Freaks, mummies, wax and weirdness in Texas

It is halfway through September and we are doing our best to get into an autumn frame of mind. This week we visited a handful of places where one can see weird things, wax figures and taxidermy, without really planning it that way. It's nice to find this kind of seriousness weirdness in Texas - the kind of things I used to read about or see on travel shows on TV and think, I wish I could go there! Of course, being from the greater Philadelphia area, I've been to the Mutter Museum a few times, so these places had a lot to live up to, but I'm pretty pleased.

First, in Austin we have the Museum of the Weird. On E. 6th St., a $18 ticket will get you admission BOTH to this and its sister attraction, the Sfanthor wax horror museum, which isn't very far away, over on S. Congress Ave.

At the Museum of the Weird, the assortment of bizarre taxidermied animals -- two-headed calves and the like -- sideshow and horror artifacts and a couple of wax figures, culminates in the unveiling of a true sideshow legend, the Minnesota Iceman. While they don't allow visitors to photograph this exhibit, they build up the suspense by screening an old "Unexplained Mysteries" segment on the beast and give some background information about how the museum's founder saw this exhibit back in the 60s and finally tracked it down and bought it. I won't give anything away, but if you want the full experience and mystique of this creature, don't google it any further -- let them tell you about it, and believe the legend!

The Museum of the Weird is joined to the Lucky Lizard curio and gift shop, which you can visit for free of course. They sell amazing horror t-shirts (I got a Tombs of the Blind Dead t-shirt, I'm happy to say -- they dig deep for truly excellent films on these tees!) an other fun stuff.

Over at the Sfanthor House of Wax you can see some beautifully displayed horror classics in wax -- mostly from old movies, but there's an Alien at the end as well (with a strobe light, so I had to close my eyes -- strobe-sensitive folks, be aware of this!). I can't recall ever being to a wax museum before so this was a treat.

Those exhibits are always open, and are open late -- but over in Houston for a limited time, the Museum of Natural Science has a wonderful exhibit called the Cabinet of Curosities. Modeled after Victorian-era curio cabinets from well-to-do explorers and collectors, it is an interactive exhibit full of dozens of drawers you can open to reveal more wonders: feathers, bones, crafts from native peoples around the world, shells, insects and other delights.

It's a wonderful, unique exhibit and so much fun to just wander around marveling at all of the artifacts. Even if you're like me and don't care for taxidermy, in a modern context -- as a mostly-vegetarian for 30 years, I recoil at the thought of killing an animal just to put it on display -- the fact that these are older artifacts makes it something I can appreciate on a different level within a historical context.

I'm not sure how long this will stick around but it really does seem to fit in with the Halloween time of year, for me.

Of course, Houston boasts one of the most gothic of all museums next to the Mutter, the National Museum of Funeral History, but we will save our visit to that for October. It's been two years since we last stopped by there, so perhaps there will be some new morbid things to enjoy there by now as well.

Meanwhile, back in the world of weird

Right, so here's another post with no holiday content whatsoever! I don't know why I feel apologetic about that, but I just do! We were snowed in this weekend but rather than share snow art with you all, I will delve deeper into the cosmic weird. That thing above, that's what I imagined when I was stuck in traffic on the way home from work during the busy holiday shopping season when all of the roads were already jammed but the bad weather made it worse. I couldn't think of a title so I wound up calling it Brain Tree. Wow, don't hurt yourself coming up with names there, lady! It is 9 x 12.

This one is 6 x 8 and apparently I titled it : Shards of the Swirling Sun because i like alliteration.


And this doesn't have a link because I didn't put it up for sale but that doesn't mean you can't look at it. This was based on some images from a weird, long dream I had. Suffice to say that weird sea creatures and mushrooms were in it and that's enough for me to go on. I might put it up for sale but for the moment I am too amused by it myself!

So happy Psychedelic Christmas I guess! Ha!

Repainting the past

This is a tree that I like to read under. I remember reading Dune....many books of ghost stories...Unfortunately I missed the chance to read under autumn foliage in this particular park this year because it was just gone in an instant -- one day it was all green, then there was a cold weekend and then everything blew off the trees. Alas! But I have a vague memory of what fall is supposed to look like. I did this little painting in an evening recently and somehow resisted the temptation to put any creatures or characters in it.


This is one of the things I found in my vaults recently that I made some prints from. They'll be up for sale in a few days...I remember it took days for me to figure out what the UFO should be beaming up and finally I realized -- duh, obviously, a unicorn! This is the kind of thing that I'm guessing sane people don't generally think about.

I'm knee deep in repainting a bunch of things that I originally did around 2000-2002. The limitations of technology (specifically, the kind that I was stuck with at the time) left me unable to get high quality scans or pictures of them before I sold them so I've never been able to do anything with them in terms of reproductions. So I'm repainting a bunch of them, with what I hope is possibly a little more detail than I originally painted them in, and getting nice crisp scans.

But before I get those together...I still have some recent stuff that I'm finishing up and uploading. Click to see the full painting this is from! There is a glass turtle off to the right hand side of the painting that I'm quite delighted with.

I'm a little preoccupied tonight in thinking about weird movies I'd like to see or find on dvd so my coherent post will have to come in a day or so! I'm going to go look through my old video tapes now for something weird and inspiring to watch!