“Mutation” indeed gets at the heart of Potter’s recurring themes; the bold layering and blending of disparate elements that lend his work to narrative is suggestive of constant transition in some form or another, often with either overtly or subtly macabre sensibilities.  This sense of the macabre is often grounded in bodily concerns that merge the monstrous with the sensual, suggesting that the two are perhaps more closely related than we’d like to acknowledge.  In addition to these ideas being presented in his numerous illustrations for the works of speculative fiction authors, he has also released collections of his own work that explore these topics somewhat more freely, in the form of Neurotica (featuring modeling from weird author Poppy Z. Brite) and Horripilations. We talked to Potter to get more of the story behind his work.

“The Taborin Scale” by J.K. Potter

Weird Fiction Review: Can you tell us a little bit about your process? Do you begin with a particular goal in mind for the image you want to arrive at, or do you perhaps have a more “play it by ear” approach?

J.K. Potter: Because I use photography and because I am dependent on models my first goal in illustrating a book is finding scenes that I can actually pull off considering the limitations of my techniques. I ask myself, what do I see in this story that I can recreate using my own source material, my surroundings, models, props, etc. I am not quite as versatile as illustrators who paint and draw. I recently had a falling out with a publisher who tried to tell me exactly what scenes in a book to illustrate. I’m more flexible on covers but I have to be free to pick my own interiors. That’s just how I’ve always worked from day one. Interestingly, I had someone recently ask me where I get my source images. They were surprised to find out I take my own pictures. They thought I was buying them from some secret Fantasy-Horror stock photo archive!

WFR: What do you feel is the role of art when it comes to interacting with the story in question?

JKP: Illustrating a book immediately puts me in a coffin with the author’s name on it. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. As an illustrator I try to inhabit the author’s fictional world. All images are subservient to the writing. They wouldn’t exist without the author so they are not personal works but collaborative ones. The authors I illustrate often push me into unique worlds that I never would have found on my own. This sometimes ends up affecting my personal work in positive ways. I admit that sometime I’ve missed my cues and produced inaccurate illustrations, but one can’t always be perfect.

“Ghosts of the Hotel Grim #2” by J.K. Potter

WFR: Do your methods differ when you’re working on your own personal projects versus working on images for a book?

JKP: There are hundreds of personal works on my website jkpotter.com. They are different from my illustrations in many ways. First, many are location driven. I am obsessed with haunted places. Ghosts are my specialty. The weird crumbling factories and abandoned places I photograph inspire me to create new ghostly and monstrous things much in the same way it does working with an author . A good example is my Ghosts of the Hotel Grim project. The whole series grew out of my experiences in an actual place in Texas whose real name is the Hotel Grim. My personal works are more rooted in reality than my illustrations. I take a lot of straight photos and they are scattered throughout my personal projects. These confuse some of my old-school fans who say to me, “Hey that’s just a picture of a girl in a swamp. Why doesn’t she have a shark-mouth or something!?” They expect more flashy effects but I like taking straight-up photos and will continue to do so.

WFR: How did you get started in art?

JKP: I started in grade school drawing pictures of certain teachers I didn’t like with nails and hatchets in their heads. I learned that the other kids would give me their lunch money for these kind of drawings. My first published work was in a 1975 issue of Nils Hardin’s pulpzine Xenophile. It was an intricate ink drawing on the cover of the First World Fantasy Convention commemorative issue. It makes me sad when other people try to take credit for what Nils Hardin did for me. Nils really discovered me and launched my career. He once generously sent me an original piece of art by Clark Ashton Smith. I still have it. Don Grant published my first illustrated book Tales Of The Werewolf Clan way back in 1979. Don gave me a second big boost.

“Ghosts of the Hotel Grim #1” by J.K. Potter

WFR: You’ve had quite a long and prolific career. How do you think your art has evolved over the course of your career?

JKP: About 1977, I started using photography because I was the world’s slowest artist. It would take me months to finish one piece. From 1977 to about 2005 I was a dedicated film-camera, darkroom, and airbrush guy. Strictly analog. I stubbornly stayed a film junkie well into the computer age and only switched to digital when the darkroom started destroying my health. In the days before Photoshop, I was really able to develop a name for myself, and I have built on that ever since. Happily, the skills and work-ethic I developed in my darkroom days have carried over extremely well into Photoshop. Things are definitely easier now, but it’s not quite as romantic to me as it was during the film era. For some reason, I liked doing things the hardest way possible. That’s what really made me. As my career has evolved, I’ve also broadened my horizons from strictly Horror to Fantasy, Science Fiction, Steam Punk, and mainstream illustration. I’ve had a few really great editors who refused to typecast me and who helped me to grow. I’ve been very, very lucky in that regard.

WFR: Who are some of your favorite weird fiction authors? Are there any authors who have specifically influenced your art?

JKP: Besides the authors I’ve been most associated with, most of the writers I’ve been influenced by can be found listed in H.P.Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” I also love authors like Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers, but I don’t want to leave out non-literary stuff like Al Feldstein in EC comics, Steve Ditko in early Marvel monster comics, Creepy and Eerie magazines… I could go on and on forever.

WFR: Who are some of your influences? Who are some of your favorite visual artists?

JKP: These days I’m into freight-train graffiti and tags, hobo art, art of the insane, old monster movies, Cramps-style rockabilly horror, pulp magazine covers, and vintage Halloween stuff. Really anything offbeat or oddball attracts me. Right now my favorite artist is a graffiti guy who just calls himself 27. You can see a few of his drawings in photographs for my Love Your Yard series.

WFR: What are you currently working on? What have you worked on or released recently?

JKP: I’ve been scanning a lot of my oldest works in preparation for resurrecting them on my website, making prints, and preparing a new art book. I’ve also been working on an illustrated essay called “Behind The Scenes: The Face That Must Die” to memorialize my first great model/collaborator Dead Joe. My latest profusely illustrated project is a small book by Tim Powers. It’s called Nobody’s Home and is published by Subterranean Press. Tim Powers has probably influenced me most out of all the authors I’ve worked with in recent years. I would also like to recommend Five Autobiographies and a Fiction by the late great Lucius Shepard. There are no interior illustrations, just a cover by me, but it is a truly mind-boggling anthology. If you are interested in weird fiction you should not miss it.

The post J.K. Potter Mutates the Story appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.

Untitled, Shane LaVancher, print on mat paper, 36“x36”

Shane LaVancher’s “Creatures” invites us into a lab of hybrids–somewhere in between our technological future and our cave-dweller past. These bodies are beautiful and monstrous, thriving on the ethereal gothic: it is Gattaca meets Nosferatu. In the press release for the show, LaVancher reminds us that “visible changes in the human body are often preceded by unseen changes in the mind. As the mind is altered and becomes more beautiful, or angrier, or more erratic, the body and its surroundings generally follow suit.”  How often, though, do our minds become overwhelmed with a host of electronic and visual stimuli, to the point that we hope to tunnel our escape through a distorted vision of  the body? Figure 1 displays the particular anxieties and dreams that our capitalistic, technological advances have afforded us. Delicate, bat-like wings encase a human form that seems to be sleeping. But then notice the luminous steam or gas filling the tube–we cannot say whether this wondrous, haunted thing is about to be released or killed. Do we need to study our desires–to fly, to be better in body and mind, to continually morph into something greater, lest they get out of control? Or do we let many such dreams die, suffocating under own analysis?

Untitled, Shane LaVancher, print on mat paper, 36“x36”

Figure 2 crawls on the backs of its hands, inching forward without looking up. We can’t tell if it has just learned to crawl and is still figuring out the basics or again, if it’s about to die. The lower half is smooth, with the thin, sensuous legs of a woman, but the belly is reptilian. The back sports mats of hair that grow in strange patches, even coming over the chest and down the arm. Its scalp looks diseased with the lack of any hair–can you say whether this is a male or female, caught in the evolutionary process, or perhaps trapped by our own anxieties about just what, a “male” or “female” should look like? In my grotesque class, I always ask my students to think about what is the difference between the “natural” body and the “normal” body. We are perpetually caught in the war between these two rhetorics—that which we are, that core of the self that sheds all labels, that in-between thing we might be terrified to face, and that “normalized” self which obeys the whims and fancies of culture.

Untitled, Shane LaVancher, print on mat paper, 36“x36”

Figure 3 is a gleaming, gorgeous body also in the middle of a grotesque transfiguration. At first glance, my eye followed the dark tail whipping up into the air and I immediately landed on the label, “mermaid.”  But the end doesn’t fan out into a glorious fin as it should, and then I pay attention to the cracked landscape, which creates a darker narrative. Obviously, the sea has dried up, and so this creature must either take flight or learn to slither upon the barren ground, like any normal serpent. The story rings too true as we create more adaptive technologies in the face of rising global temperatures and disappearing resources. Still, we must bow before Nature’s force, even while we learn how to fly.

LaVancher’s show is a breathtaking display of light, shadow, grotesque bodies and stark landscapes. If you are in New York City, then go and view “Creatures,”  which is showing at the Orchard Windows Gallery, 37 Orchard Street in New York City until July 5th.  Caitlin Dodge Sloat was the model for all the photographs.

To view more of Shane LaVancher’s work, visit his website: http://www.lavancherstudio.com/

The post Creeping Beauty: Shane LaVancher’s Evolutionary Creatures appeared first on Weird Fiction Review.