Time will tell. Right now, it is time to say hello to another season of the dead.

OLOGY 15 sees the continuation of OLOGY's new segment called ADVANCEMENT.
(a spot for experiments in creative storytelling) with he second installment of Kevin Lottes' strange and haunting work , “Voicebox”.

In keeping with our theme of all things esoteric and creepy,
Be sure to check out ARTISCOPIC for the latest emerging artist ghoulishness.

Winter is on the way and it's a time for recollection, introspection, and more importantly...candy. Speaking of things that are sweet, check out this issue's cover artist, Danny Malboeuf.

Take a good look folks because long after we are all dead, people will still be talking about his work. In the spirit of the Aztec belief in the duality of the human condition, the cover of OLOGY 15 is a double feature. So thank your lucky stars for beauty in the world, and lift a glass with a kind word to some dearly departed.

The veil is thinning, pass the Rollos.

Let's kick things off in a spectral fashion with recollections of All Hallow's Eve beginning with those from our cover artist. You can see more of his work at The Queen's Gallery & Art Center, and on kolaboy.deviantart.com

When Shadows Were More Than Shadows

by Danny Malboeuf

When it was suggested that I write a piece regarding All Hallows Eve,
I suddenly found myself at at of a loss.

Halloween has always been my favorite of holidays, and to attempt to capture in words all that it (and it's accumulated customs) has inspired in myself over the years... well, it's a daunting task. The difficulty is that there is no one element, no definite attribute that I can point to that makes this particular day so special to me. The effect is a cumulative one, combining childhood memories (both real and imagined) and the illustrative pop culture iconography that has it's beginnings in the middle part of the nineteenth century... but I digress.

Visually, the bold signature of orange and black that predominates in the festive
decor of this season is to me suggestive of that first brittle wind of Autumn, scented with ripening apples and dying leaves. Cool crisp nights, and skies cleared of summer's haze. The harvest star, Fomalhaut, reigning low in the southern horizon, and the last few fireflies die as the pumpkins grow fat in the fields.

Surrounded by this glorious death, our minds turn naturally to the dead, and to the childhood tales and legends that gave us those delicious chills, and that became the fodder for our imaginations. Those close to us who have passed on before, intermingle in our minds with the nameless phantoms that speak behind every rusty hinge, and who move obliquely past our windowsill at midnight.

You will find that if you listen very closely on a sleepless night, after a time you will begin to hear those sonorous voices, just beneath the surface of reality. It's a bit like staring at a portrait in a dim room. As the minutes pass you will be surprised to discover that the lips begin to move. I still remember the paralyzing shock when I first experienced this phenomenon, and how I had to take down the die-cut witch decoration that was hanging beside my bed .I must have been eight. I would still stare at the witch to recreate this effect, but only in the daytime.

Musically, there is an abundance of Halloween related fare, both good and ill.
Be assured that somewhere on the 31st Bobby Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers will be performing the Monster Mash for the umptillionth time. Sam the Sham will be croaking out Wooly Bully, and whatever entity is responsible for that Purple People Eater song will certainly be afoot.

Personally, I've never been attracted to these so-called novelty songs. Halloween to me has nothing to do with such silliness. It's more of a winsome, piquant poetry.

A taste of candy and a sensation of some indefinable (yet not wholly unpleasant) dread. A mysterious mixture whose equivalent I find mainly in classical pieces such as Bartok’s “Music for 2 Pianos, Percussion, and Celestia“, or Krzysztof Penderecki's "Fluorescences". In addition, there is an entire genre of children's records devoted to scary sound effects, spooky stories, and famous actors reading classic poetry in an admittedly overly dramatic fashion.

Ironically, some of these old and scratchy LPs come closest to capturing the spirit of the holiday. No matter what age you are, you (if you are receptive) can be transported back to a more innocent time of life when shadows were more than shadows, and a mere suggestion was enough to conjure up a stadium of spirits in your bedroom. But beyond the puerile, the profound, and yes even the poetic, what I recall with the most pleasure is a little song I learned in the second grade:

"Tonight is the night when dead leaves fly
Like witches on switches across the sky..."

It seemed (at the time) to almost be a hymn to... fear, and to the pleasure that one can take from a fear that we ourselves choose to cultivate. Elevating and condensing this fear/pleasure into something tangible, yet still undefined. This is what makes Halloween such a unique and unsettling holiday.

Early on, my obsession with this day led me to attempt to collate and decipher these disparate elements into a workable puzzle with definite pieces, reasoning that once one had a puzzle and the pieces, one could certainly solve it. It took me years to fully understand that these conflicting sensations are not meant to be solved or understood with the cognizant mind, but are the germinations of that most treasured of visitations - inspiration.

So for me, Halloween is a day of beautiful conflict, a marriage of elements that are somehow held together by night-chilled candy, the lingering whispers of the dead, and the Autumn moon. A surrealist's heaven.

I remember a Halloween past, trick or treating with my friends, riding up the interstate past the big Union 76 ball that hung like a huge pumpkin in the sky, sorting candy on the living room floor with my cousin while Frankenstein met the Wolfman on TV, falling asleep outside in my orange tent, staring with half closed eyes at a waning and blurry moon, and waking up on a bright November morning to find that the candle in the jack-o‘-lantern beside the tent had gone out.

But, he was still smiling.

What is your work all about, what motivates you to make the work?
¿De que se trata tu trabajo? ¿Que te motiva a hacerlo?

My work, my job, and reason, is to “search”. To explore imaginary places, talk about the sensations and attitudes of the soul, about the trip we all make towards the same place. My motivation is that, with my art, I can go to other points of time, or to other worlds. And tell or show in very different ways, what I believe, what I’m trying to understand, what bothers me, what worries me, what frightens me, what I Love. I’m interested I taking you to places I don’t know but that make you ask yourself the same things that they make me, and that more questions arise. To show that there is a world behind this one, where almost everything seems to be explained only in one way. Question, that is what we do .

Mi trabajo, mi tarea, mi razón, es "buscar". Explorar lugares imaginarios, hablar de las sensaciones y posturas del alma, del viaje que todos hacemos hacia el mismo lugar. Mi motivación es que con mi arte, puedo ir hacia otros puntos del tiempo, o hasta otros mundos. Y contar, mostrar de muchos modos diferentes lo que creo, lo que trato de entender, lo que me molesta, lo que me inquieta, lo que me aterra, lo que Amo. Me interesa llevarte a lugares que no conozco pero que te hagan preguntarte las mismas cosas que a mí, y que surjan nuevas preguntas. Ver que hay un mundo detrás de este, donde casi todo parece estar explicado de una sola forma. Preguntas, eso es lo que uno hace.

How do you feel about artwork that is made using digital tools?
¿Cuales son tus pensamientos acerca del arte realizado utilizando herramientas digitales?

I believe that digital art offers some advantages when it comes to hastening the time on the editorial field, but I use it as a minimal complement. I am not fulfilled with the results I’ve seen in the works painted in machines. There is no spirit there. They are like little shells emptied of feelings. Everything looks the same, it seems as if the life of these people was always the same, like waking up every morning on marmot day. The only exception that I know of is Tatarnikov, who mixes good drawing and good painting with textures made by hand, but that are treated digitally in the end. This guy is amazing.

Creo que el arte digital, ofrece ciertas ventajas en cuanto a agilizar los tiempos en el campo editorial, pero yo lo utilizo como un complemento mínimo. No me llenan los resultados que he visto en lo pintado en máquina. No hay espíritu ahí. Son como cascaritas vacías de sensaciones. Todo se ve igual, parece que la vida de esta gente fuerasiempre igual, como levantarse siempre el día de la marmota. La única excepción que conozco es Tatarnikov, que mezcla buen dibujo y buena pintura, con texturas hechas a mano, pero tratadas digitalmente al final. Este tipo es increíble.

When your time on earth is up, and you leave this mortal body, are you cool with someone drinking from your skull?
¿Cuando tu tiempo en la Tierra termine, y dejes este cuerpo mortal, estarías de acuerdo con que alguien beba de tu cráneo?

Even though I paint obscure things to provoke shakes, I try to compensate this with the appearance of beauty. In every thing that surrounds us, the beautiful screams or hides fragments, details, little gifts of this love story of Life with the Spirit. The eternity of the Existence. The Eye of the Soul must be awake. I don’t think I World would mind that someone drinks from my skull, because my work is that. The spectator must be predisposed to the search, a journey that the sleeping spectator or unprepared overlooks, because an initial cadaverous wall exists that must be crossed in order to get to the underlying message. If my message can be tasted by the trained drinker, then toast with the goblet that contains my conscience!

Aunque a veces pinto cosas oscuras para provocar sacudones, trato de compensar esto con la aparición de la belleza. En todas las cosas que nos rodean grita o se esconde lo bello; fragmentos, detalles, pequeños regalos de esta historia de amor de la Vida con el Espíritu. La eternidad de la Existencia. El Ojo del Alma debe estar despierto. Creo que no me molestaría que beban de mi cráneo, porque mi obra es eso. El espectador debe estar predispuesto a una búsqueda, a un viaje, el espectador dormido o desprevenido pasa de largo, porque existe una barrera inicial cadavérica, que debe cruzarse para llegar al mensaje que subyace. Si mi mensaje puede ser saboreado por el bebedor entrenado, entonces que brinden con el cáliz que contiene mi conciencia!

God's Acre Book One: The Ravens & The Rhyme is now available and shipping.

Please visit www.omnibucket.com/godsacre for details

"Neither a graphic novel nor an art-book, at times it could be both. The strange and fragmented world that is presented is reminiscent of a reality that might be seen through the eyes of a child. This is a world where what is real and unreal is a matter left decided by the power of imagination. The push and pull between the detail and abstraction, between deliberate sculpture and sketch reflects and enhances the experience of the characters in their own search for solidity and truth in the world around them.

The story within the story, illustrated by a separate artist, evokes a shift in perspective from the teller of one story versus the other, and in doing so, creates more depth than many single-narrative stories are able to achieve. Watching the stories twist and turn around each other adds an extra layer of intrigue.

This first book contains enough substance and resolution that it can be enjoyed in isolation. It does, nevertheless, lead the reader into the next story of the series.

Given Omnibucket’s growing reputation for quality production, it is not surprising to see that it is wonderfully crafted. The attention to detail, in conjunction with a sublime handling of both material and subject, immediately brings to mind childhood fairy tales and storybooks of youth."