Archive for February 24th, 2010
Tell us how you thought of us…
Posted by: Laura Park
Book: Geek Love (purchase on Amazon)
click image for larger
A chance encounter with a garden of experimental dual colored roses served as the inspiration for Aloysius Binewski’s ’dreamlets’.
“The roses started him thinking, how the oddity of them was beautiful and how the oddity was contrived to give them value. “It just struck me – clear and complete all at once – no long figuring about it” He realized that children could be designed. “And I thought to myself, now THAT would be a rose garden worthy of a man’s interest!”
Geek Love is the story of the Binewski family, both of their past glory and of what remains of them in the present. Former geek Crystal Lil and ringmaster Aloysius run Binewski’s Fabulon, a traveling carnival. Their children, who serve as the Fabulon’s main attractions, were designed as human wonders through a variety of experiments involving drugs, chemicals, and radiation treatments. There is Arturo the Aqua Boy, the firstborn with fin-like hands and feet. Next are the violet-eyed and musically talented Siamese twins Electra and Iphigenia. Our narrator Olympia is a hunchbacked albino dwarf, deemed too ordinary looking to be much of an earner. Lastly, there is Fortunato (called Chick) completely normal in appearance but gifted with secret talents. The Binewskis are a tight-knit family and each ‘dreamlet’ is fiercely proud of their abnormalities.
It was a hard time choosing how to start this project. There’s a wealth of inviting images to pick from. The main tragedy of Geek Love is the loss of family, and I thought it best to start off with an image of better times. So here they are, before things got complicated. Papa Al, the dreamer surrounded by his dreamlets.
posted by Laura Park
8 comments February 24, 2010
