What's In A Name

There's crime in the streets, violence on the international scene and unrest in the heartland. What to do, who to call, someone help, please!

But have no fear, there is an answer just around the corner, super-heroes.

They crept from between the pages of comic books to invade our films, spawn graphic novels or generate Steampunk television shows and all the while no one in the vast Red State, apple-pie loving, centrist, god-fearing, right-thinking middle of America noticed.

Now they show up unannounced and without fanfare and they are here to stay and most of us don't even have a clue what they are. Just what the heck is Steampunk and why should it matter to any artist?

Well, it matters because it is a vast untapped market for art and there are lots of young, energetic, driven artists out there creating up a storm and if you don't catch on now you will get left behind and you wouldn't want to miss the Wave or drift into the out of touch world of politicians, now would you?

This whole thing got its start way back in the nineteenth century with guys like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. They created fantastical machines driven by strange and curious powers when all of the world ran on steam. But just because they did it, didn't mean it caught on. Oh Wells and Verne were the creators of the Steampunk world, but they didn't actually launch the movement. No for that you needed a truly innovative artist like Walt Disney.

I know, who'd have thunk Uncle Walt would change the shape of things to come and I'm sure at the moment he didn't plan on doing it, cause if he had you can bet that the Disney market machine which gave us Davy Crockett lunch boxes and Davy Crockett coonskin caps and Davy Crockett flintlock rifles would have made sure that they, not some later-day Madison Avenue, Brooks Brothers-wearing, slick and slimy add flack got all the credit and more important the Trademark and Copyright, but he did and didn't and that's why we'll give Uncle Walt the nod for creating the first Steampunk image, Captain Nemo's Nautilus.

And how that wonderful bronze and brass submarine filled the dreams and desires of teenaged boys and later when it went on television teenaged girls, although in the Disney version the Girl didn't have much to do but breath heavily while wearing a corset, but then maybe that's why corsets figure so heavily in Steampunk images.

Then a coupla years later George Pal gave us the second brick in the Steampunk empire, that glorious, fantastical, velvet and brass Time Machine.

Was anyone ever more adventurous than Rod Taylor? Okay, so he talked funny but he's Australian so he learned his English down under and never got it turned right-side up, but he could swash his buckles with the best of them and he could fight off Morlocks and birds and save blondes only some of which where Hitchcock blondes and who was more pale and wan Tippy Hedron or Yevette Mimieux, no, no contest Yevette cause she only had that Morlock designed shift which barely hung on her frail blonde shoulders while Tippy had to wear those tailored sixties suites which did more for pre-pill birth control than even the pantigirdle.

So there in the middle of this time-traveling jaunt way back before Dr Who and the Tardus ever dealt with a Daleck was a machine made of the most interesting and wonderful collection of parts ever set upon a sound stage and even the gas pedal had a honking big diamond in the hilt like some crusader's sword only it cut through time and not Saracens.

That was the visual beginning of Steampunk.

Worlds, some familiar, some not which mostly were powered by steam and Victorian clockwork machines while telling stories a lot like things which could happen in our own world except we discovered electricity and atomic power and screwed the whole thing up.

Now that wouldn't have been enough to keep the vision alive except the ole Hawaiian Eye Robert Conrad came along and made The Wild, Wild West and showed us all just how neat things could have been with a train set of our very own. (Tell the truth, Artie always had the best toys, didn't he?)

After that the image was burned into the collective memory like Bigfoot and Nessie. Sure they may not have ever existed, don't tell that to the Scots, but you can bet they turn a profit every year churning out Nessie and Bigfoot souvenirs. (And what about the real Bigfoot? That fire-breathing, smoke belching, giant-tired monster truck that is sooo popular it has it's own racing team and a contract with the film industry which says that no image of Bigfoot can ever be used as the villain’s ride.)

Along about now, which was actually then, somewhere in the Eighties or Nineties, someone said, “Why not write some more stories about things powered by steam which come in our so-called modern world and see if people like them as much as they did the Nautilus or the Time Machine?"

So they did avoiding the trap of writing about the most common thing powered by steam, but having no real useful purpose and capable of producing nightmares when thought about over long, politicians.

And that's where we find ourselves today, with Steampunk as a whole genre of works that might just offer an artist a new avenue of expression.

Don't think so? Drive down to the Bandon Public Library, take your camera cause it is off the road by the beach and offers some pretty incredible views of the coastline and while you are there with you mouth hanging open take a look inside the library at Shawn Tempesta's beautiful jewelry and fantastical sculptures which just happen to be on display.

Then slink off to your studio and mourn over your own lack of imagination and why you didn't discover this genre and why you haven't tried your hand at finding something you could do with this and maybe even though it is too late for this Halloween you could do something interesting for next Halloween and maybe even find a new outlet for your art at the Cons.

Me? I always fancied myself as a Toff