This is my non-short and non-silly post about the Interfictions auction.

For those of you kind of new to my blog, I’m a member of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging art and artists that exist outside of or between borders. I’ve been a fairly active member for a while, mainly because I once expressed a bit of interest and Ellen Kushner pounced on me. I am forever within her paws, but that’s okay because she is one of the more fabulous human beings on the planet, as is her wife Delia Sherman. So it’s all good.

I was lucky enough to have a story picked for the first Interfictions anthology. Then about a year later I organized an auction of jewelry based on the stories in Interfictions. It went so well that we immediately began brainstorming ideas for how we’d run the auction for the next volume of Interfictions. This time we opened it up to all manner of art, as long as it was wearable, portable, or at least easily mailable. The call went out, some free stories were distributed, a little over 40 artists took on the challenge and now we have just over 30 pieces of art to show for it.

The auction has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Sorry I have not posted about it before this. Like I said yesterday: awesome, but busy job. The pieces that are no longer available were beautiful and amazing, but there is definitely still time to bid on some awesome pieces.

You should go take a look at this gallery with images of everything, but I am going to walk you through my favorites.

Shatterglass Datakey is ending today (in about an hour, actually) and I wanted it then Ellen Kushner tried to take it from me then my friend Charlotte came along and tried to pretend like she was going to win it. I’m going to be evil and bid at the last minute. If you are evil, maybe you should as well. It’s a pendant that is a key that is wrapped in wire and beads that have writing on them and, people, it is awesomeness squared.

Everybody Knows is a hunk of handmade yard that incorporates bits of paper with the story it’s based on (Valentines by Shira Lipkin) printed on it. You need to just click here and read the artist’s statement, as I cannot do it justice. I really like this piece, but I kept wondering if it would be possible to actually DO something with that yarn. Like knit it into a scarf or something. So I asked the artist, the faboo Emily Wagner, and she said:

You can TOTALLY knit with it. I mean, the paper is going to be falling out, but the yarn itself should be pretty structurally sound. I soaked it and stretched it on my swift when I was done skeining it up, which took FOREVER, BTW. :) I think it would be a really cool textural scarf, with lots of dropped stitches to show it off.

And here’s the thing: whatever anyone makes from this yarn, it will also be interstitial art. And the fact that the bits of paper will fall away adds this layer of transience to it. Like, no matter what, the Valentines will continue to fall away, until all that’s left is the memory within the yarn itself, in the person who made the yarn, and in the person who knitted it. There are just so many layers of meaning inherent in this art — layers that reveal themselves over time — that I can’t believe more people are not bidding on this. If you knit, you must bid. Then you must show us all what you knit. I’ll post about it on the IAF’s blog myself.

The Animometer is a piece everyone always gasps over when they see it. I have an affinity for art made from the bones of objects, and who doesn’t love an antique pocket watch?

The Child Empress of Mars (doll). When I first opened the box this came in I was both entranced by its beauty and shocked by its alienness. As I’ve said elsewhere, this is probably the most evocative and striking piece in the auction. It’s visceral and perfectly embodied the story and beautiful but also makes you want to run away screaming. Can you imagine having this in your living room in a place where everyone who comes in would see it? That would be so awesome. I have no hope of owning it, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

Untitled is just a beautiful picture depicting a really, really strange scene. I love the colors, the way the brain is glowing but entrapped by and connected to all of those branches. It’s going up in a few days and is definitely on my want list.

I will post more favorites next week. In the meantime, you should go check out the auctions and this preview of all the pieces. There’s clothing and jewelry and funky barely classifiable items of amazingness. Also, if you have not already, you should check out the Interfictions 2 anthology. I’m lucky enough to have read all of the stories and can tell you that this antho is just as good as the first. My homie Alaya Dawn Johnson has a fantastic story within and my other homie Genevieve Valentine has a story in the online annex to the anthology. Eight stories that were so good that Delia and Chris (the editors) couldn’t bear to not buy them, so they published them online. You can read them for free.

Next week I will also probably post something about comparisons between pieces of art based on the same stories. It’s always cool to see different interpretations and which parts of the story speak to each artist.