Edward Gorey once illustrated classic fairytales from The Brothers Grimm, retold in sparse but humorous language by author James Donnelly. How did I not know this?!? What a perfect combination. If I had a kid, I would buy this for them straightaway. 
In case you couldn’t tell, the top picture shows Little Red Riding Hood meeting that big, bad wolf in the forest before it runs off to do some mild cross-dressing. The second picture is Rumpelstiltskin, that little gnome-y scoundrel, dancing in the forest and celebrating the victory that will never be his.
Art
Moki, teach me how to disappear.
I just spent an hour tracking down the origins of this piece. I first saw the eerily calm, untitled image floating around on Pinterest. It’s by Berlin-based artist Moki, and oh man am I glad I figured that out. Because Moki is amazing. This waterfall sleeper is from the series “How to Disappear,” a name that feels like it was plucked from somewhere inside my ribcage. Her work is amazing—soft, textured, dreamlike. She’s also chosen to remain anonymous, painting under the simple nickname Moki, keeping her real identity hidden. Disappear? She’s already invisible. 
On her website, she has several other projects, like “Turquoise” and “Caves” and even a series on treehouses. All her work seems to touch on similar themes and swim in that weird place of magical realism. (I know in art it’s called surrealism… but the tone of these images seem closer to a page from a novel—they lack the flatness that so many surrealist images have. They are so layered and human. They tell stories. Damn, even that rock looks human.) 
So lovely. See more here.
Herbal cures for whatever ails you.
Blogger and artist Catherine of Wolf Eyebrows took to Instagram this summer for a 30 days project in which she sketched medical ailments and their natural remedies. The results are just great—albeit a little bit gross. But I don’t find that off-putting. There is so much humor in each pretty little sketch!
On a related note, I’m learning how to make herbal tinctures. I’ve dabbled in foraging—though who in Maine hasn’t gone out looking for fiddleheads? It’s practically a rite of spring—but herbal medicine is new to me. I love the idea that we can cure ourselves with leaves and petals and roots rather than pills and needles and plastic. Admittedly, that idea is particularly attractive at the moment, seeing as I don’t have health insurance, but there’s something deeply appealing to this highly independent, mildly prickly lady about being able to fix my damn own body without calling for help.
The History of Pretty: Ophelia, the girl who just couldn’t catch a break.
Poor Ophelia. Life wasn’t kind to you. And by life, I mean Hamlet—or rather, Shakespeare, because he’s the one who gave you so few lines to speak, so little personality. Faded, lost, mad, drowned. No wonder painters couldn’t stop painting you—who doesn’t love a tragic ingenue? In the words of your brother: “Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness.”
Your youth and beauty made madness appealing and your virginity made it all the more intoxicating. Artists went wild, turning your tragic character into fodder for their romantic paintings. This (above) is perhaps the best known Ophelia image, pained by John Everett Mills in 1852. It even inspired my own flower-bathing experience.
Here is Ophelia looking alive and rosy, holding some posies. I love the expression on her face here—she looks strong, almost defiant. This painting is titled “Gather Ye Rosebuds or Ophelia,” which references both the famous Robert Herrick poem and Shakespeare’s doomed character for a lit nerd double-hitter.
While not as famous as many of the other Ophelia depictions, this painting by Arthur Hughes is my personal favorite. She looks so frail and so childlike. Look at that vibrant, sinister, poisonous green! And the cute little toadstool. I find this piece enchanting and strange in a surprisingly modern way (doesn’t it look like it could be by a contemporary artist?). Also, do you ever wonder why Ophelia is always depicted with flowers? It’s not just because she’s a wilted, fragile symbol of femininity…
Ophelia had relatively few lines in Hamlet, but her madness is marked by gibbering about flowers, herbs, and their meanings. She sings and babbles to her brother Laertes:
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts… There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o’ Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.”
There are some modern renditions of Ophelia, but she seemed to be most popular during the mid-1800s, which makes perfect sense. This was a time of Romanticism and Impressionism, of experimenting with new forms while reawakening old stories.
The rich visual language of Ophelia creates an instantly recognizable figure. Who else would be swathed in a white dress, floating in water, surrounded by greenery and flowers? Contemporary artists seem to prefer to photograph Ophelia rather than paint her. It’s an easy shoot to set up, and the results are made all the more dramatic by the literary references. (Plus her fate is really tailor-made for modern feminists, since her madness is predicated by a very real virgin/whore dichotomy set up by her father and her lover. Ouch.)
Admittedly, this last picture has nothing to do with Ophelia, except that it was shot by Claire Rosen (same photographer as the one above) and it is gloriously awesome. Rosen has an entire series of Fantastic Feasts with beasts, as well as a series of fairy tale-inspired images. They’re all lovely. Go take a look.
More in History of Pretty:
I love Alphonse Mucha
The most beautiful sculpture I have never seen.
Two Nice Things: Yumi Okita makes textile moths, reminds me of the Limberlost.
Moths! They’re the redheaded stepchild of the butterfly family (no, that’s not science, but it feels true anyway). They’re ugly and furry and yet, in Yumi Okita’s hands, they’re kind of… cute? Cuddly? Fuzzy and warm? 
Not since I read A Girl of the Limberlost (a novel by naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter published in 1909) have I been so taken with moths. The book tells the story of a young Indiana girl named Elnora who sends herself to school with the money she makes selling insect specimens. She goes into the Limberlost swamp—what a wonderful, fantastical name for a real place!—where she finds all manner of strange flora and fauna. 
I think Elnora (again, that name!) would love Yumi Okita’s textile moths. She makes these beautiful patterned winged things from yarn and string and fiber. You can’t tell from these pictures, but the moths are actually huge—each wing is about as big as a hand. 
I particularly like these three, but Okita creates insects (and flowers) in all different shapes and sizes. They mimic real life, but they’re infinitely more beautiful than the average brown moth you see dive-bombing a lightbulb. Just look at the patterns! And I’m really loving this particular color scheme right now. Rose and dust and dusty rose and soft browns and warm ivory. See more of her work here.
History of words gets visualized in Minna Sundberg’s lovely arboreal chart.
Check out this amazing illustration, which shows the growth and spread of “Old World” in a properly old school-lookin’ linguistic family tree. Stunning, isn’t it?
As a side note, Finno-Ugric is the strangest language group! I lived in Hungary for six months and learned so little Hungarian—I remember it took me weeks to properly pronounce köszönöm (thank you) and even then, I still preferred to just say the short version (sounds like “kussie”) for fear of embarrassing myself. It’s such a difficult language, and related to so few other European tongues. I always loved to hear it spoken—to me it always sounded twisty and jagged, yet musical, like a piano played too fast. Oh, Magyar. I miss you.
To be fair, I’m also terrible at languages in general, despite being fascinated (a little in love with, honestly) words and their sounds.
{Via}
Instagram on my wall.
Sometimes people email me about products they want me to write about. Usually, to be totally honest, I delete the emails or send them a quick “thanks but that doesn’t fit” note (I’ve been trying to respond to PR pitches more, especially after reading this great piece about gendered work and the public relations business from Jacobin, which made me think twice about clicking delete). But anyway, I was recently contacted by the folks at Instantly Framed, and because I’m an avid instagrammer I decided to try out the app (you can find my Instagram account here… in case you were wondering).
And I’m super glad I did! It took about five seconds to pick a photograph from my phone and order a framed print, which was delivered in two days. While I admire minimalist decor, I’m truthfully a maximalist myself; my apartment is covered in prints and pictures, weird textiles and pointless knickknacks. But I wouldn’t have it any other way (what are walls even for, if not to cover in pretty pictures?!).
Today I hung the above picture on my wall. I took that picture myself (on my iPhone… obviously). It’s the view from the top of Mount Kineo, a mountain that is located on a small island in the middle of Moosehead Lake. Up north, Maine is wild and green, scarcely populated and full of larger-than-life moose that chill out by the water as if they’ve got nothing better to do. (Did you know they have hollow hair, which enables them to swim, despite the fact that they’re big, huge, heavy, actuallykindofscary animals?) I love it up there. I often wish I lived further north, though I know there are few jobs to be had and a lot of economic depression. It’s a hard place to make a living, and though Maine is amazing, it’s still a state with a lot of issues. But I consider myself lucky to live here, and fortunate to have access to so much natural beauty. In the summer, I drive north whenever I can, to camp out at Lily Bay State Park and spend my days soaking in tea-dark lake water.
But I’m getting off topic. This is a cool app. I would never recommend it on my blog if I didn’t really, really like it. So, if you need some new wall art, you should check it out. And if you use the code CIKELLEHER10 you’ll get $10 off your first order (though December 15). Cool, eh?
Your body is a wonderland.
What I’m Reading:
Mary Roach’s delightfully morbid, tastelessly funny Stiff. I’ve read Bonk before, Roach’s book on the scientific study of sex, and this one is similar, but I think much better. Stiff is all about cadavers (that word sounds too much like a food item for my taste, yet I like it more than “dead bodies”). How we care for them. How we use them. How we abuse them. In the introduction to the book, she describes the process of becoming so deeply obsessed with a topic that she pursues it for years—despite the fact that many people find her work off-putting and strange and her professional interests disturbing, even threatening. “I’m a curious person,” she explains. “Like all journalists, I’m a voyeur. I write about what I find fascinating. I used to write about travel. I traveled to escape the known and the ordinary. The longer I did this, the farther afield I had to go. By the time I found myself in Antarctica for the third time, I began to search closer at hand.” The world is full the strange and unfamiliar things, and Roach wants to find them, to peer closely at them, to play doubting Thomas and prod at their wounds. Reading this, I was reminded of a quote by essayist Kathleen Hale: “I never look for things to grab me. They just do, and once they do, the obsessions usually continue until I’m so sick of them—or of myself for enacting them—that suddenly, and with a sense of great relief, I’m repulsed.” When I read this passage, I wanted to find Hal and shake her. “You nailed it!” I would yell in her face. “That’s exactly exactly what it’s like!” To be obsessed, to be a voyeur, to be relentlessly curious to the point where you begin to wonder if it’s really healthy—I think maybe that’s what it is to be a writer.
What I’m Admiring:
To stay true to theme, I’ve been really digging the work of artist Travis Bedel. He use anatomical imagery as the jumping off point for his intricate collages, turning the human body into a lush and unsettling menagerie. I imagine if one dissected a nymph, or a citizen of Narnia, they might find this waiting inside. It’s a lovely visual depiction of the circle of life (dust to dust and earth to earth and guts to flowers and the worms crawl in and all that) or an eerie reimagining of what lies within. I personally think his work is very pretty, but then again, I consider Stiff light bedtime reading, so perhaps I’m a terrible judge of these things. (If you like his work, you can buy prints online at Society6 and Etsy.)
Hope Gangloff has been spying on me.
It’s been a strange, exciting, unnerving couple of weeks. I took up smoking again, I quit smoking again. I stopped drinking, then I drank all the wine. I followed my gut, and I ended up dizzy, sick, happy, relieved.
But seriously, on the whole, things are going really, really well.
I made the decision a few weeks ago to leave my full-time job as managing editor at Maine magazine and strike out into the world of freelance. Not because I didn’t love my job—I did, which is what makes leaving so crazy and hard—but because I love writing even more. I’ll still be freelancing for the magazine (hurrah!) and I’m also going to have more time to work on personal projects, like my short stories and my poetry and this here blog (double hurrah!).
But being home all the time also means I spend most of my day in various states of odd-dress/undress. It means I slouch around in sweatpants for hours before deciding suddenly that it’s time to break in that pair of heels that never fit. Too lazy to put on an outfit, I end up in heels and a quilted down vest, chewing on the end of a honey straw and trying to decide whether it’s worth it to put on pants (the answer is usually no).
I was going to say something more profound about Hope Gangloff’s languorous young ladies, but it’s late and I do have work to do tomorrow. Instead, I’ll just let them be.
She’s talented, that’s for sure. Check out Hope’s website here.
Feeling uncertain.
Trying to keep the wisdom of Too-ticky and Tove Jansson in mind today.
Katy Kelleher 
