Auction #32: The Bees Spring To Life

“Let’s see how you look,” he says, pulls up a chair in the doorway so she can’t run out.

The mother had beautiful things, and the racks behind the governess sag with the silk and satin dresses the mother wore only once and couldn’t throw away. One is the dark blue of the night sky sewn with silver, one is the bright gold of the sun, one shines like a diamond.

When she shakes her head he says, “Come on, you took the boots she gave you. She’s not coming back for these. Let’s pick something nice.”

She feels as if his hands were on her, but he sits in his chair while she pulls the blue dress from the hangar, slides it over her naked bones. She trembles so much that he has to pull up the zipper himself.

He turns her to face the mirror.

“That’s better,” he says, moves the chair aside, closes them in.

---

After the children are asleep, the governess goes to her room and sees the dress of gold laid out on her bed, unzipped and waiting for her. The lining is embroidered with bees (from the mother’s name–the dress was made for her).

She looks out the window as if she could signal someone, but it’s night out, and the window might as well be painted over black.

She puts on the dress and goes to his room.

“Very good,” he says, and she feels like her mouth has been stuffed with cotton and no light will ever reach her.

When he zips the dress closed, she can feel the bees spring to life inside the dress, a thousand tiny stings.

---

A gilded cage is still a thorny prison, and meat is meat.

Cris Fisher

Auction #31: Write. Appropriate. Remix. Transform.

Chimera Fancies are wearable poetry made of old recycled fairy tale books made into new art, my own chosen interstitial art form. For this auction I used an ARC of Interfictions 2, so the text on these pieces is both taken from and inspired by the stories themselves.

“What He Said” is taken from the introduction to Interfictions 2 by Henry Jenkins, “On the Pleasures of Not Belonging”. Jenkins discusses what interstitiality means to him and to others so beautifully here, I wanted to make something to capture this idea. As he said, “Write. Appropriate. Remix. Transform.” Let’s all not belong together.

Mia Nutick

Auction #29: Bottle Your Emotions

Shira Lipkin and I collaborated on this project, working together to record the story in as many different forms as possible: audio on cassette tape and CD, video on DVD, handwritten on parchment, computer printed on paper. I then shattered the disks, tore the paper, and cut the tape into small fragments and used one fragment from each medium in this piece, to reflect the story’s theme of data loss and recovery.

Kythryne Aisling

Auction #28: Memory Chain

Upon reading Valentines, I wondered what it would be like to have to carry and write your entire life. I translated that feeling into a charm necklace which can actually serve as a necklace, belt, or even a bracelet depending on how you wrap it. I wanted to make a piece that was functional, beautiful and useful. Something that the new owner would be able to add to with their own story as well as the story of the heroine. One of my favorite parts about this necklace is the message bottles. Ways to carry slips of paper and notes. These bottles can be left as is, or filled with your own memories. A lot of these charms were found objects in and around Hollywood, CA.

Jonaya Kemper

Auction #25: Stray blots of ink, scattered from hasty scribblings

These shell beads I hunted down just for this story — I wanted something paperlike as well as just a nice bead, something that could be written on. The writing, glazed black ink (well-baked and safe for nearly anything you could do to it, this writing will not fade from memory) are excerpts from the story, of the narrator’s own musings: “movements a careful ballet of hot espresso and soup and witty banter” strung around the necklace, and “leather-bound journals with elegant heavy pens” around the wrist. The pendant is for Valentine(s): what image does his name inspire if not a heart? The black beads I chose for their resemblance to stray blots of ink, scattered from hasty scribblings.

Sarah B. Evans

Auction #22: Silver Harmonies

When I first heard about this project, I knew I wanted to participate, but I’ll also admit to a certain amount of trepidation: how *do* you make a piece of jewelry, something so tangible and unchanging, to match a story, something that by its nature is about narrative and time, and inherently intangible despite being fixed in a specific order of words?

But by the morning after I read “The Score” I knew what at least my own answer would be — knew it in that mysteries-of-the-subconscious way, where the answer presents itself fully formed without your ever being aware you were thinking about the question. These earrings are a surprisingly (to me, at least) literal representation of the story — so literal, indeed, that I fear to discuss the correspondences lest I find myself in spoiler territory. I’d love to know how well this attempt at a translation works for those who’ve read the story; for now, I’ll just have to wait to have that conversation.

You should go read “The Score” yourself, of course. Immediately, if not sooner. And not just so that I can talk about it.

M. Panitch

Auction #20: The Moon On A String

I tried to make this bracelet festive, to focus on the party scene at the climax of the story rather than Dunbar’s anxieties. I tried to show the award ceremony as it would seem to others in the story: oh, isn’t it all pretty? Isn’t it fancy? Aren’t we grand? The beads I chose for their color — champagne, of course — and the way their facets reflect light so well, making the strands quite shiny. The locket comes to you empty, to stand for Dunbar at the moment he’d wanted so long. It is also for the buyer, a place to hold their own memories.

Sarah B. Evans

Auction #19: Raspberries On A String

Auction #13: Remembrance Is Something Like A Necklace

Chimera Fancies are wearable poetry made of old recycled fairy tale books made into new art, my own chosen interstitial art form. For this auction I used an ARC of Interfictions 2, so the text on these pieces is both taken from and inspired by the stories themselves.

“Still Standing” is taken from Will Ludwigsen’s haunting story “Remembrance is Something Like a House,” a piece which spoke to me of persistence and redemption and the power of truth.

Mia Nutick

Auction #10: The Short Chain of Memory

As a student surrounded by people like Heidi everyday, she felt to me like a very real character who really deserved to be canonized in beads. The braided cord I used was for her particular hairstyle, which added quirk to her character and, I think, to the choker. The more colorful glass beads dotting the piece are for her memories, the things she so valued and that ultimately undid her: they’re colorful, vivid, and the faceted, chunky shapes of the glass were something I like here as not only a contrast to the darkness of the necklace, but to represent bits, fragments, of memory. The silver chain is for pretty, and in places, to represent Heidi’s memories tied to her mind, unable to forget anything. And the bit of frayed cord in the center is to represent the surgery, the severing of her hippocampus.

Sarah B. Evans