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Maria Strutz

@mariastrutz.bsky.social

3.1K followers 630 following 3.4K posts

Artist, printmaker, sculptor, translator of various subjects. Foxes, owls, stones and bones I have an online store for some of my limited edition linocuts; have a look-see and enjoy :) https://www.maria-strutz.co.uk/

www.maria-strutz.co.uk

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 30m

Good morning, Hookland!
I find this so moving, Harriet Rain waking to find apported swan feathers enfolding her bed.
Sending much love 🌿

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 32m

Oh, arent' they lovely?! 🍄🌖🌿

Reposted by Maria Strutz

Folk Horror Revival 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @folkhorrorrevival.bsky.social · 12h

I hear Amanita is helpful for revelations

Swirly psychedelic art of a frog or toad sitting cross-legged on a fly agaric mushroom, surrounded by other mushrooms, by Shamanska Kate

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Reposted by Maria Strutz

Art History Animalia @arthistoryanimalia.bsky.social · 14h

Resharing for #WorldOctopusDay 🐙
#CephalopodAwarenessDays

Art History Animalia @arthistoryanimalia.bsky.social · Oct 9

For #WorldOctopusDay 🐙:
#Octopus Frontlet
Moche (La Mina), Peru, 300–600 CE
Gold, chrysocolla, shells
H. 11 × W. 16 15/16 × D. 1 3/4 in. (27.9 × 43.1 × 4.4 cm)
Museo de la Nación, Lima, Ministerio de Cultura del Perú (MN-14602)
www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

official museum photo of the gold octopus frontlet, full front view on black background

“This object would have been affixed to a cylindrical headdress. Made of gold sheet, it was cut into the shape of a supernatural figure with serrated octopus tentacles that terminate in catfish heads. The creature rests on two clawlike feet, depicted in low relief. Reportedly found at La Mina, in the Jequetepeque Valley, the frontlet is remarkably similar to an example illustrated on a ceramic vessel from Dos Cabezas.”

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 23h

oh, I'm glad to hear that! 🍄
I remember trying to fit the words to the song and it just didn't want to fit. Until it finally did. Amanita revelation 🤍🌿🍄

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 1d

:) I have never seen one in the wild, would love to see them snuffling around. I love their claws as well 🐾

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

🤍🐾🌒🌿🖤

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

badgers are very satisfying to draw I find. Also, apparently it is #Brocktober - Badger Month... 🖤🐾🤍

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

And thank you for that beautiful wish 🤍🌿🌀

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

In celebration of #NationalBadgerDay
'Under the Badger Moon' 🤍🌖🖤

2 badgers running towards each other, each badger reflected below, above and below the badgers crescent moons. There are stars above, and below the badgers, overall forming a figure 8. Linocut, dark blue and white, Maria Strutz

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

what a beautiful illustration! 🦊🐾🌻
Ages ago I studied Theatre design (stage and costume); the final project was 'design for opera'. One of the operas was 'The Cunning Little Vixen'. Loved the opera, the design process, collaboration with the singers/ other students. Director was an a*** though

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

she did indeed 🪶

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

If you have not yet got one of your own...
bsky.app/profile/toms...

Thomas S Brown @tomsbrown.bsky.social · Aug 26

In a land that had cried out for the Latchless door...
Order page is up! thomas-brown-1.sumupstore.com/product/the-...
By @taliskimberley.bsky.social , Illustrated by me, with foreword by @hookland.bsky.social
This is a small book (A5) UK only for now. Limited edition, signed and numbered.

Cover art for The Latchless Door by Takis Kimberley, illustrated by Thomas Brown with foreword by David Southwell.

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Latchless Door: Foreword text
Inbox

Talis
11:06 (10 minutes ago)
to me

Foreword by David Southwell

Rhymes have power. We know this at a bone-deep level. At school, the
texts of great novels and plays were studied. Can many of us remember
and quote more than odd line of them? Rarely. Can we remember a dozen
rhymes of the playground? Of course we can. They’ve tattooed themselves
upon our psychic skin. They’ve become part of us.

Rhymes are magic. We know this. Some deeply ancient part of us
understands. They summon. They seal. Banish and transform. They are
apotropaic acts. A spoken, chanted ritual of correspondences that pulls
on the strings of enfolding worlds.

Songs, well we all know about them. Songs are engines of emotion,
inspirers of action. They are invocations, enchantments. Clear high
sorcery. An alchemy of mood change. Songs are openers of the ways. Few
things can challenge their potential for discovering, mapping and
celebrating the hidden parts of ourselves.

It is for these reasons I regard The Latchless Door as a book of magic.

On the following pages you will find magic that Talis Kimberley has
created, collected and manifested.

Here are the rhyme-spells for ending and beginning things, for stitching
the wounds of the heart so that it can love again. Here are the rhyme
spells that will turn the bolts of wickets to Faery (whether they will
unbolt the gates from the other side is another matter). Here are the
rhyme-spells to open doors to memories we thought long lost. Memories of
the time we talked with a tree and it taught us a little of the green
language. Memories we now understand were locked away for good reason.
You know the sort I mean. Recollections of the spiderweb sutured woman
we used to glimpse living in the realm between the mirror’s glass and
silvering.

Here are the song-spells that summon the Queen of Owls, that let us feel
the blade of winter’s ice falling upon the year even while we are in the
stretching of summer heat.

ere are the song-spells to invoke the The
Hum or the feral saints of folk faith whose names are all but forgotten.
Here are the song spells to ward against untethered temporal shades, to
turn the Marsh Ape from from your door and loose the ankle grip of Stay
Below.

If you doubt the potent magic of Talis’s rhymes and songs, just study
the illustrations they have called forth from Thomas Brown. Ripe with a
sense of unearthed gods and feral mysteries, they dance to its score.
Chanted and song into existence, they throb with a shared sense of the
land as transmission.

The Latchless Door offers paths to the occulted within and without.
These are traditions that never were and always were. Truths you have
always known and felt, but never had put into words before. This is a
navigation of routes not only into Hookland, but the living current of
folklore it springs from.

People often tell me I am mad for having created Hookland as a
pre-enchanted landscape for others to freely use. My usual response is
to list all of wonderful things that have manifested from a belief
artists don’t always need to be landlords for the places they create.
I’m going to be able to add The Latchless Door to the list of wonderful
things.

Of course, no-one needs my validation for their exploration of the
county. It is part of the Commonwealth of the Imagination. I am merely a
guide to it and so is Talis Kimberley.

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

Beautiful mail from Hookland, thank you very much! 🌿
The music and lyrics by @taliskimberley.bsky.social, the artwork by @tomsbrown.bsky.social and the foreword by @hookland.bsky.social all sing! 🌀

booklet with the title 'The latchless door, Rhymes & Songs of Hookland' leaning against a tree

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

🧡 xxx 🧡

Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

that's the one! Took me forever to figure that one out 🍄

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 2d

An #AccidentalHeart for @louisenorgate.bsky.social 🌿🌀🤍

a heartshaped leaf in bright autumn sunlight, on the left some red unripe blackberries

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 3d

:) 🍄🐾🍂
A few years ago you posted a puzzle (or was it a gif?) that boggled my mind forever around Amanita and the name of a famous song... 🍄🌖🌿

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 4d

terrible pun but I love it...

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 4d

Because he was a... fungi 🍄

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Reposted by Maria Strutz

Rosalind Ahmed @21rosa.bsky.social · 4d

The story of "Vixen Bystrouška" - Vixen SharpEars, Bystrouška being a pun meaning both pointed (like a fox's ears) & also smart witted, was published as a feuilleton in 1920, with readers eager to read the next installment. It inspired a 1924 opera by Leoš Janácek that remains popular #BookWormSat

🎨 Maurice Sendak. In this colour illustration, SharpEars stands among sunflowers under a full moon with the silhouette of a mature tree behind her

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Reposted by Maria Strutz

Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 4d

‘‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!’’ — Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (1908) #BookWormSat

🎨Paul Bransom

The Piper looks bemusedly at Water Rat and Mole.

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Maria Strutz @mariastrutz.bsky.social · 4d

I love the quote. And the artwork! 🤍🐾🌖

Reposted by Maria Strutz

Rosalind Ahmed @21rosa.bsky.social · 4d

"Light as the moon’s path over the sea
the run of the hare over the land"

Anna Crowe from 'A Calendar of Hares'
🎨 'Running of the Hare' Robert Gillmor

#BookWormSat
@asls.org.uk

The poem is featured in 'A Secret History of Rhubarb' (Glasgow: Mariscat, 2004) Of her poem, Crowe writes: "I have tried always to keep faith with the creature itself, bearing in mind its behaviour in the wild as well as the mythic, magical values it has acquired in human consciousness over the millennia" 🎨 Linocut showing both stages of 'the run of the hare'. Brown hare on a grassy background. (1936–2022). Gillmor produced many natural history illustrations, among his other artistic works, over a long and successful career

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Reposted by Maria Strutz

Folk Horror Revival 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @folkhorrorrevival.bsky.social · 4d

Today's animal theme for #BookWormSat wouldn't be complete without Nael's classic poem 'The Tiger' 🐅

🎨 by Brian Wildsmith

The Tiger by Nael, age 6, from 'They're Singing a Song in The Rocket'

The tiger
He destroyed his cage
Yes
YES
The tiger is out

Painting of a tiger in dense undergrowth by Brian Wildsmith

https://www.brianwildsmith.com/wild-animals

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