'katie and the mimzy'

satis house

2012-03-01T11:02:00.003-08:00

shot for the spring issue of fussed magazine. charlotte benson @ TESS lies betwixt lace and cobwebs, hair and make-up by siobhan drew, styled by tom bloomfield. thank you to issy for letting us spread our dreams all over her magical home.

the birds are sleeping, the birds are weeping

2012-02-12T11:11:00.001-08:00

sir, please don't watch the birds as they weep, you are the reason i can not sleep.

i am not sure how much longer i will be here, it is very dark where i lay. my meadow is a graveyard.

a rabbit bid me goodnight

2012-02-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

the witch rabbits were a collection of ghostly creatures that i met one day in my mind. they were majestic as they danced with me, and stars were lightly encrusted into their fur. i bite my tongue before i tell them they are beautiful, i fear my love will only make them flea; instead they take me home to their bed of flowers, and cast spells of magic all over me. i drank their elixir, one morning in april, my black feathers sprouted from the bones of spine. soon i was clasping the witch rabbits by my finger tips, we soared over the patchwork of the forest herself.

i have not seen the rabbits in a very long time, they have fleeted, i am fleeting.

i want to play with those witch rabbits again, but the pills keep making them hazy in front of my eyes. they spin. i feel sea-sick. they kiss my eyes; they bid me goodnight. 'sleep tight, shy lover', they'd all sing, 'sleep slient, sleep dreams, sleep, peaceful thing.'

i sit alone in my meadow, it is so very dark and my moon glows above me. the tips of my wings are bleeding so heavily and my moon tries to cradle me with his lulls, but it is winter and i am slowly freezing. the creatures have all left me and all i see is darkness, i think i am in a dream but i scream and i do not wake up.

sometimes my winter meadow morphs into a winter maze, and even my moon is hidden away betwixt the branches that scratch my flesh. i am incredibly lost, and nobody knows that i am here. i can not breathe very well. my naked body swings down towards the ground and the moss sews itself into my skin.

i do not think that i was very well today, yesterday, or tomorrow; my antlers are snapped upon your floor. stop standing on them, please.

lately there has been a fire in the darkness, a burning star. it streams from the horizon in a magnificent red and helps me to find the path in winter's maze again. often it takes a moment to curtsy towards my moon, thankful for his care over me, and he smiles as i wander so curiously towards it. for that time, i am no longer freezing. for that time, i am no longer bleeding.

that is what a girl named kitty is to me, she is that piece of soul i often wonder if i am missing.

one winters night she and her lover picked me up by my wings and took me into their nest. i curled up beneath their dancing fireplace; they baked in their kitchen and told me stories of all the humour that encompassed their lives. they stuffed me with their love and warmth and began to cut away at my darkness. stitch by stitch, they unpick the moss from my flesh. 'i don't see any stars,' kitty said to the night as ice kissed the earth, and i feared my darkness had cast them out. but instead she smiled at me so widely, and we made up words as she filled her nest with the musted sweet scents of lavender.

on the first morning i accidentally stumbled into their bedroom, still caught up in the layers of my sleep. before i hurried out, i noticed the word 'dream' written above their bed. it was implanted against the wall in letters of a dulling gold. i hope that those letters chase away all of their nightmares, i hope they fill the folds kitty's mind with such songs and such beauty.

i folded paper into a swan and left it for them upon their mantlepiece. the swans are another creature from my meadow, they are full of grace but they can not find the wind to fly. i may acquaint you with them sometime.

kitty and i ventured out into the cold air before dusk, and we sat in mud in the park at the end of the street. i placed my moon above kitty's head, and sprinkled her hair with the gold stars she missed so dearly. our bodies began to numb but our souls were very free, we hid ourselves in the corner of a small cafe and slept in the thoughts of each other's words.

before i flew away again, they granted me one wish, and i hugged onto them both tightly as they gifted me two fish.

i feel i am nearing the surface of my freezing lake, although it's further away than i think. there is moss in-between my toes, and it still grows in my hair, and somedays i wish my scissors were not so blunt.

the witch rabbits might come back to play with me one day; let us dance to the hums of the stars, sweet ghosts of my light. never let me go, sweet ghosts of my life.

my fingers of bloodlust kissed the stars of his crown, he gave me back to the river where i started to drown.

annie the hatter

2011-12-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

annie in her great grandmother's wedding hat, hair and make-up by amber scarlett, shot for SYN magazine (for which i write and edit).

i had dream in the summertime

2011-12-24T09:27:00.000-08:00

a dream i had once, i think. i have to give extra thanks to my team, for their endless patience while i went to hell and somewhat back; victoria emslie and miranda read wilson wear clothing by sarina mantle @ wildsuga, swan costume and set-design made by myself, hair and make-up by laura naish. thank you emily harris for your endless help.

a hallows-eve too late

2011-12-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

lydia came to visit me at just before last hallows-eve. my moon lays much lower in the sky now. lustful, i think.

never young again

2011-11-15T00:11:00.000-08:00

dear mama,

i remember a day, i'm not sure when and i'm not sure why, at a time where i still saw myself underwater. there was wind that day, in that time underwater, and you sat me at the edge of the earth. the infinite horizon and the white stallions galloping as an army towards rocks i sat on, their foals licked against my toes. i briefly remember looking at photograph of that ocean once, and i watched as the waves rolled forward to greet me, i turned the print over and over in the skin about my hands to made it stand still.

i see my father by my mother and the sunflower they grew, intertwined with their love years before i was born. the sun grew that flower, my father the sun - he grew me that tall until my youth began pondering. then the moon took me one night, unveiling himself into my midnight sun, he unravelled my father and i laid on the ground; a dress to my knees, hair tinted with blood. i held onto my sister, delicate as a water-lily and still remains that way.

there were times of blood, and of darkness, mama, and i still love the blood and crave the darkness. we curtsy each other every now and again. i thank the ones that sang to me. i thank the one who saved me. i thank my rational mind for loving my escapist mind and for letting me spend every moment of reality somewhere else. no matter how scared it makes me that i may now never be able to leave. 'but i never want to leave' i argue with myself.

i am in a lake of freezing water, without my moon's tides keeping me afloat i drown.

once on an evening, perhaps a night or a morning, where i cut my nails with rusty kitchen scissors and let them fall to floor, for they were just my nails after all. i thought they'd soak into the floor until i remembered it was carpet, not my earth. i think they found their way somehow.

i fell awake one morning to find my favorite small creature lying limp; she, entwined in dirt and her blind eye glowing her unbind eye's red. i held her for hours that mourning, i did. that night the ground was wet so i watched her leaving her body. streaks of soul orange moving further towards her sister, i buried her them together in hopes they remain that way; away from black cats and black bats under wood that made love with green.

yesterday was the final day that my rational mind tells me i should be full of angst and uselessness, and i spent it alone in my meadow. the creatures all came to bid me goodbye, one by one they kissed my skin with their spindly legs. i could only return as different to them. i promised them that i would never, and they looked at me with such pity.

it has been eighteen years since i met you, mama, a youth ago as i will say, and a further eighteen minutes, mama, since you told me one day i will fade. eighteen scratches, mama, since i begged that i can never.

love forever,
never young again

-

dear the dark haired crow boy of my mind (the one i named with a singular letter,)

slience slience and your rough breathing.

thank you for giving me the strength to hopefully move away from you one day. thank you for making everything okay. thank you for stitching my patchwork skin back together with your shaking fingers and threads and glue. i wish you and my other freckled self all the beauty in your make-believe lives; i hope if i grow into that white-haired woman i see, the one that i fear so very often, that i will find the understanding and the patience to share you with this reality.

love forever,
never young again

the butterfly replied, stitching crow feathers to his side

2011-10-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

the butterfly replied, stitching crow feathers to his side, "oh to be a swan would be so much grander."

fawn

2011-09-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

victoria, the fawn in the forest of my mind, hair and make-up by sophie whimster and assisted by my work experience student, jess.

once upon a time, a swan spoke to a butterfly

2011-09-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

once upon a time, a swan spoke to a butterfly, ‘can you fly high, sir flutter fly? as i can only graze the water.’

there was a red spider who had a red lover and they crawled together. i always feel safe with nicolette, her soul greets mine with a curtsy and she reads my mind in the way i read the world. infinite sky, my moon was high.

the petal circus

2011-08-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

miranda in the petal circus, hair and make-up by alice moore and dresses provided by kee boutique. featured in tarte magazine with an interview from me.

sweet meadow at night

2011-07-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

my bethany and amber, from our late twilights in prague that we explored the forests as birds and mermaids.

prague

2011-07-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

in prague i only saw the night three times, once when i was arriving and once when i was leaving. that third time was the most spectacular though, when lightning strikes danced in entrancing patterns and the thunder betwixt the rain to make a lullaby from an untuned voice. i sat up from my mattress by bethany's bed, for just a moment, to watch it, and fell back to the floor in a delirious trance. numinous.

two twilights in a row we ventured out to the forest of lakes and pine trees that circulated bethany's home. one night amber painted patterns over bethany's shoulder, collarbones, and the top of her spine, we made her into a mermaid and she played with the slugs in the long grass and lifted her arms towards the moon. on the next night bethany and amber swam in lakes and streams of cold rushing water, i watched through my view finder as they laughed and stumbled through the reeds and came out spluttering with red rashes lacing their skin.

my moon watched over me on those nights and days; he never vanished as he always seems to on my nights here, only appearing when he knows i need reassurance. i think he could sense my nervousness, he made my favourite dreamscapes over the poppy fields every nightfall and he glowed so majestically above it all. he only seemed hazy for a short while, when i ran out into the woods under a determined, upset, spell at having left one of my film rolls somewhere there. when i walked out empty handed i looked to him and he had hid himself behind the clouds, i swore at him.

that night the lightning storm struck, and the thunder roared loudly and i dreamed of electric creatures fighting in the sky. the lakes flooded and it felt like the world had been folded over in half and the ocean was pouring in on itself. early that next daybreak bethany's papa ventured into the forest and retraced my steps, he found my film roll in a tree branch where somebody had left it for me. completely undamaged from the storm. i think somebody really wanted me to have those pictures.

one day we picked up two models who both spoke in different tongues than ours, well they all did there, and i comforted them with smiles between my red lips. we drove them away from the city, far far away, to a mansion house that belonged to a ridiculously kind german girl named agnes. agnes had hair like a cloud. i kept my eyes stuck to the window for the entire journey, absorbing the rushing haze of orange sun and pine trees, dreading the day where i'd stare from my window again to see the old mental asylum staring back at me.

the cloud haired girl's mansion had a spiral staircase in one of the boy's bedrooms, two dusty libraries, and an attic filled with washing lines with the occasional boot laid askew. the cloud hair girl frolicked and skipped down the red carpet lain corridors, tinges of orange touching it where the sun shone so brightly everyday, and the antlers of bambi and her lovers and daughters graced the walls of each room. the cloud hair girl's father was a hunter, you see, and and on the stairs lay the flat fur of a boar with eyes appearing as glass marbles looking to a place far away from here. i lay next to his head for just a moment, he told me tales and i saw his death. he was really quite a majestic creature. i mourned for the deer that frolicked ignorantly in the gardens.

on our first two days we were joined by a nymph like girl named katarina, she dressed our girls in pieces of fabric. she turned the same fabric into a dress, a skirt, a shirt, and neatened them temporarily with a few ragged stitches and a string of black leather. after we'd finished shooting she'd dismantle that dress, skirt, or shirt back into a large piece of cloth, spend a long while folding it neatly, and lie it back into her suitcase. she spent the evening we spent together sewing new inventions and repeatedly folded her magical cloths - cloths who i imagined were wondering what piece of clothing they would be transfigured into next. i used to watch the nymph like girl from the corner of my eye, she often would be found dancing or once hanging from the spiral staircase in the cloud hair girl's brother's bedroom. she would stop when she saw that corner of my eye.

we shot many girls on our adventure, and i gave many more reassuring smiles than i have ever before. one time one of them gave me a reassuring stroke on the shoulder, to tell me that i was doing okay, i wish could speak in the same words. we broke into a warehouse on our first morning of being in the city, and me and bethany took all but three steps inside before setting off a howling alarm that sounded like a pack of wolves in the distance. a pack of wolves coming to get us perhaps. we ran back to our team with dopey smiles before we all ran together, we ran far far away. we only stopped at the other side of the city. we explored train stations and aeroplanes that week, with our beautiful czech models in tow. my favourite girl was called anna, she was the mermaid in the garden. she let us dress her up and while we were shooting i fell over in mud, invertible really.

the food there smelled like home, better than home, and we feasted over the pine tree valley every night. the pine trees made me pine too, pine to see them in winter when i knew the lakes would freeze and endless snow flakes would kiss the earth. the sun was harsh me to that week; everything clung to my skin in the daytime, moisture and fabric, and my throat filled with sand. my neck burned under the embers of my hair, but when i left it bare to the sun she destroyed it's milk skin in a fire of red.

on our last night bethany and her family left us to embarking upon their own european adventures, and they took their puppy with them. we stayed with an artistic family who lived in a crooked house and drank their water from a well. they clutched us tightly with beautiful words and wide smiles and their drooling puppy, more bear than dog, watched us slightly through our bedroom window as we slept. on our last morning they preyed for us over breakfast. we spent less than a day within their clutches, before they ferried us to back to towards home just as my moon began to glow, and it sadden me that we couldn't spend more time in their crooked house. i still think they are the most welcoming family i will ever meet.

on our last moments, our last journey back to the airport, we passed an army of sun worshippers, or sun flowers to be more exact. they stood in lover like stances all basking in her final hazes. i wanted to roll from the car towards them, but it was insisted that we had no time as our homes were calling for us. at that time i did not want a home. i will return for you sun flowers, just for you, i promise.

rose tinted spectacles

2011-07-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

my free faerie, victoria, sees the enchanted forest through rose tinted spectacles, dresses by kee boutique.

bambi and the tambourine

2011-07-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

katia plays as bambi on the heath in an editorial for femme magazine; hair and make-up by amber scarlett and styling by jenna morley.

the magpie, the crow, and the butterfly

2011-06-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

there once was a disjointed butterfly, her wings lay slightly askew,
they were sewn into patchwork shadows you see, by the crow with sweet tinges of blue.
he made love to that disjointed butterfly, and breathed wind from mountains so high,
then one day our miss butterfly, acquainted my sir magpie.
'magpie, oh evil wizard' they named him, with seductive wings of white,
he cast spells on my sweet crow boy, and his disjointed butterfly took flight.
ensnared by the temptation of magpie, the butterfly lost her way,
concoctions of potions and poisons, disjointed wings started to flay.
that magpie was always alone you see, a sign of cursed luck in these parts,
and my crow boy watched on from a distance, as magpie broke butterfly's hearts.
crow captured our butterfly back one day, he carried her onto their nest,
she pleaded he stitch her together again, patchwork feathers clutched to her breast.
his needles lay rusting as antenna, so instead he opted for glue,
'out of love, out of love' he sang to her, and his wings grew slightly askew.

'who would have known, who would have known?' mountain folk spoke of him,
my dear crow with the sweet twinges of blue.

my sister lies on my mother's mattress as the magpie, my crow, and the disjointed butterfly.

capes and crowns

2011-06-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

a small snippet of a lookbook for clothing designed and handmade by georgia xanthe dorey, starring faye gramston with hair and make-up by laura naish.

marionettes in the bluebell forest

2011-06-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

rainbows flowing through the trees, smoke-kissed wind implants their leaves; hunted puppets on their knees, they’re bruising.

yesterevening

2011-05-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

sweet daughter of light, i bid thee good-night.
kate roddy, yesterevening, betwixt in the sun's ribbons of splendour and pink.

candyland

2011-05-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

hair, make-up, and candy accessories hand-made by amber scarlett, thank you lauren towner for the assistance.

sea-salt

2011-04-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

my new muse, sarah, with rocks and waves of sea-salt and shells.

flowers for a bed

2011-03-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was lucky enough to play dress up in sleeping flowers with the exceptionally talented and truely lovely photographer cat lane. we climbed blossom trees and i tied ribbon in her hair whilst groups of tourists watched and took photographs from a distance. spring has sprung and sun sir sun has made her scents so sweet.

oh wondrous one

2011-03-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

sun sir sun, what have you done? wrap me in feathers oh wondrous one.

a forest dwelling

2011-03-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

nicolette with butterfly eyes.

feathered wings

2011-02-22T03:14:00.000-08:00

sleepwalking

2011-02-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

tanita sleepwalking through ivy and stone, make-up by gee lyno.

strawberries and crucifixes

2011-02-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

patchwork

2011-02-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

jade bigwood @ bookings models entwined in patchwork, hair and make-up by amber scarlett.

ways through waves

2011-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

i was recently commissioned to shoot a series of my photographs to coincide a collection of seascape poems by incredible poet david annwn, my images entwined onto each page of haunting words, (poems hidden within poems). i was lucky enough to come home and have to lug a very heavy box into my kitchen to find an incredible pile of the of the books encased inside, as well as two of david's other beautiful books as a gift to me.
i now have forty free copies of 'ways through waves' to give away, a free copy to be received with every print purchased from me. prints can be made from any image here on my blog, or on my flickr. 4x6's are £3 and 5x7's are £5, this covers all costs, (including postage,) for me - bigger print sizes are also available upon request. please email me at katie@katieeleanor.com with any enquires or to make your order and receive your free copy.

the wizard

2011-01-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

i am watching you cast too many spells; burning cinnamon and black lipstick to lovers entwined in your thick concoctions (emitting coloured smoke through their sweat soaked bodies). the wolves have stopped praying for you, my love, proclaiming you, "sweet daemon," as they scratch at the sticks that betwixt your cauldron. your bones are becoming gaunt, my dear, and spiders are lacing their silk to the tangles of your hair, (growing as thick wires from your skull). the forest has stopped begging for you, my lovelight, we watch as the skin of your throat slowly dries in a scarf of your knots. your wand is breaking, the fibers cracking. your skin is shifting; shifting about your lungs, fingers. it's time for you to leave me, dear faerie, "oh please," i whisper, and you turn to dust.

not real

2011-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

a mid summer's daydream

2011-01-04T09:19:00.000-08:00

summer,
you encase my hair in daises (insects); you sight me dancing (writhing) and chanting (screaming). you give me feathered (leathered) wings (tumours). we are writing ourselves into the creases of your bedsheets, and you note the cracks in the creases of my vertebrae. my pining spine; you sew them back together with your mother's rusted needles and your father's patchwork stitches. with spindles of yarn encased underneath the fabric my skin, you begin to sing of her, "dear darling nights of summer, your darling days less sweet; your songbirds stopped singing, my summer, (they peck at snow white feet)."

words and pictures from last summer, expired film in a broken camera.

shells and spines

2011-01-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

dusty moon

2010-12-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

it is the time of the dusty moon outside tonight, and everything between the white sky and white floor turns red under his dirty glows. the only sound is silence, the extraordinary sound of silence, and i have crept from my creased bedsheets to the dark tiled pattern of my roof. the skin of my knees fits perfectly under the skin of my chin. it is too quiet for the birds to sing, it is too quiet a hear a thing.

i remember when i was child and my mother told me a myth of how the night sky was a black curtain drawn over the sun every twilight to plunge us into darkness, that stars were created by fireflies burning holes in the curtain to allow sunlight to stream through. my child's mind saw the concept as feasible, more dreamlike than the reality, but now i realise that it could not be. the sun could not create something this beautiful, the sun viewed me as worthless. the moon is the creator of all our dreams, (and nightmares if we are bad,) the sun finds pleasure in shattering us back into reality - only a relief for those whom the moon cursed, the ones i wanted to curse as well. no, the world that i, solely, am surrounded by this night is the work of the moon alone, my moon.

he loves me tonight, i can tell without looking; some nights he loathes me and makes me writhe in my dreams, sometimes he's jealous and casts spells to deceive me, and sometimes he's kind and watches over me as i rest. but tonight, oh tonight, tonight he loves me. tonight he lulls me awake and creates for me. tonight he makes me love him back with widened eyes. tonight i can watch him rejoicing in the coming of the white snow, of each flake blanketing the trodden ground. the sun has frozen and cannot thaw, she cannot hurt me any more.

i shift the tangles of my legs so as my feet are dangling freely just over the edge of the roof, and i wait for ice to encase them or for iciles to grow from the skin beneath each of my toes. i wonder how it would feel to walk then, or maybe i'd use the feathered wings of mr songbird to keep them intact. i walk from then the roof then, and for a moment i can not breathe. for a moment i am choking on my own gasps, my own stomach, sir gravity swings me lower and lower. i find myself laying entwined in winter flowers, (wilting pinks and browning oranges). i lay, waiting for flustering lungs to recover, absorbing dust streaking through dull glows and sliver beams. sliver beams help to salvage my insides, my insides which feel on my outside, and my head, which continually spirals and spins.

i remove my shirt button my button, and peel it off my sweat soaked bones, (the colour of my skin matching those of the flakes that land upon it, making them feel lost and bewildered as they touch me). i am moving then, dancing to explore a place so familiar, created for these illustrious hours alone. i am as naked as the trees who's fingers are trying to grab on to me, glistening under the wilderness of the moon's light. i am heading towards my favourite place, a small nest of trees, masked into a cavern by the ice queen. a place where i once played with mimzys, a place where i sill play with magic. a place where lust and i did meet, my blood is warm with numb bones in my feet.

the trees are creatures here, and tonight the moon has ensured that they are awake for me. awake so as when i arrive they swoop me quickly into an entwined concoction of all their spindly arms, and i can hibernate on the edge of conciousness for the remaining hours of this night. from there the moon watches me, he tells me new tales about the sky; he tells me about how the constellations really came to be, about how they sometimes argue and how it makes him ache. i sooth him in whispers, whispers which sooth my skin.

over the stories i watch the sky very carefully, rolling onto my back and feeling the tree's arms roll with me. i see a faint glow somewhere around venus, i see her first fiery breath since the ice encased her. star. i know what is coming and i try to ask how far away she is from me now, how near to me. but he continues his stories, and i continue to whisper. over the minutes i hear his voice begin to mute from my ears, from melodies to murmurs. i feel the tree's grip on my bones loosen ever so slightly. bones from bones, i begin to fall. the glow is beginning to burn, dust is trying to grip onto the light. my moon transforms into the day's ghost, ceasing to be seen; the extraordinary sound of silence broken by the faint hum of the people, of the birds, and the world. i feel the icicles soften beneath the skin about my toes, "it is mourning time."

wilted roses

2010-12-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

jade @ profile model management in winter flowers, make-up by amber scarlett and styling by nicolette clara.

winter song

2010-12-19T04:26:00.000-08:00

there is a deer, over here, in my favourite place, a deer with speckled fur and the eyes of the moon. there is a deer, over here, dripped in yesterday’s blood, a deer with no ear or no stomach. this deer, over here, was embracing the year, so blind and so merry he didn’t see it appear. “mr deer, over here, you laid singing your tune, now all remains of you is speckled fur, (and the eyes of the moon).”