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The Black Ibis Tarot

The Moon

Bethalynne Bajema, my fiancee, co-conspirator, and occasional collaborator is working on her third eerie and beautiful neo-victorian Tarot deck “The Black Ibis” – and taking a different approach at her deck from the previous two in that she would like to have the deck published in one big run.

Being artists, and in this day and age where discretionary spending is at an all time low, being able to offer great things at low prices is essential.

Though the Sepia deck is very popular, with inquiries made every day about purchase, we are running that deck in very small runs (as our budget dictates), and for that reason have a higher asking price of $70 per deck. We would prefer to be offering them at $30, even less – because we’d like to have our art in the homes of everyone who likes what we are doing.

We would like to get this beautiful deck into the hands of *many* more fans and enthusiasts, make it more widely available, and maybe even go so far as to get bar codes and all that stuff that would allow for distribution… which requires a lot of printing setup fees and bulk ordering, the sort that is always way beyond our means.

Toward this end, she has set up a kickstarter fund. We need to raise $2,000 in printing and material expenses, and every dollar counts. She has set up many rewards for donations $5 and up, but what would be really amazing would be to receive a $1 donation from you, the reader.

People tend to feel that little amounts do not matter, that such gestures are unappreciated – but if even half of my 2,000 daily visitors pledged one single dollar, you and other contributors would have made a mark (and a damned good one) on art history by allowing an incredible artist to achieve her dream of bringing this project to life.

I know you’re probably thinking:

2000 other people? Well, that should all be taken care of then.

No… because most every one of them is thinking that exact same thing. Seriously. We get a *lot* of visitors and readers, we get a lot of email, we get a lot of people viewing images and galleries, we a lot of people downloading wallpapers, we get a number of comments, we get a handful of re-blogs (some of which even credit or link to us), we get a couple of twitter shares, we might even get a sale or two on a *really* good day… and that is generally the point where the world feels artists are well-rewarded for their work.

Here is a little-known secret: *You* are every bit as important in the art world as *any* artist. I’ve seen great and talented artists give up their dreams for a day job; I’ve seen *terrible* artists rise to the top. And if you are even a fraction as disappointed as I am in this, then you must know that artists live or die on support – not from hoity-toity self-appointed aficionados – or outlandishly rich philanthropists: but by real people, spreading links, making tiny donations, buying a print or two here or there… being involved, rather than being a bystander. You personally shape the future history.

If you would like to help out, be a part of the arts and of art history: be a part of this project, not an observer. Whether through sharing the link, or through donating $1 (seriously just $1 is AWESOME), *you* can make this happen (because all those other people are not even half as incredible). The link for her kickstarter fund is here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1835434564/the-black-ibis-project

Thank you,

Myke Amend

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Tees!


CirqueACirca Cotton Tee

Our beautiful shirts from Extreme Screen Printing have arrived. They are printed in 2 colors on an all-cotton heavyweight desert sand colored t-shirt – with art by Bethalynne Bajema, an incredible logo design by Ted Jauw, layout/pre-press by Myke Amend, modeled for by Cassie Truskowski, and loved by everyone who sees them.

Buy yours here: http://cirqueacirca.com/artprize/?page_id=131&category=5&product_id=26

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The Art of Cirque A Circa

Cirque A Circa (A Circus Out of Time) is coming up fast, and with it our 121st Annual RetroNauticon – which is much like a convention, but without registration fees and admission fees.

In a work of art nearly the size of two football fields, we will have many performers throughout the ArtPrize competition. Performers include airial, fire-spinning, fire-eating, and other sideshow performances by Cassie Truskowski, Author Bethany Grenier, Local Artist Ted Jauw, and many others – as well as fashion shows, and of course music: Such as acts by Zoe Boekbinder of Vermillion Lies, and also by The Gypsy Nomads – a great band last seen (by us) at the World Steam Expo.

You may, or may not be able to make it – but this promotional art featuring the Art of Bethalynne Bajema, and Ted Jauw’s Cirque A Circa logo and the Love ambigram is well worth-grabbing while it is still available. Not only do you have the chance to snag some wonderful and rare art for a low price, but you get to take a part of this event by supporting the artists behind it… thereby supporting the event (not having to find and earn money to eat on allows us more time to put towards this monumental effort).

Special Prints for Cirque A Circa by Bethalynne Bajema
Special Prints for Cirque A Circa by Bethalynne Bajema

Not only is Bethalynne offering these limited edition images for a very low price on the CirqueACirca page (direct link to the shop), but she has a beautiful limited edition (limited to only 21 prints) 8×10 metallic from this series available on her site, here ($2o): http://bethalynnebajema.com/scriptorium/?page_id=42&category=9

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The Sweet Smell of Recovery

I am back online. I’ve finished fixing the images in the store, and got a lot of the more recent blog enties (though I still have ten years more worth to go).

The timing for the server going down couldn’t have been worse – as during those 4 days, I not only got featured by Internet Jesus, Warren Ellis, but I finally got one of the Daily Deviation thingers on Deviant Art – sending anyone who searched for me by name or tried clicking my homepage link to a dead page.

… I hate to even think of the dead page casualty count there… 1200 faves on that image in one day, says that number would be approximately …”a lot”.

Today, Browsing Warren Ellis’ blog, I found my good friend, Eric Adams: Moon Zombies
and also my fiancee Bethalynne Bajema: Cthulhu Maestro. It seems like the internet gods are smiling upon our little cluster of artists this week.

In other news, I’ve added three new artworks to my stock – prints of two new engravings (here and here) and prints of one new painting (here). I’ve also made a single page about prints, print quality, and print types (here). The new painting, as all my paintings from this series, was sold before the last brush stroke was done – if you are interested in either of the two engravings they are currently listed on Etsy (here).

Pollen
Pollen - a weird art engraving not necessarily from my Airships and Tentacles series
See Monkeys
See Monkeys - a weird art semi-steampunk engraving of ocean depths, man-made contraptions, and ancient beings.
Red Queen - A fast and rough spatter painting in acrylic on birch panel
Red Queen - A fast and rough spatter painting in acrylic on birch panel