The House of Pomegranates Press
is pleased and excited to present
Lost At Sea, An Evening of Magical Things
May 9th, 2013 at 7:30 p.m.
at the
Augusta House
(in the dark heart of Kensington Market, Toronto)
The evening will feature
Readings by: David Keyes – Author, artist, musician – launching his new book I Do So Worry For All Those Lost At Sea Nancy Baker – Novelist Lynn Crosbie – Controversial author, poet, journalist Liisa Ladouceur – Journalist, Poet, Author
Presentations by: Belinda Chun, Gallery House, talking of art Prof. Richard Greene, award-winning poet and biographer, talking of the Sitwells A Special Musical Performance of Ravel by an insanely talented, award-winning mystery String Quartet
A short film launching the first edition of The House of Pomegranates Vintage Vampire series, Carmillaby J. Sheridan LeFanu, with a new introduction by Daniel Richler and illustrations by Taeden Hall
Fashions from Gloomth.com
A haunted confectionary table by CakesCove
The Five Cocktails of Mr. P
For a few brief hours you will be transported to a magically haunted world of art, music, and film, filled with luscious chocolate, exotic cocktails and clever words.
Please mark it on your calendars and plan to attend We promise you will be transfigured by the splendor!
Biographies:
David Keyes was born on an island in the Adriatic Sea, but was raised in a suburb of Toronto. His career in the arts spans almost 30 years and includes musical works for dance, film and stage, literary pursuits, art happenings, curatorship, coffin making and fashion. He spent most of the 1980s involved with music, playing with a number of bands including the punk free-for-all, The Polkaholics and with the feminist riot girls, Fifth Column, releasing 5 LPS.
In the 1990s Keyes began concentrating on publishing limited editions of handbound books.
In the 21st century he continues to write and pursue papery arts and portraiture. In 2009 he started a small couture line, which features funeral fashions for the young at heart or just broken hearted.
He recently authored I Do So Worry For All Those Lost At Sea (The House of Pomegranates Press).
Keyes lives in Toronto in a haunted house where pumpkins grow on his lawn. He makes paper coffins and likes martinis and cats.
Lynn Crosbie was born in Montreal and is a cultural critic, poet and author. A PhD in English literature with a background in visual studies, she has taught at the University of Toronto, OCADU and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her books (of poetry and prose) include Queen Rat, Miss Pamela’s Mercy, Villainelle and Liar. She is also the author of the book Paul’s Case and the editor of The Girl Wants To. She is a contributing editor at Fashion, and a National Magazine Award winner.
Nancy Baker is the author of three novels (The Night Inside, A Terrible Beauty and Blood and Chrysanthemums) and a collection of short stories (published by The House of Pomegranates Press). She has been lost at sea for many years but sees the shore of her fourth novel approaching.
Liisa Ladouceur is the author of Encyclopedia Gothica, a dictionary for the doomed from absinthe to zombies, and the forthcoming How to Kill a Vampire. She lives in Toronto and still owns a hair crimper.
Belinda Chun and Gallery House. Since 2000, Belinda Chun has been professionally involved in the Fine Arts industry, working for commercial galleries and institutions including: Christopher Cutts Gallery, Lonsdale Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Royal Ontario Museum, McMichael Gallery, and The Power Plant. Belinda has also served as a private curator, presenting special exhibitions and participating in prestigious art fairs such as ARCO Fair-Spain, Art Expo-England, Scope LA, Scope New York, Art Forum Berlin and Art Chicago.
Gallery House is a unique art space devoted to fostering long-term relationships between established artists and global partners. It has been hailed as the first of its kind to operate as a management site (much like an independent music label for highly influential and collected fine artists) as well as a commercial gallery (by appointment and with public viewing hours that are posted each month on the website). The management of such an enterprise allows artists and dealers to establish long-term relationship as Gallery House directs traffic flow and sales to their partnered galleries.
Chun’s special relationship with artists, art historians, curators and dealers, coupled with her stature in the fine art industry, allows curators, auction houses and dealers to work collaboratively with her artists. Gallery House provides a system that allows dealers to access and rotate inventory for exhibit, thereby expanding the public viewing of the works as they are presented in various countries, as well as providing ‘fair grounds’ for dealers to benefit from one another. The artists of Gallery House are regarded as senior and/or established artists in mediums such as digital art, painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and artist’s collectible books
Richard Greene is a professor of English and the director of the Creative Writing MA at the University of Toronto. He is the critically acclaimed author of EDITH SITWELL,Avant Garde Poet English Genius, editor of Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell, and Graham Greene: A Life In Lettersand has been commissioned to write a new biography of Graham Greene.
This October will see the release of Dante’s House, his first collection of poems since his Boxing the Compass won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in 2010. He was born in Newfoundland and lives now in Cobourg, Ontario.
Daniel Richleris the author of the novel Kicking Tomorrow. He has written, produced and presented various television series, including The NewMusic, Big Life, and Richler, Ink. on BookTelevision. He was a participant at the First World Dracula Congress in Transylvania, Romania, and a contributor to Udolfo, the magazine of the Gothic Society in Great Britain. He has written about the suicidal goth punks of Hungary, and directed Real Vampires, a documentary about the science and psychology of vampires, for the Discovery Channel.
Gloomth & the Cult of Melancholy is a Canadian clothing label specializing in frilly pieces with our own signature strangeness – a blend of street fashion, historical attire, wildflowers, and darkness. We seek to provide a means of outward expression for elegant misfits and peculiar creative souls. Started in 2007 by artist Taeden Hall, Gloomth has been featured in numerous publications and has a fan base that reaches across the world.
Cakes Cove. Having always been interested in something a little different, Samantha Anderson created Cakes Cove in 2011, allowing her to fuse her passion for Victorian romance, comics, science fiction and gaming with the art of great food.
Although she’s always been in the kitchen, she trained at George Brown College and Bonnie Gordon College of Confectionary Arts, going professional in 2006.
Anderson’s distinctive culinary creations come mostly from her own experimentation with the blending of different dessert mediums such as cake, chocolate and sugar, and are influenced by her unique geek-inspired passions. The desserts that Cakes Cove creates are custom made from the best ingredients and designed to suit everyone’s own unique personality.
For all those people in my fair land of Canada who would like to purchase our books locally we now offer a Canadian option.
I Do So Worry For All Those Lost At Sea
The long awaited short story collection by eccentric writer/artist David Keyes. Ghosts are haunted, girls fling themselves out of windows, wolves are cartographers, hares pornographers, mermaids are rescued from carnival sideshows and everyone drinks cocktails and comments on the moon. Collected here for the first time are 10 short stories and his novella The House of Sleep. Each story a slight variation on reality, each it’s own weather system, it’s own logic, surreal, beautiful and haunting, all recorded in Keyes’ melancholic prose style.
For a sample story press here.
Paperback
$9.95 plus shipping
Carmilla, A Pomegranate Vintage Vampire Edition
This new version of Carmilla, the first in our new series Pomegranate Vintage Vampire Editions, features beautiful illustrations by Taeden Halland a foreword commissioned especially for the book by the quite wonderful, erudite Mr. Daniel Richler. Who better but he to blend vampires, Victoriana, politics, feminism and girl school lesbianism?
Paperback
$9.95 plus shipping
Chrysanthemum Shadows
Originally published as part of Nancy Baker’s second novel, Blood & Chrysanthemums, this new book contains the extraordinary diary of the vampire Sadamori Fujiwara.
From the seductive nights in the imperial court of the eleventh century to the horror and tragedy of the darkest days of the twentieth, Fujiwara’s story is a tale of poetry and violence, of delight and despair.
Exquisitely illustrated and designed by the artists of the House of Pomegranates Press, this edition stands alone as an evocative exploration of being a vampire in a world that has no word for what you are.
Hardcover $10.00 plus shipping
For e-versions of Nancy Baker’s books please click here.
Internationally, you can purchase copies here or on your country’s Amazon service.
The House of Pomegranates Press would like to announce two very exciting releases. The first, a new edition of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic Carmilla. With publishing Carmilla we begin our Vintage Vampire Series. Over the next few years we intend to publish – beautifully – as many vintage vampire novels as we can. Why? Because we grew up with these stories, stories that were simply scary, that transported us out of our bedrooms and in to other magical worlds. Then as we grew our complicated messy brains morphed them in to not just esoteric shadows under our beds, but real, tangible existentialist demons. They walked amongst us, they became our friends, our lovers, our fears. So we are taking it upon ourselves to gather those demons, wrap them in lovely covers, and put them in to context with intelligent introductions by fascinating people.
Carmilla features beautiful illustrations by Taeden Halland a foreword commissioned especially for the book by the quite wonderful, erudite Mr. Daniel Richler. Who better but he to blend vampires, Victoriana, politics, feminism and girl school lesbianism?
The second is the long awaited short story collection by eccentric writer/artist David Keyesentitled I Do So Worry For All Those Lost At Sea. Ghosts are haunted, girls fling themselves out of windows, wolves are cartographers, hares pornographers, mermaids are rescued from carnival sideshows and everyone drinks cocktails and comments on the moon. Collected here for the first time are 10 short stories and his novella The House of Sleep. Each story a slight variation on reality, each it’s own weather system, it’s own logic, surreal, beautiful and haunting, all recorded in Keyes’ melancholic prose style.
For a sample story press here.
I was thrilled to be able to make a short film of the recent photoshoot for Gloomth’s Haunted Circus. The fashions are by Gloomth, the music is by The Sitwells and the models are Nymeria, Fine Lines, and CheshireCat.
We’ve been hiding,
Hiding under the snow.
We are pale and chilly and frost bitten.
We are ghosts rattling your tea cups,
Whispering in your hall.
Here is a photo of our friend Lovina Yavari. She is perfect.
Today she is Gilles de Rais, part of a diptych in the planning,
One half of Gilles et Jeanne.
One seventh of our new show that we’re not going to talk about.
Just yet.
We miss you.
Tell us your secrets, one day we’ll tell you ours.
One day.
We are ever so pleased to announce that the St. Gloomth Academy for Boys and Girls is finally open and all the little monsters, or should we students are hard at their studies, drinking hot chocolate and feeding their pet spiders.
We are proud to be a part of the academy and proud also to have a certain, shall we say influence on the curriculum!
And although not everyone can attend (the lectures really are fascinating and the sports, are … so sporty!) you can certainly dress the part. Why not be the first on your block to be decked out St. Gloomth style?
Contact the registrar here.
You can see more photo’s of the line here.
I am writing to you from our attic studio and although the full moon was a week ago, the front lawn is still aglow with lovely, magical moonlight. Looking down I can see that most of the pumpkins are still lit; it is Halloween (or if you must be more hardcore, Samhain), the end of our year and the start of the next. I believe that everything is possible, though more so tonight. (sprinkle of magical dust)
I hope this finds you well. We miss you and as a little festive gift we have made a short film of which we are rather proud. You can find it here on the blog. It features our parent’s house and stars the very mysterious, alluring and lovely Yi. Our friend Emma Pill’s band The Sitwells did the music. I so hope you like it, please let us know what you think.
As I’ve been grumbling, we took this year off but now with the new year dawning it’s time to wake up from our sleep, dust off the moss that grew on us and cast again the magical Pomegranate spell on everyone and everything. So, we happily announce some of our plans for the coming year (in no particular order): a new show of paintings, with life sized dolls, more twigs, moss and cherry blossoms, and perhaps even a band; the publication of a collection of short stories and a novella written by a very lovely friend of the family who, sadly, was lost at sea; the release of The Sitwells first full length CD (we are so proud)…
…and in collaboration, we are ever so thrilled to be helping our good friends at Gloomth.com with a new line of clothing, the St. Gloomth Academy for wayward boys and girls. It’s so exciting at the academy, think Gomez Addams goes to Oxford. And there is also talk of putting all Elisabeth’s House of Pomegranates odd sizes and samples into one big discounted jumble sale! For more information visit here.
And now, how are you? Please write and let us know. For now we wish you a very magical Halloween/Samhain and a safe, warm, magical, inspiring and good food filled New Year. With love always,
The World is Scary
The World is full of Monsters
The World is Beautiful
Welcome. What you have before you is my two year art project. Or I like to think of it as such. God, so much has gone on and changed in two years, flipping through this I am amazed at all that I’ve seen and experienced, all the amazing people that I’ve met and talked to, all the places I’ve been. My sisters and I started this blog in April 2008. We had great plans. We were three crazed sisters in our attic studio designing, drawing writing and painting. Since starting we’ve launched a fashion line, had a part in a few books and had an incredible show of our paintings, dresses and art with some friends. It’s been an amazing and magical ride.
But so much has changed since we started; Alice has all but disappeared, off somewhere writing a novel and, we suspect, a vampire; Elisabeth is in Paris, an apprentice, sewing fantastical dresses and I’ve become, hm, not disillusioned with blogging, more, I feel I’m saying more with my art … words have begun to fail me. In fact, aside from the Questionnaires which I am terribly proud of, my two years of writing cannot match one single issue, in terms of content, some of the more fascinating glossy magazines like Lula, Pop, An Other or Corduroy. Who am I kidding? I’m a painter, I live in a world of stripy stockings and ookpiks and penguins. I never go out unless forced, I go crazy in crowds, I never pick up the phone, in fact I even don’t own a cell phone. I am forever misquoting Shakespeare.
So here I am, Sarah Pomegranate, whatever I am, lets say artist. And as a person who speaks better visually, who needs to wave her hands about, I thought I would move to a gallery page format (I will add the link once I have it) and say this chapter is finished. You know, we get so bogged down, there is just so much noise, I love this blog and am proud of it, and it will always be here, but this is the next step, I’m jumping back in to the mirror.
This was our two year art project and you, gentle readers, were a wonderful and magical part of it.
Lastly, as a kind of aside, we are struck by all the deaths so close. Just this month alone, our dear decadent friend Sebastian Horsley and the very wonderful Tracey Wright and what of the macabre and ill-timed death of Tobias Wong? And what of Mr. McQueen or the luminous and magical Daul Kim? If this keeps up the world will truly just be filled with monsters (and YouTube sensations) Please, everyone, take care, stay with us for the art, stay with us for the anarchy, there’s still so much to do, and still so much to clean up. Okay, on to the next sensation. On to art.
In the mean time!
Scary/Monster/Beautiful – The Catalogue
The book, a spread of which you see presented here, and in the hands of our stunningly lovely model Crystal Wan above is a most gorgeous, glossy paper, hard cover catalogue of the Scary/Monster/Beautiful show, it to me is the period at the end of this grand art experiment. It is so beautiful and I am so proud of it. The first 25 copies will come with a signed original print of a new work by me, plus a CD featuring the AudioGuide from the show and three short films, plus a handmade ookpik keychain! That’s pretty exciting I must say. And all for $45.95 plus $15 for postage and handling. To purchase you copy click on the button below, if you truly hate PayPal email me and I will send you details.
