told her that they were going to take her to a wild animal park but instead dropped her off at a southern Baptist home for girls. She has this to say about it:
'It was horrible. We drive up to this gate and it opens. My parents are telling me, “We’re just gonna get directions. We’re lost.” As they’re driving up, the gate slams shut behind us with barbed wire. Then I see these Christian weirdos coming. I went crazy and wouldn’t get out of the car. They finally dragged me out and locked me in the “G.R.” room -- the “Get Right With God” room. It was a little closet with religious tapes playing outside the door. It was hell. They said, “You’re here for a year.” I thought, “I’ll escape. They can’t hold me here.” But they could. It broke my spirits, but then again I was a bad kid. So, I don’t know what I would’ve been like had I not gone there.'
In an other interview she says that she was always getting into situations where she would have to do a lot of community service. She was sent to complete her community service with her dad who worked in the LA county morgue. She spent a lot of time in this morgue putting toe tags on people and filling out reports on how they died. Here is a bit about that in her own words:
'One of the jobs was just filing reports on how people died. I wasn't supposed to read the files, but of course I did. It was mostly pretty boring, but there were interesting things. After doing it for one summer, I started a tally on gang-related deaths vs. other weird deaths. Like, "they got shot, and they had spaghetti for dinner." Most of them were gang-related, but out of every 20 boxes of files, one box would have the interesting files. Weird stuff that happened: weird murders or body parts found or something, and half of those would be suicides. By doing this, I figured out that a lot of women committed suicide in their mid-to-late thirties or early forties. They all had cats and left suicide notes. Most of the men were in their late forties, and most of them did it in their garages, by hanging or shooting themselves.'
Elizabeth says she always dabbled in creative things but didn't do much art in her teenage years as she was busy playing in punk bands. She started out doing menus for her aunt's restaurant and flyers for her punk bands. Then she had a friend who worked at a printing company called Kinkos and she and her friend decided to create a magazine about bands that they liked, because they felt like the bands that everyone they knew liked were being ignored by the media.
Elizabeth had no formal art school training but did go to school for a year for fashion design. From there she started working for Trashy Lingerie in LA where she would get all sorts of weird requests to make anything from dolls, to fairy wings to giant surfing santas. It was there that she made a toy called 'The Junior Meth lab' which looked like a science kit but had crack pipes and things in it.
Her art, presumably the dolls and things that she made at Trashy Lingerie, got noticed by an animation director named Fred Stuhr who did a lot of the ealry Tool videos. He hired Elizabeth to do work on some videos and animation. She worked for Fred Stuhr Animation Studios and then another studio. She says 'I never really dreamt of doing anything in the artistic world until I started working on videos. That sparked all kinds of creative ideas for me. I couldn't stop.'
The work she is now known for are sculptures. She brings to life some very strange creatures that are inspired by religion, consumer culture, urban life, music videos, Edward Gorey, The Victorian Era and nature. They often look like taxidermy animals that are given tattoos and clothing. One of her works is a dear's head on a wall with tattoos and power lines for antlers.
