Merry-Fucking-Xmas

I'll be out of town for a few days, looking for reindeer to share my shroom stash with as I mount their racks, so I'm leaving this little slice of Christmas cheer to disturb and throttle your brain into weirdsville.

It's quite possibly the most unsettling thing I've ever posted here, and most assuredly a Seed from Hell that I never want any part of.

You've been warned:

Mark Powell

Mark (seen here at the H.R. Giger Museum) is a 25 year old painter and sculptor from Melbourne, Victoria Australia.



The majority of his sculptures I'll be featuring here will be the miniature scenarios of gore and mayhem that he calls Dream Dioramas. From his website he states:

"I have been working more or less in total isolation for several years, focusing primarily on sculpture. My sculptural works are essentially miniature tableaux where moments are suspended in time. These are moments in dreams, in phantasms..."

Although the themes are somewhat similar, each elaborate piece contains endless tiny details and surprises with each viewing. In fact, several of the photos I've included are small zoomed-in sections taken of a larger work.



Within these scenes of torture chambers, cannibals, morbidity, and horrific creatures there is an odd kind of beauty and elegance that's hard to adequately describe. Nightmarish to be sure, but presented in such a way as to be enticing, making you want more.



































Besides his website, his work can be found on his MySpace page, and on Flickr.

Jeffrey Knight Potter

J.K. Potter is a photographer and digital format artist that works in many fields, including horror, fantasy, science fiction, CD covers and various personal projects.



Initially, he was known exclusively for innovative designs using only B&W darkroom techniques and hand-tinting to achieve amazing and bizarre imagery. Jeffrey now also works with computer programs, expanding his repertoire, while still retaining the disturbing and vivid images he's been known for through many years of intense work.



Mr. Potter has been commissioned to provide designs for films such as 'Shadow Of Doubt' and 'Necronomicon: Book of the Dead', as well as several others in production.



In the arena of books, his illustrations can be found in the fiction publications of J.G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, Poppy Z. Brite, Lucius Shepard, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, and Stephen King. Stephen King, in particular, is a huge fan of his work, once stating: "...when it comes to imagination, J.K. Potter and I are soul brothers".



There are two main sites, JK Potter & The Blue Dot that feature his work, among a few others with various galleries.

Wayne Douglas Barlowe

Mr. Barlowe is an artist from Glen Cove, New York with a unique vision and style, often incorporating alien-like environments and creatures--or descents into the bowels of Hell and Occult symbolism. He is the son of Sy and Dorothea Barlowe, a well-respected pair of natural history artists.




Wayne attended the Art Students League and The Cooper Union in New York City. While in college he apprenticed in the Exhibition Department of The American Museum of Natural History.



His first major recognition came from a book he conceived, illustrated and co-authored in 1979, Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials, which was nominated for The American Book Award and the Hugo. The American Library Association voted it Best Book For Young People, and it was chosen Best Illustrated Book of 1979 by the Locus Poll.



For a decade following this first work, he produced over 300 book and magazine covers and illustrations, as well as editorial paintings for Life, Time and Newsweek. Barlowe's second book, Expedition, a natural history journey to another world, consisted of forty paintings, one hundred black and white illustrations and two hundred pages of text, and was published in 1990 by Workman Publishing. It received extremely favorable reviews and was nominated for the Association of SF Artist's 1991 Chesley Award. Expedition was voted a 1991 Best Book for Teenagers by The New York Public Library.



Mr. Barlowe's paintings have been exhibited at The Bronx Museum of the Art's, The Orlando Science Center, The New Britain Museum of American Art, The Society of Illustrators, The Atrium at Park Avenue, The Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut and the Hayden Planetarium in New York. In 1984 he was instrumental in organizing and co-chairing the first SF art show in the history of the Society of Illustrators. The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe, an art retrospective, was published in 1995, along with a limited edition print entitled Elytracephalid, from Morpheus International.



Two screen-savers utilizing his paintings were released in 1996, also from Morpheus and HarperCollins released Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy, a sequel to Barlowe's first book. In the summer of 1996 Barlowe and James Cowan, publisher of Morpheus, created a development company called Xenophiles, Inc. with the purpose of developing imaginative multi-media properties.

Its first creation, XENOZOO, was sold first to Playmates Toys, and then to Fox Kids Network. Barlowe designed the Artifact, the principal aliens and their homeworld for the two-hour TNT BABYLON5 movie, THIRDSPACE, which aired in the fall of 1998. He contributed alien creature and character designs for the animated 20th Century Fox release, TITAN AE and designed creatures seen in GALAXY QUEST for Stan Winston Studios.



In 2000 Barlowe executed pre-production drawings for BLADE 2 and creature/character designs in 2002 for HELLBOY as well as HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN. 2003 brought the next installment, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, to his drawing table for which Barlowe once again executed concept art.

Wayne's next book, which was released by Morpheus in January of 1999, is Barlowe's Inferno, a dark and unique vision of Hell. Inferno represents a shift in both Barlowe's thinking and rendering toward a more classical, less narrative, approach.



Of the book, director James Cameron (TITANIC, ALIENS) has said: "Wayne Barlowe's Inferno is an awesome visual work, taking us into a contorted landscape of the damned which Dante himself could never have imagined." In concert with the book's release, Morpheus has published a limited edition giclee, a poster and a bronze created by Barlowe.



In the summer of 1999 Barlowe began work on a screenplay to accompany his art book. In November the completed screenplay entitled INFERNO: REBELLION IN HELL and the book were sold to Fox Feature Animation. In 2001 Barlowe followed up on his first Inferno book with a second venture to Hell entitled Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno. This bound portfolio contains 18 new paintings further fleshing out the universe. Barlowe contributed creature designs for Activision's console game DEAD RUSH in 2003.



In 2006 he executed pre-production artwork for THE PRIEST and HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY as well as the highly anticipated film, PARADISE LOST. He also rendered preliminary studies for Relic Entertainment's PROTOTYPE, an upcoming XBox 360 title.



Barlowe works at home with his wife Shawna McCarthy, well-known editor and literary agent, and their two daughters Cayley and Hillary. His novel, GOD'S DEMON, will be published in October 2007 by Tor books. His art and products can be found on his main website, as well as a secondary site, God's Demon. Be In Art also features a few of his works.