$20 Print for July

For the month of July I am offering $20 prints of my photograph entitled UNCLE SAM.  

This image was meant to be a kind of murder mystery, a crime scene where the police have discovered the dead body of Uncle Sam in the woods.  Who killed America?

I wrote the concept for this image during George W.’s first term as president.  Given our current economic crisis, this image still strikes me as strangely relevant.

Uncle Sam was played by my brother-in-law Tom Beggs, who also played the monster in FACE.  The police are made up of different friends.  One of the officers is my frequent cohort  Jason Coale.  The detective collecting evidence is Ry Brown, a local filmmaker.  The lead detective in the trench coat is actually my accountant Bryson Roberts.

We shot this image in a thatch of woods that Tom uses for deer hunting. My best friend and fellow photographer Kevin Sisemore helped me carry a heavy generator into the woods so that I could set up my strobe lights and fog machine.  Almost as soon as we had everything set up it started to rain. As a result, this was an extremely short photo shoot.  I had shot maybe 10 frames before being forced into a hasty retreat.

$20 Print For June

For the month of June, I will be offering a $20 print of the photograph titled BED through my website.  The idea of a monster hiding under your bed is perhaps the most emblematic of all childhood fears.

The little girl in the photograph is played by my daughter Shiva.  

The monstrous arms emerging from under the bed are from a giant Creature Reachers Halloween costume that I bought on sale the day after Halloween.

Hidden in the blocks on the floor are the words ‘DADDY’ and ‘NO’. This was meant to suggest that the real monster was in fact the little girl’s father.

This image was shot in my friend Joel Kraft’s living room.  Joel is a musician and songwriter.  He has a gentle and beatific personality that would have made him very successful as a hired musician for children’s parties. Before moving away to Portland, Joel was one of my most active collaborators.  It is Joel (and his human hand) crawling down the stairs in WOLF.  That’s Joel playing the boogeyman in REFRIGERATOR.  And CANDY was photographed in his backyard.

SNAKE

Hey kiddies! This is my new Horror photograph, called SNAKE. This will be my $20 print for the month of May.

This photograph was shot on a set I made in my friend Mikal’s living room. The snake is a giant foam and latex prop. The baby is my little niece Thea.

The snake is 16 feet long, and was donated to me by my friends at Fright Catalog. When the snake arrived in the mail, it was painted with a traditional boa constrictor pattern. I took the snake to my friend Chico to see if he would be willing to repaint it in a more stylized manner. Chico is a local art star in my hometown of Kansas City. He specializes in zombie paintings. I am a big fan of his work, and spend most Monday nights at his studio watching obscure Horror films with him and his friends.

I asked Chico for his opinion on how we might re-stylize the snake. I told him that it should reflect the mind of a child. He suggested we repaint the snake as a giant argyle sock. I swooned with the brilliance of this suggestion and told him to do it.

I returned to Chico’s studio a couple of weeks later, and the snake was completely repainted in black and white, as you now see it in the photograph. Chico had intended to add another layer of color and texture, to make the snake more believable. I stopped him, though. I loved the crisp black and white because It completely reminded me of Tim Burton.

I added to the snake a pink tongue that I made out of sculpey and a wire hanger, and a pair of sawed-off deer antlers as fangs.

The snake had a wire armature built inside. I positioned the snake so that it’s body would mime the symbol for Eternity. The shadow of the snake on the floor was meant to suggest an Ouroboros, the ancient symbol depicting a serpent swallowing it’s own tail and forming a circle.

Now a lot of you are wondering what the hell did I do to that baby to get her to cry like that? The truth is: nothing at all. In fact, getting my happy niece Thea to cry was the hardest part of the shoot. She was having a ball pushing herself across the polished floor of my set. Every few seconds I had to jump up from behind the camera to reposition her. My sister Becky – Thea’s mom – was there for the shoot. After 45 minutes Thea was still cooing and playing on the floor. Becky left the room to call her husband (and my best friend) Felix to tell him the shoot was running long. Becky leaving the room finally put a dent in Thea’s sunny disposition. Becky came back into the room just as Thea was beginning to cry for her. Becky said I had 10 seconds to get my shot. I started to shoot like crazy as Becky counted out loud. As soon as she said “ten”, she swooped in and grabbed Thea. And that was it. Thea stopped crying, Becky was relieved, and I had my shot.

I want to thank my friend Matt Tady for helping me build and paint my set.  The vent and the Welcome sign over it are my favorite details.

I want to thank my friend Damien Vela for helping me on the day of the shoot.

And I especially want to thank my friend and fellow photographer Peter Obetz for loaning me his camera and laptop to shoot this image.

The next image I’m working on is called BABYSITTER. My 13 year old daughter Arinna will be playing the babysitter, and Thea will be the baby. My friend Bob Barber, who recently played the part of the Devil for me, has been cast in the role of the escaped lunatic. Should be cool.

$20 Print For April

For the month of April, I will be offering a $20 print of a photograph called MIRROR.  You can buy this print through my website.

MIRROR is one of the very first Horror photographs I ever made. My friend Phil is playing the monster. I chose him because of his thin frame and articulated spine. The bathroom was a location I discovered in a condemned home. The electricity was still on in the house, but the heat was turned off. It was cold enough in that bathroom to see your breath. Phil was a real trooper.

The monster’s face is made up of two different halloween masks: one for the exaggerated brow, and one for the giant mouth. I cut the two masks apart and stapled what I needed together. The seam was hidden by the gauze I wrapped around his head. I aged the gauze, and exaggerated his eye sockets with make-up.

I replaced the bulb in the existing light fixture with a 200 watt bulb and used it as my main light source. I used two 500 watt hot lights on dimmer switches to bounce off of the ceiling as fill light.

I added all of the weird jars of brackish fluid and prescription pill bottles to the cabinet shelves. The crazy starfish on the wall, however, were already there.

Rue Morgue Radio

Rue Morgue continues to show me love. First there was the awesome article about me in the magazine. Then they featured my photographs in their online gallery, The Necropolitan Museum. And last Friday, Rue Morgue Radio broadcast a great interview about my work. You can still check it out at http://www.rue-morgue.com/rmp_rm_radio.php

Herschell Gordon Lewis

While visiting the Fangoria convention in Chicago last weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting one of my heroes, the great Herschell Gordon Lewis. Some of you might ask, ‘Who is that?’ Herschell Gordon Lewis is a luminary in the canon of modern Horror! Herschell Gordon Lewis, boys and girls, invented the Gore film.

It was in 1963 that Lewis and his producing partner David Friedman decided to abandon nudie exploitation flicks to create the seminal film BLOOD FEAST, considered by most critics and scholars to be the very first “gore” film. They made two more Gore films together : TWO THOUSAND MANIACS in 1964, and COLOR ME BLOOD RED in 1965.

The red red gore on display in these vibrant color films caused an immediate sensation, and soon other Horror filmmakers around the world began to saturate their productions with similar shocking effects. Lewis and Friedman singlehandedly created the subgenre of the “splatter” film. Without Lewis, there is no FRIDAY THE 13th, no DAWN OF THE DEAD, no EVIL DEAD 2, no DEAD ALIVE, no HOSTEL, no SAW, no PLANET OF TERROR, no super-cool Italian gore. There is nothing! Lewis represents a major turning point in the development of the modern Horror genre.

When I told him that I had seen all of his Horror films, he just laughed and said “Oh, you poor bastard.”

Rue Morgue

Last month, my work was featured in a Swedish lifestyle magazine called Cafe, a kind of Swedish version of GQ or Esquire. This month, my work is being featured in Rue Morgue, arguably the greatest Horror magazine in the world. The article about my work is titled THE GIANT SPIDER, THE CANDYMAKER, AND THE WOLF WITH HANDS, and was written by the editor-in-chief herself, Jovanka Vuckovic.

Also, I will be visiting the Fangoria convention in Chicago next weekend. I will be hustling my new line of jewelry with the Strychnine Sisters. I will also have a few prints for sale hidden under the table. If you are a fan of my work and live in the Chicago area, come visit me.

Shortly after returning home, I will release my latest Horror photograph. It is called SNAKE. If you are afraid of snakes, this one is for you!

New $20 Print For March

For the month of March, I am offering a $20 print of BALLOONS on my website.  

My daughter Chloe is playing the part of the unwary little girl. Chloe’s grandmother is playing the clown.

Later this spring, I am shooting a sequel to this image called FRONT DOOR. Scary clowns, baby.

Jason Coale

There is a wonderful article today in the Kansas City Star about my good friend Jason Coale. Jason has been collaborating with me on my projects for years, and is now the most active and sought-after scenic designer in Kansas City.

I met Jason during my first commercial job for the rapper Tech N9ne. I hired Jason to make the set for the “controversial” cover that was never used. (If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know what I’m talking about). At that time, he was still earning his Masters degree at the UMKC theater department. He put himself through school as an undergraduate working as a magician. On the set of Tech N9ne’s photo shoot, Jason performed magic tricks for the crew and entourage. He was a big hit.

Jason has a very cool personality. You can’t help but like Jason. I quickly made him a part of my clan. We spent a summer living as roommates in a decrepit house on the edge of Westport. We spent most of our nights drinking beer and watching old VHS tapes about magic tricks.

Jason has helped me out on several of my projects. He built the amazing set for HANDS. He also helped me with the set for ISOLATION, as well as DEVIL. The set for DEVIL, like the set for HANDS, was built with a raised floor so that people could fit underneath.

During our summer as roommates we also spent a lot of time experimenting with special effects make-up. Jason helped me with the make-up on my film BLACK LULLABY, he created the skin-less mask in FACE, and did all of the make-up for DEVIL.

He will also be the chief collaborator on my upcoming project THE GRAND GUIGNOL.

To learn more about Jason Coale the superstar, check out today’s article in The Kansas City Star.

Exit Magazine

This month my work is featured in Exit Magazine, an amazing art publication from Madrid, Spain.  The theme for this issue was “Once Upon a Time…”  My photographs are alongside the works of such artists as Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Anthony Goicolea, Yeondoo Jung, Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman, and Miwa Yanagi.

Miwa Yanagi is one of my favorite contemporary photographers.  Her latest body of work is called FAIRY TALES.  This series deals with the relationships between young girls and older women.   She chooses famous children’s stories, such as Rapunzel and Snow White,  stories in which the central characters are either young or old, then reinvents the story by confusing the distinctions.  Both roles are played by adolescent girls, but the older character wears the mask of an old hag.  You almost get the sense of children playing dress up. The images in this series were all shot in black and white.  I love her sets and the styling is marvelous.  Here is one of my favorites: