About this project
Although we are artists and performers for the majority of our year.....we set our sights, once a year, to bring together all of our friends and followers under one roof for what is known as the Atrocity Exhibition. Sideshow and fetish performers from all over crawl into town to join an array of fellow artists and vendors to throw one of the most unique events our fair city has seen. We specialize in turning what most would consider as "fetish" performance into "art of fetish" performance. Our entertainers are skilled and have spent many years mastering their abilities and talents. From human pin cushions, to rope work, to flesh suspension, to alternative burlesque stylings, we take everything one....step....further and incorporate skills into stunning themed performances.
Last year's Atrocity Exhibition was held at the historic Rex Theater in the southside of Pittsburgh in September. Although we were on a tight budget, we were able to bring our bizarre friends from states afar to perform, as well as house 20 phenomenal artists and vendors.
We dabble in a darker nature, and work hard on creating themes that have yet to be seen. Last Atrocity Exhibition was set in the post-apocalyptic 1930's. Artists and entertainers from all over arrived adorned in gasmasks dressed head to toe in themed black and white attire. What if the bomb had dropped? What became of the maimed and disformed survivors? We answered those questions and brought it to life with one incredible and well attended evening as well as an opportunity to step inside of the House of Oddities.
What do we have up our sleeves for 2011? That story has yet to be woven.
Our goal for 2011 is to head into Atrocity with a larger budget and blow our event out of proportion. With the proper funding, our visions have no limit. We are holding Atrocity this year in late April, early May and are working with a new, larger venue. We have begun to organize our veteran entertainers and artists, as well as welcome some new faces to the event.
All donations and funds will go towards venue rental, promotion, travel expenses, and entertainment fees. We all know what it is like to be a struggling, starving artist and relying on your craft to survive.
We are reaching out to our friends and followers to help take this small idea, and turn it into a visionary nightmare of atrocities on parade.
FAQ
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$800
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Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on January 1, 2011.
Pledge $20 or more Pledge $20 or more
pledges of $20 or more will either receive a hand screen printed Morose & Macabre black Bloodsucker Patch or a Morose & Macabre Conjoined Bat Twins Patch
Pledge $40 or more Pledge $40 or more
pledges of $40 or more will receive a hand screen printed Morose & Macabre patch and a surprise limited edition original artwork print, signed and personalized.
Project By
Connected as Macabre Noir (2029 friends)
In early 2009, a little house was built in a sea of dark artists, designers, and jewelry makers on the internet.
We were two independent artists from the rural areas of Western Pennsylvania trying to reach out for some recognition in a small and low income community. Indepent artists and misfits that had been deemed "freaks" all of our lives, the collaboration was never planned, in was born out of frustration and lack of the community's respect for a "darker art form". People from the area weren't buying art, very much less supporting the kind of creations that we were producing independently. Only able to showcase at "halloween shows", our work was only appreciated once a year and
never actually purchased to hang in local homes, aside from friends who shared our love of odd.
We started as friends hanging out and having morbid, little painting parties for fun. After working with each other for a time, it was fairly clear that we were able to motivate each other and that was what we were lacking seperately. We call it "one upping". One of us would paint something phenomenal and it would drive the other to want to create something equally amazing, if not better.
We had previously discussed doing a website featuring our designs and illustrations on tee shirts, but we were discovering that there was a whole other spectrum to our creativity. Our paintings eerily collaborated with one and other, although they were crafted with different techniques. Our color schemes and thoughts were meshing together in some sort of creepy harmony and were forming a collection without intention. Our website tumbled from morbidly sarcastic tee shirt designs, into
a gallery for neo victorian inspired horror art.
We painted and we planned in the months that followed as we built the site and began networking before our launch. We built our profiles on social networking sites and began teasing people with our dark senses of humor and the promise that "something wicked this way comes".
In February of 2009, The House of Oddities was born. It was inhabited by those dark, little voices in the back of our minds that most people ignore. We named them Dr. Morose and Miss Macabre and instead of keeping them locked up, we built them a house to run rampant.
By the end of February we were producing artworks, post mortem shadow boxes, dolls, and simple jewelry made from pewter stampings and began selling them in our Wicked, Little Shoppe via Etsy.
Although not prepared or planning for any sort of immediate success, to our surprise, our oddities were selling......well.
Shortly after, we hit the road. We built 2 giant, bloody walls with mounts for paintings and strapped them awkwardly a top a Ford Focus hatch back and headed south in the cramped, art-packed car. Morose & Macabre's House of Oddites made our first public appearance as a collaborative in Charlotte, North Carolina in late May and early June of 2009 at Shiprocked! and Kabarett Vulgare. With the help of our dear friend, Deville, it was a flying success.
Since then, we have traveled, shown, and evolved at an amazing rate that neither of us had ever hoped, nor dared dream. Our jewelry has snowballed from simple pewter stampings on chain, to hand crafted wearable art in our Strangulations collection and Arachnophilia
collection. Our paintings continue to collaborate all on their own and now incorporate mixed medias of both fibers and dead things. We branched out to do a fully dimensional installation monstrosity which we lovingly named "Mary".
Best of all, we became ring masters for the Atrocity Exhibition, Morose & Macabre's first independent event that houses sideshow entertainers and showcases our fellow dark artists and artisans. The first event was a raging success and we were not only able to promote our work, but bring all of our misfit friends and comrades together from all over for one unforgettable evening and share our success with these talented folks who supported US for so long, we are now 3 YEARS GOING STRONG.
Morose is currently lurking in the dark, toiling away on projects and new art forms. Macabre is a member of Pittsburgh's alternative burlesque troupe and has taken on fetish and sideshow performance when she is not creating.
