Art

Graz Photos

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Here are some more photos from my trip to Austria. These are all from the city of Graz, where the conference took place. They include the Schlossberg, the precipitous, fortified hill in the middle of the city.

Graz is 2 hours by train south of Vienna. Part of the reason for the time is that the railway has to wind through the foothills of the Alps. It is not far from the Slovenian border, and only a few hours from Zagreb by road. A lot of the big buildings in the city were built by Italian architects, which gives the city something of a Mediterranean feel. The courtyards are a particular feature of the old town.

City Hall lit up for Christmas

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This Year’s Card

~ Cheryl


I still have a few, mostly elderly, friends and relatives to whom I send cards. I always buy my cards from my friend Dru Marland. The design I chose for this year is shown above. So for everyone who isn’t getting a phsyical card, here’s your holiday greetings thing. May you have a fabulous end of the year celebration.

And if you fancy buying cards from Dru, you can do so here.

A Festival of Monsters

~ Cheryl

The University of Bristol’s autumn art lectures series will focus, this year, on monsters. It will cover Frankenstein, Gogmagog, dragons, and a lot more. The full programme is available here. I’m too busy to attend all of them, but I’m going to make sure I am available for Ronald Hutton’s lecture on dragons.

British Fantasy Awards

~ Cheryl

The short lists for this year’s British Fantasy Awards have been released. Obviously there are a lot of my friends up for awards, including obvious candidates like Neil Gaiman, Sarah Pinborough and Mike Carey. There are also a whole lot of people from our little South West community: Emma & Pete Newman, Jo Hall & Lucy Hounsom.

I’m pleased to note that Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Francesca Barbini, is up for the Non-Fiction award. That includes essays by both Juliet McKenna and myself. There is a review of the book in the new issue of Fafnir.

But what I am most pleased about is seeing Ben Baldwin in the list for the Artist award. Ben has done some great work for Wizard’s Tower over the weekend, including the covers for Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom (above) and The Green Man’s Heir.

Good luck, everyone!

Yesterday on Ujima – Sculpture, Gender Stereotypes & Dirty Computer

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s show was a bit thrown together due to my being in Oxford the night before, but I think I managed to make it work. That’s thanks in part to two great guests, and in part to the inimitable Janelle Monae.

My first guest was Harriet Aston who is a fellow member of a feminist SF discussion group based in Bristol. She’s a sculptor working mainly in industrial paper. She makes large figures that don’t yet move, but with enough magic might be persuaded to do so. We talked about how people view sculpture as compared to paintings, about theatre and the Greek Chorus, and about Harriet’s upcoming show at Centrespace. And because we are geeks we also talked about Catherynne M. Valente’s Space Opera, which is just as wonderful as everyone says it is.

You can listen to the first half of the show here.

In part two my guest was Natalie from TIGER (Teaching Individuals Gender Equality & Respect), a wonderful Bristol-based organisation that goes into schools and colleges teaching about gender stereotypes and how to resist them. TIGER has been running an art project with local young people that is going to be exhibited at Easton Community Centre for a month from the 19th. I will be one of the speakers at the launch event on the 18th. Natalie and I spent quite a bit of time talking about toxic masculinity and the need for a men’s movement to combat it. Obviously we also talked about those silly Trans Exclusionary people (who are neither Radical nor Feminist).

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

The music for the show came entirely from Janelle Monae. I played the whole of (the clean version of) her new album, Dirty Computer. I make no apologies for that, it is all wonderful.

Cover Reveal – The Green Man’s Heir

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Something else I need to do on International Women’s Day is celebrate living women, and who better to chose for that than my friend Juliet E. McKenna whose books I am honored to publish. Here, therefore, is the cover of her new novel, The Green Man’s Heir, which will be available once I have got a proof back from the printers and checked that it is OK.

Juliet has written about some of the inspiration for the novel here.

And while I am mainly talking about women today I should add that Ben Baldwin, who provided the art for the book, and for Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom, is an absolute joy to work with.

For #IWD2018 – Artemisia Does Snark

~ Cheryl

For International Women’s Day I want to feature one of my favorite women from history, the hugely talented 17th Century painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. This picture (currently owned by the Queen) is probably a self-portrait. Much more importantly than that, however, it is a response to this picture by another Italian, Cesare Ripa.

That is from Ripa’s famous work, Iconologia, and it is intended to represent an allegory of “painting”. The woman in Gentileschi’s picture is a physical embodiment of that allegory, sharing many of the iconographic elements. But there is one symbol that she has chosen to omit. I think you can probably spot it.

Well played, Artemsia, well played.

Beaumont as Athena

~ Cheryl

On the way home yesterday I shared a train with Jen Grove who showed me this image she had found in the archives of the British Museum. It shows one of the world’s most famous trans women as the goddess Athena. Given that I have been talking about Amazons all month, I thoroughly approve. Also it is great to know that she used that name. I understand that she went by Lea when she was working as a spy in France, but the name she uses here is far more grand so I shall use that in future.

I would love to see this picture on display as part of the BM’s LGBT+ Trail. It would also be nice to see a bit more respect in the official write-up.

Solstice Card

~ Cheryl


Yes, it is that time of year again. And because I am still in the Northern Hemisphere today is the Winter Solstice and a wintery card is required. If you were among the small group of people to whom I still send paper cards (mostly ancient relatives who don’t do the Internet much) this is what you would have got in the mail. The art is, as always, by my very talented friend, Dru Marland. You can find her Etsy shop here.

Happy Solstice, everyone! Thanks for being here over the past circuit around the sun.

Scythians at the British Museum

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments


As I had to be in London all day Saturday I took the opportunity to travel a bit earlier than I needed on Friday and check out the new Scythians exhibition at the British Museum. This was a research trip, because many people believe that the Schythians were the original source of the Amazons legend. More of that later. First the exhibition.

The most obvious thing you see when you go in is that this exhibition was mounted with the assistance of the Russian government. Many of the items on display are from the Hermitage, and there is a lot of material about how early research into Scythian history was encouraged by Peter the Great. There’s even a big portrait of Peter to emphasize the fact. Of course Scythian territory is now almost entirely within the Russian Federation, which is a bit of a nuisance for those of us who can’t read academic papers in Russian, but I rather suspect that the Scythians are “Russian” in much the same way as the Celts are “English”.

The other obvious thing is that the Scythians were very fond of bling. There is loads of lovely gold jewelry on display. Personally I prefer some of the horse coverings. The Scythians clearly felt that their horses should look as good as they did.

I very much enjoyed getting to see all of this, but I was a little disappointed with the way that the write-ups tended to reinforce Western ideas of gender stereotypes. There are a couple of places where the text mentions that Scythian women rode horses, and could be fierce warriors. However, Scythian women are almost always shown wearing full-length dresses which are completely impractical for horse riding. Where a set of women’s leggings are displayed, they are described as “stockings”.

There is also an unspoken assumption throughout the text that warriors are men, despite the fact that large numbers of burials of Scythian women have been found with horses and weapons. One does have to be careful not to assume this means a “warrior grave”, but some of these women show clear signs of being wounded in face-to-face combat (as opposed to being cut down while running away, which is the usual way of dismissing wounds as evidence of women warriors).

I couldn’t see any mention of the Amazon legend in the exhibition, though a couple of books on the Amazons were on sale in the gift shop. The exhibition book excuses this by quoting Herodotus as saying that the Amazons regarded themselves as distinct from the Scythians. However, the term “Scythians” is about as precise as the term “Celts”. It refers to a group of peoples united by common language and culture. It seems entirely likely to me that all Herodotus meant by this was that the Amazons he met refused to acknowledge the local Scythian king as their overlord.

Anyway, I am glad I went, and I did pick up a few valuable bits of information from the exhibition. Now I need to get round to writing a presentation for next February.

Today on Ujima – Art, Literature, Feminist SF and Vampires

~ Cheryl

Today’s show was full on culture, starting off with the fabulous Amy Powell from Bristol Art for All, an amazing organization that looks to provide cheap or free art courses that anyone can be involved in (even a total klutz like me).

Next up we had Amy Morse from the Bristol Festival of Literature previewing all of the fabulous events they have lined up for this year. The Festival is bookended by Bristol Horror Con (on Friday 13th, naturally) and by BristolCon (on the 28th). Of particular interest will be Stories of Strong Women – Unconventional Heroines on Friday October 20th. This features not only me, but also Lucienne Boyce, Virginia Bergin, Jean Burnett and Becky Walsh.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Talking of Virginia, she was my guest for the third segment of the show. Most of the discussion focused on her latest novel, Who Runs the World, which is a YA take on the classic “world without men” trope.

And finally I welcomed Anna and Orla from the Food and Theatre Company who specialize in immersive dining events. In October they will be staging Loco Lost Boys in the tunnels beneath Temple Meads station, where the audience can enjoy a fine meal and hopefully avoid becoming a tasty snack for the local vampires.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

It being Black History Month, I decided to have all of the music from amazing black women who are no longer with us. We did the whole gamut from Josephine Baker to Whitney Houston. Here’s the playlist:

  • Aretha Franklin – Respect
  • Josephine Baker – Blue Skies
  • Billie Holiday – These Foolish Things
  • Big Mamma Thornton – Let Your Tears Fall Baby
  • Bessie Smith – A Good Man is Hard to Find
  • Ella Fitzgerald – Everyone’s Wrong But Me
  • Memphis Minnie – Doctor Doctor Blues
  • Whitney Houston – Love Will Save the Day

On the subject of Ujima, we are running a fundraiser for disaster relief in Dominica tomorrow night at the Watershed. It is 10:00pm – 1:00am, so not the sort of time I can be in Bristol, but if you are around please consider dropping by.

Picacio Sales for Disaster Relief

~ Cheryl

Hugo-winning artist, John Picacio, is making some of his work available in a sale to benefit disaster relief for those affected by the earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico on September 7th, and victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. There are five original works of art available for sale. A portion of the sale price of each one will go to the disaster relief effort of the purchaser’s choice. For details of the items available, see John’s blog.

Dragon Hunting in Bath

~ Cheryl


As I mentioned earlier, I took yesterday off. Donna Hanson was in Bath as part of her GUFF Trip (that’s the fan fund for taking fans from Australia and New Zealand to Worldcon). I offered to pop into town and show her around. She’s seen a lot of Bath before, but there was something going on that I wanted to see, and I figured it was right up her street as well.

The Victoria Art Gallery is running an exhibition called Here Be Dragons. It features dragon art by a number of well known illustrators of children’s books, including Chris Riddell, John Howe, Axel Scheffler and Cressida Cowell. The illustration above is a bad photo (by me) of a LEGO mosaic based on an original piece by Cressida Cowell.

The exhibition also has a companion app that allows kids (of all ages) to hunt dragon eggs around town. The “eggs” as posters with pictures of the eggs on them. The app has a compass that will point to a selected egg, and tells you how far away it is. When you have found the poster in question you use the phone’s camera to prove that you have found it. I was especially interested in this because it uses some of the same technology as I’m hoping to use for app ideas I have.

The exhibition is open until October 8th. It isn’t huge, but it is fun, especially for kids.

Jukka Rintala Exhibition at Didrichsen

~ Cheryl

Didrichsen is an art museum in a wealthy suburb of West Helsinki. It was originally the home of Marie-Louise and Gunnar Didrichsen who collected art and cultural artifacts. As they got older they decided to turn their home into a museum so that everyone could enjoy the things they collected.

The particular passion was sculpture, and the museum has several Henry Moore pieces as he was a personal friend of the Didrichsens. There is also work by Eila Hiltunen who is most famous for the Sibelius monument in Helsinki. Much of the sculpture is in the garden. Inside there are some paintings, including one Picasso. There is also a small collection of ancient items from Latin America and the Far East.

However, the main item in the museum right now is an exhibition devoted to the work of artist and fashion designer, Jukka Rintala. He’s made a lot of dresses for models and actresses, and has also done quite a bit of theater work. Here are some photos. Enjoy!

Camille Auer Exhibition – Trans in Finland

~ Cheryl

Today’s Helsinki Sanomat had a huge feature on Finnish trans artist, Camille Auer. Her photo took up the whole of the front page of the culture section, and there was a big article inside which is reproduced on their website (in Finnish, obviously). Naturally I had to visit the show.

The exhibition is fairly small, and is mostly installations, which may or may not be your cup of tea. The two biggest are both about the process of medical transition. One is made up of empty packaging from the vast amounts of medication that trans people have to take. It might not seem much on any one day, but it builds up quickly through your life. The other is made from (heavily redacted) letters from various medical people. They are all in Finnish, but I knew the sort of things they’d say.

Trans medicine is evolving slowly, and these days most Western doctors don’t think that merely being trans makes you insane. However, in order to get treatment, you have to prove that you are mentally disturbed because you are unable to live in your assigned gender. It is a degrading process.

In Finland things are worse on at least two counts. Firstly the country has naming laws, so if you want to change your name you have to apply for permission. Secondly, because Finland’s law about changing your legal gender is very old, it is necessary to prove that you are infertile before you can do so. That’s not necessary in the UK because our law is more modern (though still very much lacking compared to the newer Irish law).

Any trans people passing through Helsinki for Worldcon might want to pop in to give Camille some support, but mostly I hope that lots of Finnish people check it out. Their laws need an overhaul.

The exhibition, rather delightfully titled Antiphallic Dick, is at the Project Room at Lönnrotinkatu 35. It is open from 11:00-18:00.

Creative Histories – Day 1

~ Cheryl

As promised, I am in Bristol. I have not yet got to explore the zoo, but I have listened to four interesting papers and made a bunch of new friends. I have also discovered that you get very well fed at the zoo. Or at least you do if you are a human (or masquerading as one). I can’t vouch for anyone else.

Creative Histories is all about engaging with history in creative ways, not all of which involve fiction. The first session today was all about more visual arts. We learned about a project to make textile arts based on stories found in the historical archives of Hertfordshire (which featured alchemists, pirates and witches). We also heard about preserving the artistic heritage of Wiltshire, including making pottery in the style of the Bronze Age “Beaker People” (because Wiltshire looks down its historical nose at most of the rest of the UK in the same way that Egypt does at Greece and Rome).

Session two was all about children’s fiction. We saw a great interactive ebook project based on a YA novel about the Spanish Civil War (which sadly sank without trace because Apple’s big plans for interactive ebooks never amounted to much). There was also a really powerful paper about the evolution of children’s historical fiction in Australia which had some of us in tears. Also bonus Shaun Tan mention.

Tomorrow I get to do my paper. I am in a great session. I have Sonja who is currently based in Newfoundland but is a newcomer to Canada. She’s talking about writing about Colonialism when you are a person whose culture was colonized. And I have Joanne who is talking about teaching history though comics. Her paper is titled, “Punching Hitler” and she has an awesome batgirl-logo necklace.

Basically all is well, apart from the flamingos who have been barracking loudly from their enclosure just outside the windows.

Chris Riddell at Mr. B’s

~ Cheryl

On Monday I took myself into Bath in the afternoon for an event that was intended mainly for kids. However, some of us refuse to grow us, and anyway Chris Riddell put in a few things clearly aimed at adults.

The event took place in Bath’s Masonic Hall which is, as you might imagine, a weird-looking place. On the stage there was a throne decorated with arcane symbols. Chris elected not to sit in it, but he did draw himself doing so.

The way Chris does events is a lot of fun. He asks for questions from the audience in advance (written on postcards), then draws randomly from these and finds something to draw to illustrate each of his answers. Several kids went away very happy with sketches he had done for them.

I didn’t put in any questions because I wanted the kids to be able to get the attention, but I did buy some raffle tickets because they were being sold to support Mr. B’s charity of the year, Bath Welcomes Refugees. I had fully intended to put mine back if I won anything, but then Chris threw in the sketches he had done while he was waiting for the event to start. The one of him in the Masonic chair came up and it occurred to me that I would love to win that. And guess what? I did.

More surprise was to come. The top prize was to have your portrait done by Chris live at the event. It was won by my friend Marjorie, who was delighted to win and even more delighted at this drawing of her as a princess.

All in all, it was a very successful day. My thanks to Chris and the staff at Mr. B’s.

New Judith Clute Website

~ Cheryl


My dear friend Judith Clute had a brand new website. For a bunch of complex reasons it has been easier to have a new domain, and that means it is not yet appearing high on Google searches. Judith needs people to link to the site to get it noticed, hence a bit of promo from me.

The site includes the original artwork that Judith did for the new Amanda Palmer & Edward Ka-Spel album, I Can Spin a Rainbow, which I have included above. Head over to Judith’s site to see the high res version.

Today on Ujima: Bookshops, Podcasts, Art for Health & Drag Queens

~ Cheryl

Despite the fact that England Women were playing South Africa in Bristol (of which more later) and it was a beautiful sunny day, I took myself off to the Ujima studios to do a show. I love you folks that much.

First up was my good friend Alistair Sims who runs Books on the Hill in Clevedon. We talked about bookselling, tea, and some of his personal projects. If you want to buy some of their specialty tea (which I highly recommend), you can do so here.

My second guest was Gwyneth Rees whom I met at the Sound Women event last week. She’s been getting into podcasting, and we talked about that. You can find her Woman of the Week podcast on iTunes. I suspect that you’ll be hearing more from Gwyneth in the near future.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

In the second hour I began with Joy Johnson who is an art therapist. I had no idea anything like this existed, but apparently it is quite common. Joy doesn’t have her own website, but this is the Art & Heath South-West site that I mentioned during the interview.

Finally I was delighted to welcome Donna La Mode who is part of the Drag Queen Story Time project. Donna and her friends will be at Bristol Pride on Saturday telling more stories. If you can’t make it there, the crowdfunding appear that we mention on the show is here. Every little helps.

You can listen to the second half of the show here.

The music for today’s show has a very summery theme.

  • In the Summertime – Mungo Jerry
  • Under the Boardwalk – The Drifters
  • Sun Is Shining – Bob Marley
  • Long Hot Summer – Dizzy Gillespie
  • Summertime – Sam & Dave
  • Farewell My Summer Love – Michael Jackson
  • Summer Night City – Abba
  • Hot Stuff – Donna Summer