Faerie Illustrator

We thought you might like to hear from the creator of our faeries...the "faces" of our Village...Jeffrey Himmelman...

A few months ago my dad told me he was building a miniature fairy dwelling in his basement.

To most people this might sound a bit odd, but growing up with my dad, it wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. My dad writes and illustrates children’s books in addition to being a nature photographer and author. He’s just a really creative guy.

He told me all about the Wee Faerie Village exhibition in October, and I was very interested. He mentioned that David Rau, who was putting all this craziness together, found my portfolio linked on my dad’s website. David had worked with my dad in the past but didn’t know that his son was also an artist. He asked if I’d be interested in doing something for the exhibition. I was definitely on board.

I’m primarily a fantasy artist. I went through high school playing dungeons and dragons with my friends and doing other similarly geeky stuff, and now that I’m grown up I’m doing art for games. It’s a really fun field to work in and I consider myself pretty blessed to have been able to turn my hobby into my profession, even if I don’t have time to play games anymore.

David got in touch with me a short time later and told me he was interested in having me create a map and some promotional images. He invited me over to the museum (at the time I was living in New York), and so I took the trip. I spent the day learning about the history of the art colony, and taking tons of reference shots.

Over the next few months I did quite a few illustrations for the museum. I broke out some of my fairy art books for inspiration. Brian Froud and Tony Diterlizzi are some of my favorites. I was trying to convey a different personality into each of the faeries. The boy faerie (nicknamed Griswold) is kind of brash and adventurous, whereas the girl (as you may have guessed, her nickname is Florence) is more demure and playful.

The actual map was a bit outside of my comfort zone. It took much more collaboration and fine-tuning with David to get exactly what they were looking for. In the end however I think the map turned out well!

So there you have it: my experience helping to create the Wee Faerie Village. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re looking forward to visiting the village as much as I am!

~Jeff Himmelman
Illustrator & Podcaster
Art: jeffreyhimmelman.com
Podcast: wippodcast.com

A Faerie Dwelling? Where to begin?!

Bill Vollers, a Graphic Designer and Artist in Chester, Connecticut, was asked to design a house for Footsie, the muse of Will Howe Foote.

From Bill...

Create a Faerie dwelling? Say what?? Hmmm…well why not, but where to begin? As with other projects new to me a little research seemed to be the best place to start. The fun begins, Google "Faerie houses" and all sorts of fascinating things appear, folks have been creating these tiny dwellings for quite sometime. Then I recalled a visit to Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine where these dwellings thrive. I’m inspired!

I first selected a very old rather primitive but “funky” box from my collection which seemed appropriate. My artist is Will Howe Foote…feet will play a large part in the overall theme. I then scavenged for woodland type materials and other stuff from my shop. I created the tables and chairs out of sticks with small sand dollars for tops. The bed is the lining from an antique shoe I found in a dump behind my house. Then I remembered that my brother had crafted a miniature stagecoach years ago that had fallen into disrepair. However along with the coach he made small trunks, barrels etc..perfect to the scale and character of my dwelling. A true gift!

I then decided to decorate the walls with miniature paintings and drawings of feet, which I framed with twigs. For the entrance and awnings I used pieces of fungus as well as feathers …this is exciting! At a tag sale I came across two pieces of fan like coral (very much like Faerie wings) a natural addition to the outside of the dwelling. Fine-tuning and putting all the pieces together is the final stage, which I am indeed looking forward to.

I do hope my faerie, Footsie, will enjoy his new home, he’s been an inspiration and somehow I’ve felt his presence during time I’ve “worked” on this project. I’m grateful for the opportunity, it’s been a pleasure.

For more photos of Footsie's house....

On being a Faerie Architect

This blog is by one of the Wee Faerie Village Architects, Lisa Kenyon. Everyone at the Museum is very excited about the start of the Village! Only three more weeks to go! If you haven't taken a look at all the wonderful special events planned, check them out now. The Village is open October 10 through November 1.

From Lisa....

Late summer is the perfect time to be creating a faerie dwelling. On routine walks through my neighborhood, I find beautiful wild flowers to dry, seed pods that can act as flowers in a faerie flower box and tons and tons of acorns that make great stone walls. It’s almost impossible to go anywhere without finding some natural object that might be useful if you were a three inch faerie.

My dwelling is going to sit in the middle of the vegetable garden otherwise known as Vegetable Valley. I decided early on that I would focus on the exterior so it could be viewed from all angles. My faerie, Iris, is the muse of Matilda Browne and I wanted to model the structure after her painting Saltbox by Moonlight. I am very grateful that my husband is much handier with a saw than I am because he made the concept come true. I will be using my various natural objects to adorn the house and it doesn’t stop there. A house must have a vegetable garden, some restful sitting areas and landscaping.

With just a few more weeks to wrap up, I am looking forward to the last minute treasures I will find on my walks. You never know what a sea shell, twig or flower might become to a faerie.

Watching The Rambles

Since the completion of Patrick Dougherty's sculpture The Rambles on the campus of the Florence Griswold Museum we've noticed a definite increase in the number of visitor wandering our grounds and taking photos of this enormous stickwork. We thought we'd share a few hundred of our photos with you in the form of a 6 minute video set to a familiar piece of music, the "Miss Florence Rag," written and performed specifically for the Florence Griswold Museum by Neely Bruce. We hope this look at how the sculpture was made, as well as our new website about the project, will entice you to come and see it in person. Enjoy!

A note from the artist, Patrick Dougherty

The work is entitled The Rambles, and I am proud of the sculpture which resulted from my residency. With the museum's help, I was able to find and gather birch saplings from several sites around Old Lyme, CT and transport them to the museum. Volunteers removed the leaves from the branches and then proceeded to help with the weaving process. I use the infuriating tendency of branches to entangle with one another as my method of joining and then worked at a breakneck speed to complete the sculpture. The work, encased in scaffolding during its construction, provided working platforms but also aided in the bending and tying of the larger support saplings into the desired shape. Ultimately all strings were removed and the smaller saplings, which had been intertwined by volunteers, secured the work. I thought of the sculpture not only three dimensionally but also concentrated on the outer surface as a canvas on which to draw. Sticks are the material of bird nests, but they are also bundles of lines. All the drawing conventions used with paper and pencil still apply.

I was given a beautiful site—behind the museum, but still visible through the large window wall in the lobby-gift shop. All in all, visitors need only walk a short distance to enter and explore the work. The sculpture is sited to take advantage of the bucolic view of the Lieutenant River, a classic vista for the painters who visited Florence Griswold so long ago.

When I began to search for an image or a starting point to guide the creation of the work at the Florence Griswold Museum, I imagined the garden follies of previous eras. In the past, those who had means sometimes festooned their gardens with strange architecture and even built intentional ruins. These structures were meant to evoke mystery and stimulate a longing for bygone days. They offered a kind of poetic drama as nature reclaimed the manmade. I have been intrigued by ruins all over the world because vine cover, tree roots and unruly branches are often the first blush of architectural decay. For me it is like throwing a dust cloth over a piece of furniture which can obscure the detail but cannot deny the basic manmade form. With this in mind, I envisioned a kind of drapery for the museum's imaginary ruin—one with a 22' high round tower, a square tower and many architectural features in between. The viewers are invited in to explore the interior, to walk in some doors and peer around others. In The Rambles, the energy of the natural world seems frozen in the drawn surfaces as all the unassuming sticks gathered by the volunteers in the first few days take on presence and new meaning. With only a hint of underlying geometry, this backyard folly has no core of stone or wooden beams. As the scaffolding was removed on the final day, it was as if an insect chrysalis had finally opened and an enormous sapling slipcover had been shaken free and set out to dry.

Three Weeks in One Minute

In case you didn't get to stop by the Museum while Patrick Dougherty was constructing his stickwork, The Rambles, you can take in the progress in this quick video. While Patrick was on site we documented the creative process in nearly 4000 photographs. The best of them have been edited into a short film, now on view at the Museum. This weekend's Midsummer Festival is an excellent chance to come and see the finished project and take a few pictures of your own.

Day 16 at The Rambles

Patrick officially finished the sculpture at a "last stick" ceremony today when he also christened our sculpture The Rambles, as in "Let's go to the Florence Griswold Museum and picnic down by The Rambles" or "Kids really enjoy running around The Rambles by the river." Rather than signing his work in a traditional way, Patrick took the last stick and chomped down on it with his teeth, leaving a permanent, personal record, before weaving it into the structure.

When the work was finished Patrick took off his work gloves for all the volunteers to sign. If you were a volunteer on the project you'll soon be receiving word about an upcoming volunteer appreciation dinner where you'll be able to sign the gloves too. The gloves will be on display in the Museum through October, at which point they'll be returned to Patrick's studio.