Travelogue of an Artistic Mind - Jen Worden

The Dark Arts group of ladies evolved from a project started waaaay back on nervousness.org called Prospero’s Books - which actually REALLY got me started back into the world of tactile arts from the all-digital that I was working in. Since that time a core group of 6 or 8 of us have collaborated on a host of wonderfully dark themed round robins, swaps and have even shown some of the results. Our current project:

Emergency Suitcases

Over Christmas I was reading a book (Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnick) wherein he talks about storytelling with his son. He makes up a boy character that becomes a baseball player leaving home with a suitcase packed by his Mama with all the things "including his bottle" that he might need in an emergency.

"… the contents of the suitcase included a complete dictionary of animal languages, a saxophone, a design for the first car radio, compressed early rocket ship refueling pills, a map of Paris, a window defogger, a time machine, a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, a map of the secret route to the South Pole and reindeer medicine for Santa’s team."

I couldn’t help but be enchanted. What would *I* include in such a suitcase?

The Project:
We each create our own box/suitcase/container to send out to be filled with all the things we might need in an emergency.

A box that I bought off of ebay, rumoured to be "haunted", was the inspiration for this project. Its backstory, directly off the ebay listing, follows:

Description
Bidding is on this OLD metal box. Inside are 142 NEEDLES (surtures?) wrapped in old cloth. I do not know how old these items are but they look OLD. The metal box measures 6" x 3 1/2" x 2 1/4". It is very rusty. The needles measure 1/2" curved up to 3". They were found in an old small trunk that came out of an old shed which was being torn down. Now, for the reason I am listing in this catagory- The old trunk was put in the closet of an upstairs room in our house. We had been fixing the room as a nursery for the arrival of our 1st grandchild. My son and daughter-in -law lived with us at the time. When my sister from out of state, called and said she was coming to visit, we fixed the room for her to stay in. She had planned to stay 2 weeks. The first couple of nights did not go well for her. She complainted about hearing whispering, laughter, alot of coughing- whimpering - of being hot then cold - being shaken-up after finally falling asleep by a cold hand- waking up in a cold sweat and feeling very dizzy. We laughed and made fun of it and said.. Yea- Sure- Okay! The 3rd night she woke us up crying and screaming and said she had just fallen asleep when she heard voices- men and women chanting and moaning - something placed over her mouth and a force holding her down. We are God-Fearing Christians-we believe in Jesus and God-and are not on drugs or alcohol. After she cut her stay short and left, I looked to see if I could find an explanation for all the weird happenings. I remembered about the trunk from the old shed in the closet and took it down to the basement where it has been since. I was talking on the phone to my sister the other night ( which still shakes and cries everytime she talks about her unpleasant visit). She said if the old trunk and content are evil I need to get rid of it. She believes it is haunted. I am going to be listing the contents from this trunk this week. I cannot guarantee that these items are haunted but (handling this box and the other items in the trunk give me the creeps) why would anyone store these needles in this box? THIS IS WEIRD. If anyone is into weird or haunted- PLEASE take this off my hands. Yes, we (my husband and I) have had some unexplained happennings but not as frightening as hers. We excuse everything we hear with this house being old-built in the late 1800’s- and what we see or what we think we see - by our age.

I knew that I needed to include the needles and so created a voodou doll (why else all those needles?!), something I’m sure would come in very handy in anybody’s emergency kit!

I didn’t do anything to the box itself except create a place for the sign-in book to be held in the top of the lid. I created the doll from pieces of the old cheesecloth using a wire armature and dryer lint for the body. The book was made from pages I’d created way back for another project and liked the texture.