Holiday Gift Guide Part 2: Christmas Craft Fair

by Garrett Cook

Damn. Christmas sure gives you a lot of things to hate about it. Crass commercialism. Carols everywhere. Bitter cold. Mechagodzilla.

But worse and more excruciating than all of these things is the Christmas craft fair. Purchasing poorly wrought wooden reindeer to support your stupid kid’s school for jerks is nobody’s idea of fun. I know there are people that like Christmas craft fairs but there are also people that like bestiality and the two camps are just as difficult for me to understand. Telling me that you like the Christmas craft fair is like telling me that a particular pangolin you saw has got it goin’ on in all the right places.

So, how about an alternative to the Christmas Crap Fair? How about some weird, fun stuff that you might actually want hanging up in your home? I promise, no wooden reindeer.

Paintings and Prints

The most notoriously hangable of art works, paintings and prints are something we often think of as out of our price range or somehow culturally austere. We might own posters but actual paintings by a contemporary working artist aren’t as common in people’s homes as they could be. Particularly if you decide you want to do something about it.

Justin Coons
My alterego Henry Price is a lucky guy. Having gotten three covers from Justin Coons for my Satan’s Mummy novelettes, Henry’s work has been represented by a whole lot of monster kid whoopass. Justin Coons brings the weird and brings pulp art back to a Heavy Metal magazine kind of place.

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Ann Koi
Ann Koi is a gifted sculptor and artist. Her erotic and strange art and wonderful assortment of bone sculptures are sure to invigorate any discriminating Bizarro friendly residence.

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Jim Agpalza
Jim is one of the finest artists in the Bizarro community. His work is cartoonish, organic, filthy, fun and diverse. His shit is just plain awesome. You can view his stuff on the page below. And you should buy most or all of it.

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Liv Rainey Smith
Liv’s woodblock prints and Lovecraftian stuff are great for the dark fiction and cosmic horror enthusiast in your life. Occult esoterica with class, distinction and a genuinely informed viewpoint on the subject matter. While possessing a modern perspective on the history behind the imagery, it hearkens back to a profoundly archaic style, wearing the influence of traditional alchemy on its sleeve.

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Alexandria Pepera
Surrealism and psychedelia merge with Neopagan and Aquarian tradition in Pepera’s work. There is usually a space between the surreal, which is often thought cerebral, the province of manipulated logics instead of magicks and the sacred but Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger and French Decadents never cottoned much to these boundaries and neither does Alexandria. These paintings are beautiful, colorful, distinctly sexual, tantalizingly dissassociative and pleasing to all three of our eyes. With a pop art color pallet, a strong narrative and a library of dream images, these psychedelics don’t patronize or pander or bring back memories of sparking up a jay to Umma Gumma.

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Nick Gucker
Grade A Monster Kid, class act and erudite, fun artist, Nick Gucker does cosmic horror and horror fandom in a way that has caught the attention of many publishers and collectors alike. Nick’s work graces Skurvy Ink’s Jimmy Plush t-shirt and the pages of Imperial Youth Review, the magazine I edit, so I’m a little biased but that bias certainly wouldn’t have existed in the first place without Nick doing stone cold fantastic stuff.

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Alan M. Clark
Man. Myth. Icon and iconoclast, Alan Clark’s cover have adorned work by some of horror’s very finest. His paintings can adorn your home too. His longtime obsession with the Ripper murders has inspired not just his novels, which I highly recommend but some of his art. 

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Photography

Phillip Lo Presti
Phil is a crass and smart poet with a ton of potential and exactly no fucks to give. If you know Phil online, you have probably at least on one occasion wanted to push him down a flight of stairs. But, he’s a good, generous, caring and often very funny guy and he does great work, with an irreverent eye and a lot of attitude.

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Jim Sorfleet
Under the moniker SNS-Photo, Jim came highly recommended by my friend pinup model, Sauda Namir due to his horror pinup work. His photos are eerie, fun and confrontational and his models are well chosen. For the fan of burlesque and gothic imagery, these photos will go great on their walls.

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Sculpture and Craft

Sheryl Westleigh, Noadi on Etsy, is a sculptor and jeweler par excellence. For the geek, the pervert and the worshiper of Elder Gods, Sheryl is a person you gotta know with stuff that will make you exceptionally happy. Her Etsy store features things like fetus earrings, tentacle pendants, octopia, cuttlefish, bacteria and everything squirmy. Mad science chic.

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