I finished my Body Count Drawings, featuring slasher films, and the images are up! This detail is from Happy Birthday to Me (1981) - I saw the film in the mid-80s and this image freaked me out.

May, according to the Zombie Research Society, is zombie awareness month. It’s already the 10th, so if you’re behind I recommend sleeping with one eye open - starting now. Wear your grey ribbon (perhaps you have one you can recycle from other awarenesses such as Diabetes, Brain Cancer, and others).

Secondly, there is a band from Paris called Zombie Zombie - it’s trance music - get it?

And visit the blog for an upcoming DIY (as yet untitled) apocalyptic zombie film combining narrative fiction and contextual zombie-expert interviews… by Michael Frank of Rochester, NY. I met Michael in January in frozen Buffalo, NY and look forward to his feature.

And last but not least, this Studio 360 clip on zombies was sent to me from Sam Zimmerman in NYC:

Wildflowers are in their late spring phase. Yesterday I saw white-fringed phacelia, trout lily, flame azalia, wild iris, wild violet, pink lady slipper, and trilium. Also louse wort and squaw root which are cruel names for flowers. The squaw root is not a beauty:

Meanwhile, I’ve been drawing unpleasant things.
Below are some details of Body Count Drawing 7: “The House on Sorority Row”

Last night I watched Basketcase (1982) courtesy of a friend’s video collection, and was reminded of both Jan Švankmajer’s Little Otik (2000) - which has higher production values but is just as strange a story, and Jeffrey Sconce’s article “Trashing the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style”. I highly recommend all three.

The “monster” in the basket is not very scary, although he’s terribly violent, and his stop motion rampage is pretty wonderful. Check out the terrible lighting - including telephone wire shadows cast across faces, the bad hair pieces, and the non-stellar acting.

Now that spring has sprung, my mind has turned to new tricks and slasher films: there are new signs of life (such as pollen) bursting out everywhere and most slashers strike in warm weather. For these reasons I don’t plan to set foot outdoors until late fall, so I’ve plenty of time to teach myself new skillz including drawing! Though not exactly new, drawing is a skill I’ve forgotten to exercise for approximately 15 years. It’s probably like riding a bicycle, but the last time I tried that I fell flat on my face, scared the crap out of myself, and left the bike equipment where it lay.

Here is a sneak peek of details from the first of my drawings, in progress, titled Body Count, Friday the 13th.

For those who are curious there are 11 deaths (athough 3 took place in the past and it is revealed that 1 of the “dead” may in fact be “undead”).

Apparently it’s Easter and I am sitting in my temporary studio which is really a parlour in a possibly creepy old white mansion on a very run down street. There is moss between the stone steps leading up from the street and an electric yellow forsythia just outside one window. Through another window is a tulip tree, the kind I used to call magnolia, with half-opened magenta buds. I hear fire trucks in the distance and the older gentleman owner of the house, whom I haven’t met, is singing Candle in the Wind with radio accompaniment and working in the yard which is filled with antiques - his worn t-shirt says rocket in my pocket, in red.

I’m watching slasher films from the 70s and 80s for a series of drawings I am working on.

Its all very lovely, like spring…

This will be a summer of hot-blooded romance for vampire fans everywhere.

June 10th marks the release of Eclipse, the third in the Twilight series - and those folks don’t waste any time. If the trailer is any indication there will be much pouting and much swooping over majestic Northwestern mountain scenery. Edward’s perfect vampire eyebrows once again go head to head against werewolf-next-door rivalry. How is a (mere mortal) brunette to resist?

Hot on those heels on June 13th (coincidence?) the Southeastern variety vampire shapeshifting saga True Blood, starts up for season three and if you really can’t wait you can watch the production videos, which take the bite out of pretty vampire boys William and Eric fighting over the (fake) blond living object of their undying affections.

Speaking of eclipses, Bonnie Tyler in her 1980s video Total Eclipse of the Heart, looks mighty vampirical as we storm through 2010.

And this just in via Flavorwire’s interview with Mary Gaitskill,

Why do you think vampires are so prevalent in popular literature right now? What does it say about our desires?

~I think they are perennially popular. They’re very sexual. I think people have a fear and fascination with sex as a form of devouring, especially psychic devouring. There’s also a feeling of people starving for deeper life, like blood. The feel empty and they want to find something to suck. Vampires express out need for substance, closeness, and intimacy.

Oh Nosferatu, you poor out-dated creepy monster.

During my sabbatical I am taking a creative writing class. Oh yes, I’ve been moving the brain in new and mysterious ways, highly recommended. I may one day need to write a play about philosophical zombies and sock puppet identities, for example. Perhaps it will be a musical, featuring bands of ukeleles. I am stockpiling skills.

Friend and gallery owner Michael Rosenthal recently sent me a story by Donald Barthelme (1981) titled Zombies. It brings to mind the lesser but greatly hyped Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

And speaking of that marketing success, Dawn of The Dreadfuls, the prequel to Pride and… is coming hot on its heels next month, following the “post-script prequel” trend haunting all manner of horror lately. The cover for Dawn… is above.

RedRum, my show at Hallwalls is up and running now through late February. It features a new video, also titled RedRum that features young ghosts and houses that drip with blood.

Dear Buffalo,
Thanks to Hallwalls for everything and curator John Massier for the fabulous production assistance; the students at Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts and Jam Vafai for being my crew and actors; Joan Linder and Paul Vanouse, Julian and Colette Montague, Sandy Ludwig and Mark Kerwood, and Dennis Maher for lending their homes; The Buffalo Soundpainting Ensemble for creating uber-creepy sounds and introducing me to the ocean harp; Gerry Mead and Cori Wolff for lending paintings from their collections; and Debbie and Gary Hill for hosting me. Buffalo, I miss you already!
~love, Jillian

Although there are many zombie sock monkeys out in the world, my dear dear friend Kelty in Vancouver sent me this prize specimen for Xmas - how could anyone not love that precious face, at least from a safe distance? Thanks Kelty!