Randy | October 23, 2013
In 1890, American artist Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1850–1923) painted the family portrait that is the subject of today’s Dark Sentiment. It depicts the artist, his wife, and their daughter Effie, who died shortly before it was painted. Even a cursory examination reveals the mother to be shrouded in shadow while the child and everything associated […]
Randy | October 22, 2013
Katy Towell’s Childrin R Skary website describes its creator as, “… a graphic designer, writer and illustrator in Portland, OR with dreams of one day being the scary old lady in the house about which all the neighborhood children tell ghost stories.” I don’t personally consider children to be skary, regardless of spelling, but then […]
Randy | October 21, 2013
The title of an article by Hadley Freeman published last August in The Guardian refers to Warren Zevon as “… the man behind the demons”. I will be forever grateful to Ms. Freeman for the revelation because I was wondering who to blame for that. The title of today’s Dark Sentiment is taken from that […]
Randy | October 20, 2013
The lore surrounding iron goes back into antiquity, and many are the beliefs that trust it to have the power to ward off evils from the supernatural realm. The intention to keep the dead at rest is why cemeteries, and even individual graves of a certain age, are often contained within iron fences – both […]
Randy | October 19, 2013
The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers is a short film by Beat Pictures, in association with JMM Film and Kompass Pictures, starring Rupert Friend, Tom Mison and Keira Knightley. A darkly comic fairytale set somewhere between the worlds of Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm and Tim Burton, The Continuing and Lamentable […]
Randy | October 18, 2013
On Sunday (Julian calendar) the 4th day of August in 1577, a thunder storm of wrath of God proportions unleashed its fury between the morning hours of 9 and 10 o’clock over Suffolk, England. Within four weeks of that event, a slim volume titled Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the parish church […]
Randy | October 17, 2013
“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain” ~ William Faulkner This poem was inspired by personally experienced actual events that played out way back in the mid 1980’s. I have never been so happy to be in the grip of the worst physical pain I have ever experienced, […]
Randy | October 16, 2013
“During the second half of the nineteenth century, death was the ultimate act of nature—beyond human control and ever present. The death rate of infants were so high that babies were often not given names until they were one year old, and the death of infants were often unrecorded. The ubiquity of death, due in […]
Randy | October 15, 2013
Samuel Dombey was a black man living in New Orleans following the Civil War. Times were tough in the south, but Sam continued to bring money in by digging graves. He did an excellent job and his price was much lower that the competing gravediggers in the New Orleans area. In time, the lower prices […]
Randy | October 14, 2013
“My role, which began as designer, transformed into maker, sculptor, scientist, celebrant, dresser and death-wear facilitator. Garments for the Grave is a practice that has emerged from previous project work, and uses skills from the fashion realm whilst incorporating elements of funeral celebrancy. It is a practice that functions as ritual engaged through the creation […]