She talks to wolves...

2009 was a pretty awesome year for the Interstitial Arts Foundation: Interfictions 2 came out, they released some excellent fiction for free online in their Annex, and we had a successful auction of interstitial art featuring some amazing creations. I hear they also had some pretty fabulous Salons in New York and Los Angeles, but this Georgia lady wasn't able to make any of those. (Here's for an Atlanta-based Interstitial Salon in 2010! Who's with me?*)

By the by, if anyone is located in or near Indianapolis, Indiana: there's a Interstitial Salon happening at the Indiana Writer's Center on February 28th! See this post for access to more information.

I'm excited to see this interstitial arts movement flourishing, and more people both noticing and celebrating art that defies categorization. I'm delighted a support structure is growing for those artists who create works that side-step genre and dance between forms; I'm overjoyed that necklaces-what-are-also-stories and fiction-that-is-also-an-itemized-list and postcards-that-are-poems have a platform on which to glory. And I'm absolutely on board with the IAF's latest call: we need more people, more enthusiasm, and more ideas!

In short, we need YOU.

The Board and Working Group have already compiled a bit of a 2010 Wishlist and posted it on the main IAF blog, but I'll reproduce it for you below:

Post more regular news, reviews, events, and promotion of interstitial artists and their work.
Establish a forum for interstitial artists to exchange ideas, collaborate, network, and brainstorm.
Create an online art gallery.
Feature guest bloggers on a regular basis.
Organize an interstitial art symposium.
Begin work on Interfictions 3.
Generate a wider engagement with the interstitial art community through co-sponsored events with other artists & organizations.
Hold more salons in towns across the U.S. & in Europe (Please visit our new How to Host an IAF Salon page!)

Each of these items is a solid prospect for perpetuating and heightening the momentum the Interstitial Arts Foundation now has. I'm completely game for assisting in an Atlanta Salon - and you can easily get started on one of your own, with the tutorial already available on the website.

But what else should be added to that list?

I'm considering ways to get interstitial art in general (and Interfictions in particular) involved more academically. My ideas are still largely inchoate; however, given my current status as a graduate student, this is definitely an area where I'd like to focus some enthusiasm and elbow grease.

But come, bring your thoughts and suggestions! Bring your enthusiasm! You can comment here or join in the discussion on the original IAF post. And, if you've ever wanted to volunteer with the IAF, now's the time to speak up!


This entry was originally posted at Livejournal on February 15th, 2010. You can comment here or there.

Did you want to receive a holiday card from me? If so, and if you haven't commented yet, hie you to this post! (Also, if you wanted to send me a card, but don't have my address, ping me there as well.)

I'm sending cards out sometime soon, so don't delay.



Also, all of the auctions for the Interstitial Arts Foundation expire today! There are some remarkable, lovely things going for remarkably low bids:



ktempest talks about all the remaining pieces here at her journal and challenges us to raise just $400 more for the IAF in its last day of auctions.

Can we do that? With items like the above on the table, I'm pretty sure we can. But when you add in the below final action, I'm certain of it:



That necklace is utterly gorgeous and really captures some of the feeling of "To Set Before the King" by Genevieve Valentine, the story that inspired it. I wish I could snag it for myself, but I'm already strapped this holiday season. You should go out and win it in my honor!*


* Just in my honor: you don't have to give it to me or anything, obviously. Though that would be nice. ;) Ha!

For your Black Friday safety and pleasure, I exhort you to stay at home! If you have the need to throw money at shiny things, please consider doing so at IAFauctions.com. Not only will you be bidding on remarkable, one-of-a-kind items, but you'll be donating to a fascinating cause: the transgressing of borders, the breaking of genres, and the creation of art without categorization. I'm a fan of that kind of artistic freedom; aren't you?

Behold the tiny promo-pics of the auctions currently running below! If curiosity moves you, hovering over the image with your mouse will reveal the title of the piece and clicking will take you directly to the auction pages:

And now, to repeat myself from last week (mostly because I have to work all day and the rest of the time I'm neck-deep in a paper about Irish folklore and the Wildes):

In case you needed more evidence that interstitial art is worth the plunge into weird and uncharted seas, remember that you can read several stories for free at the IAF Annex. I never did get to mention the ultimate offering: "Quiz" by Eilis O'Neal, and it was another of my favorites. So, tell me, "Which is harder to get rid of: a wicked stepmother or a frog that insists you keep your promises to it?"

Also, the introduction to Interfictions 2 by Henry Jenkins has been put up over at the IAF's website: "On the Pleasures of Not Belonging." I heartily recommend it as it's quite fascinating.

The auction is in full swing! I know I promised to post this round-up on Friday, but the best-laid plans of cats and women... a nine-hour shift at the Paycheck Factory ate my day. Here I am now, though, to enthuse with you about the gorgeous images and pendants and shiny things up on the auction block over at IAFauctions.com.

(Hover over the pictures for the title of the piece and the story from Interfictions or Interfictions 2 they're based on! Click on the image to see the piece better, find out more about it, and, of course, to bid!)

The IAF Annex has been continuing apace these past couple weeks, bringing us further examples of engrossing fiction that denies categorization, instead sprawling web-like across our concepts of narrative and genre.

In "Stonefield," Mark Rich has developed an unsettling piece: a ghost story, perhaps, of time and place… or maybe a rumination on a type of American Atlas. Click on the excerpt below to read the full story:

“Days at the drafting table had provided such neat mental constructions - perfect lines and angles within which he could situate himself, to feel measured and squared… he must have slipped away from sensing the roundness and fullness of the world.”

This past Tuesday saw the release of Kelly Cogswell's "For the Love of Carrots" and "The Luxembourg Gardener," a short fiction and poem inextricably wound. Kelly's piece is innocently pornographic, in a way, an ode to sensation and misapprehension and the ridiculously feared animalism of taste and touch. It's also provocative: of thought, of laughter. Click below to see for yourself:

"Work dried up after the crash. My magazine folded, and the creditors came around demanding the office furniture and telephone and rent. They got one chair, a cancelled stamp, and a hundred and twelve copies of the second edition of Honeypot, which hadn't sold as well as the first. "And why should it?" Betsy asked. "Nobody's into poetry. Especially in the language of bees. They could be saying anything."

There are only two more weeks remaining in the Annex! Chris Kammerud's "Some Things About Love, Magic, and Hair" goes up on October 27th, and "Quiz" by Ellis O'Neal will be released on November 3rd. November 3rd, by the way, is also the release date of Interfictions 2. Have you pre-ordered your copy yet?

So many things to post about - yesterday's Annex story, the flooding we experienced here in Georgia last week, nattering about writing - and no time to do it in! I have Richard III and Henry IV breathing down my neck this week and it's a struggle to prevent Shakespeare's plays from eating me!

I would like to bring your attention to something near and dear to me, though, so I hope you'll forgive me if I just crosspost something whole-hog from the Interstitial Arts Foundation's site:

The Interfictions 2 Auction, sponsored by the Interstitial Arts Foundation, is well underway, with over forty artists committed to creating original pieces of art based on the Interfictions anthology series of original interstitial writing. We’re seeking a few more volunteers to help with the web aspect of the auction.

Web assistants will help the web manager with getting each of the items listed on our WordPress-driven auction site throughout October, November, and December 2009.

Do you have:

1. Basic HTML and/or CSS skills. Even if your main experience is just creating blog posts, you know enough to help with this aspect. More advanced web designers/editors are welcome as well.
2. Basic to Intermediate photo editing skills. We’re very much in need of people who can color-correct and polish the photos so items look their best. We can also use folks who can help with the tedious task of cropping/resizing all of the photos so they fit into the auction template.

We’re hoping to get enough volunteers that no one person will have to spend more than a few hours a week on their tasks. And if you can only give us time for a week or two, we’d still love to have your help! Volunteers can work from anywhere in the world as long as you have email and can access Flickr and iafauctions.com.

If you’re interested in volunteering, please contact iafauctions at gmaildot COM by email (and cc. us at info at interstitialarts dot ORG) and let us know what your skills are and what level.

* * * We are also seeking an Auction Project Manager to oversee all aspects of the work from now through December, and would be happy to hear from you at the edresses above. * * *

Related Links:
Interfictions 2 Auction Announcement – http://iafauctions.com/interfictions-2/
Auction Call to Artists – http://iafauctions.com/interfictions-2/call-to-artists/
Interfictions Auction FAQ - http://iafauctions.com/interfictions-2/faq/
Interfictions 2 Table of Contents – http://www.interstitialarts.org/wordpress/?p=80
IAF Fundraising Announcement – http://www.interstitialarts.org/wordpress/?p=94
The IAF Mission – http://www.interstitialarts.org/wordpress/?page_id=5


Please, if you've any fragment of time and possession of skill to help, do so! This is an excellent Foundation of a great group of people doing something remarkable. It'll be worth your while!

Yesterday, the Ides of September, heralded the beginning of something wonderful and strange: an online showcasing of interstitial writings. You see, Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak received so many remarkable submissions for Interfictions 2 that they simply couldn't whittle their selections down to only the number of pieces that would fit into the book. And so, in a truly interstitial move, they decided to bleed past the borders of bound paper and publication limitations into the world of digital press. What that means for us is another entryway into the world of interstitial art via a smorgasbord of liminal hors d'oeuvres.

Behold: the Interstitial Arts Foundation's Online Story Annex!

Sept. 15: Genevieve Valentine, “To Set Before the King”
Sept. 22: F. Brett Cox, “Nylon Seam”
Sept. 29: Kelly Barnhill, “Four Very True Tales”
Oct. 6: Ronald Pasquariello, “The Chipper Dialogues”
Oct. 13: March Rich, “Stonefield”
Oct. 20: Kelly Cogswell, “For the Love of Carrots”
Oct. 27: Chris Kammerud, “Some Things About Love, Magic, and Hair”
Nov. 3: Eilis O’Neal, “Quiz”

It is uniquely appropriate that we begin our annex with such a literal and literary feast as Genevieve Valentine's "To Set Before the King." Her deft interweaving of fairy tale tropes with practical cooking techniques will send a shiver down your spine and redistribute your perceptions of archetype and fortune.

While you're visiting the Annex, be sure to check out the rest of the new Interstitial Arts Foundation site! There are some great new features.

Hello! If you've a bit of a donation to spare and are interested in helping out the interstitial arts, please read the following post - because Small Beer Press is fabulous, they've extended the deadline for sending in a donation and subsequently having your name printed in Interfictions 2 as a sponsor to today, July 31st, 2009!


The Interstitial Arts Foundation understands that it takes a community to produce a work of art, especially interstitial art. The way that people come together, the labyrinths they walk among each other, meeting and parting, sharing pieces of themselves and encountering re-mixed and -constituted fragments of themselves as those pieces are shared deeper in the community, fusing and re-fusing ideas and inspiration and works in progress: this is the very heart of interstitiality. Interstitial can't happen in a vacuum or a homogeneous zone: only where people come together can interstices and inter-genres and interzones spring into being.

The IAF has enacted this belief again and again: first, by being. Again by building multiple anthologies based on interstitiality. Again by calling for artists to create multi-categorizable wonders, to eradicate borders and just create. And, finally, in their latest endeavor: offering the community the chance to directly support interstitial artists by private patronage.

From the official press release:

"We’re asking you to sponsor not just a book, but an idea - the idea that artists need to be able to express themselves freely and directly to their audiences, without the restraints of conventional genre limitations."

Please, follow the link to the press release and find out how you can become a private patron of art without borders. Since some levels of sponsorship will see your name printed in Interfictions 2, I urge you to look over the information soon: the anthology will be finalized and sent to the printers by June 30.

Artists! Creators! Various makers!

The time approaches for a new auction to benefit the Interstitial Arts Foundation! This Fall will see the publication of Interfictions 2, an anthology of interstitial writings-- pieces of art formed of words, but exploding the boundaries of story, poem, list, fiction, genre. No boundary is safe! Nor should we concern ourselves with the safety of such borders, for they are membranous things and meant to be liminal. (Great work has already been done in this area through Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writings and the auction of last summer inspired by the pieces therein.)

In last year's auction, readers and authors took the stories from Interfictions and rendered them in wearable art form. As I said before:

Through the alchemy of word and imagination and raw materials, Mia crafted evocative poem-pendants, Elizabeth Genco knotted intoxicating skeins of glittering black beads, Helen Pilinovsky invoked a terror of rats in black stick pearls, and so many others conceived of and brought into the world so many shiny things. Even I found myself moving to select beads, thread wire, and execute in necklace form the tale of a girl and her lost brothers.

This year, the Interstitial Arts Foundation is crossing their own previously-erected borders and opening the auction up to all manner of portable art! Fancy turning out a pendant, necklace, earrings, or other jewelry item? Fantastic! Delight in weaving fiber, knitting yarn, crocheting fancies? Brilliant! Maker of bags? Shaper of masks? Binder of books? Creator of paper? The IAF wants your beautiful wares inspired by the stories in Interfictions 2!

Now for the tricky part: the auction will run concurrently with the book's release. But never fear! Intrepid artists can still read stories beforehand so their art is well inspired: simply go to this website and cycle through until one of the story excerpts catches your fancy. Then fill out the form and soon you'll be shaping wire or clicking needles or heating metal as inspiration flits on the heels of prose.

Relevant reading:
The Interstitial Arts Foundation's press release.
The Call to Artists page where you can request a story.
The Interfictions 2 auction FAQ.
Read more about the intersitial arts on my journal.

Last year, I participated in a marvelous exercise in interstitiality: an auction of remarkable jewelry inspired by stories collected in Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writings. Through the alchemy of word and imagination and raw materials, Mia crafted evocative poem-pendants, Elizabeth Genco knotted intoxicating skeins of glittering black beads, Helen Pilinovsky invoked a terror of rats in black stick pearls, and so many others conceived of and brought into the world so many shiny things. Even I found myself moving to select beads, thread wire, and execute in necklace form the tale of a girl and her lost brothers.

This fall will see the publication of Interfictions 2 and, with it, another fundraising event for the Interstitial Arts Foundation. Once more, they are putting out the call for creators to donate liminal art so that such art -- visual, aural, whatever wondrous creations fall through the cracks of easily codified existence -- can continue to be fostered. A self-fulfilling dream.

Right now, they're looking for volunteers to help run this fundraising event smoothly. They need project managers, web assistants, photographers, and more. Check out this post by Tempest Bradford (coordinator extraordinaire and excellent contributor to the maiden voyage of Interfictions) and see if you can't lend a hand. And thank you if you do!

N.B. The painting to the left is by Alex Myers and was chosen by the IAF to be the cover for Interfictions 2. It is entitled "e" and is part of his art as commodity series.