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From the Editor's Desk
Spring 2003 Dear Reader, In the late 1980s, when I was a young book editor dividing my time between publishing work in New York City and carousing with a circle of friends in Boston, I rented an art studio in an old industrial building in Boston's North End, with the purpose of creating book and art projects inspired by myth and folklore. I called this space the Endicott Studio, named after the street on which it was located (in deliberate homage to the Newbury Studio, founded by my friend Tom Canty and located, back then, on Boston's Newbury Street). In the years since its inception, the Endicott Studio has supported numerous collaborative book projects, art exhibitions, readings, and myth-oriented events. Though the Studio has moved from its original home in Boston, and participating members of the Endicott circle are scattered across the United States and England, the Internet now provides a forum where we can meet to explore the field of mythic arts, and to present our work to others who share our interest in all things mythic. My own interest in myth and folklore began with the fairy tale books I devoured as a child (most particularly The Golden Book of Fairy Tales by Marie Ponsot and Adrienne Ségur); it pursued me relentlessly through high school and college (despite my youthful intention of becoming a theatrical set designer), then followed me to New York City where I became an editor of fantasy fiction. Fantasy was a field, I soon discovered, where writers and artists interested in myth and folklore tend to congregate, diligently following Joseph Campbell's dictum "to keep myth alive." ("The people who can keep it alive," said Campbell, "are the artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world.") Yet fantasy is not the only field in which contemporary artists are working with symbolism drawn from world folklore and myth. We also find mythic works in "mainstream" fiction by Angela Carter, John Barth, Louise Erdrich, Robert Coover, Emma Donoghue, and other such writers. We find it on the poetry shelves in collections by Anne Sexton, Lisel Mueller, Carol Ann Duffy, Liz Lochhead, and Olga Broumas. We find it in children's books by Alan Garner, Philip Pullman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jane Yolen, David Almond and numerous other fine writers. In visual art, myth and folklore informs the paintings of gallery-oriented artists from Leonora Carrington to Paula Rego, and book artists from Barry Moser to Peter Sis. In performance arts, myth is central to the work of Julie Taymor (designer of The King Stag, The Lion King, etc.), Stephen Legawiec (artistic director of L.A.'s mythic theater group Ziggurat) and Katy Marchant (director of the English performance group Daughters of Elvin). In addition, mythic and folkloric themes appear in films ranging from Black Orpheus to Like Water for Chocolate, in television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the writings of psychologists ranging from Jungian scholar Marie-Louise von Franz to James Hillman, and in philosophical inquiries by writers as diverse as Lewis Hyde, David Abram, Roberto Calasso, and Marina Warner. In short, despite a lingering strain of distrust in America for nonrealist art forms, myth and the mythic arts are alive and well in this country today. While there are excellent print journals that focus specifically on mythology and fairy tales (such as Parabola and Marvels and Tales), I've long wished for a magazine combining articles on myth (for the general reader rather than the specialist) with a look at how myth and folklore are used by contemporary writers and artists. Tom Canty once told me (with a world-weary sigh), "You know, sometime when you want to sit down you just have to build the chair first." Since there's no magazine out there precisely of the kind I'm looking for, we're building one here at the Endicott Studio in the form of this on-line Journal of Mythic Arts—more of a stool at this point than a full-fledged chair, but it's a beginning. We're a nonprofit Web site, run primarily on volunteer labor (with unpaid contributions of prose, poetry, and art by the kind folks in the Endicott group). Thus our resources are limited and our focus is somewhat narrow—we can't, alas, at this stage, hope to cover the entire worldwide field of mythic arts. But what we can do, and will continue to do, is to share with you the on-going work being created daily by our own interconnected, international group of artists dedicated to myth in its many forms. It is our hope that by presenting this bi-monthly journal, we'll provide information and inspiration to others out there interested in myth and mythic arts . . . and perhaps one day we'll see many such chairs drawn up to the great table of Story. Campbell's task of keeping myth alive seems to me to be especially important now—for as food is to the body, art and myth is to the soul. With challenging years lying ahead of us in a troubled, ecologically ravaged world, it is particularly important to keep our souls well nourished and our spirits strong. As folklorist/novelist Jane Yolen advises: "Touch magic, and pass it on." * * * If you're a long-time reader of the Endicott site (which debuted in 1997, under the guidance of Webmasters Richard and Mardelle Kunz), you'll have noticed that we've instituted a number changes with this edition. First, the design and architecture have been updated by our new WebWrangler, Anita Roy Dobbs. (We're still getting some of the kinks out of the new system, so please be patient with us!) We've added a new section, The Endicott Scuttlebutt, which contains all our information pages, such as events listings, publication listings, recommended links, and recommended books. Helen Pilinovsky has joined the Endicott team as our new Book Review Editor, and we aim to update the Recommendations page on a regular basis, at least monthly. Also, our old Bookstore page is gone, replaced by something many of you have been asking for: Reading Lists of various kinds, for those who are new to mythic fiction, or who simply don't want to miss anything good! Books purchased through this site (via our links to Amazon.com) still benefit our two children's charities, Casa de los Niños and Talking Feather. For more information on how your book purchases can aid children in crisis, please visit our newly revamped Children's Charities page.The Journal of Mythic Arts section of the site has a new look, but it really hasn't changed much—don't worry! We'll post new editions quarterly—and these slightly expanded "issues" of the Journal will feature (as before) articles on myth & folklore, mythic art and mythic poetry, while the articles, exhibits, and poetry of all the previous issues will still be easily accessible through the Reading Room, Gallery, and Coffeehouse index pages. You'll also now find a short work of mythic fiction in each issue—stories that have been previously published but have fallen (undeservedly) out of print. (We hope that in time we'll be able occasionally to offer brand new stories as well.) Currently, all the content from previous editions of the Journal are still posted in the old site design format, but over the next months we'll be changing them, one by one, to the new design. The Spring 2003 Journal of Mythic Arts: * In the Reading Room (formerly called the Forum) this issue, we're featuring a new article on creation myths by Heinz Insu Fenkl, along with an article from me on changeling stories in folklore and literature. * Our story is "Wolf's Heart," an original fairy tale by Tappan King. * In the Gallery, journalist Guy Cracknell takes a look at the music, masks, and dance of the English performance group Daughters of Elvin. * And in the Coffeehouse, you'll find two fairy tale poems by Neil Gaiman ("Boys and Girls Together") and Barth Anderson ("Sister and Brother"). Heinz Insu Fenkl (author of Memories of My Ghost Brother) and Neil Gaiman (author of American Gods) are frequent contributors to the Journal of Mythic Arts; a click on their names will take you to their Endicott bio pages. Tappan King is the author of the children's novel Downtown, as well as short fiction published in various anthologies; he's the former editor of Twilight Zone magazine, the grandson of Austin Tappan Wright (author of the great utopian novel Islandia), and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife, Speculative Fiction editor Beth Meacham. Barth Anderson is a writer of Speculative Fiction whose stories have appeared in New Genre, Talebones, Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, and other publications, receiving an Honorable Mention designation in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Guy Cracknell is journalist and fiction writer in the city of Exeter in southwest England. He writes for Devon Today magazine, where he's been publishing a series of excellent articles about artists on Dartmoor, and he is currently at work on a fantasy novel for children. Thanks for dropping by. Cheers, Terri Windling Tucson, Arizona February 2003 |
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