15 49.0138 8.38624 both 0 bullet 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.messynessychic.com 300 4000

Category / People / Icons / Muses

The Factory Girl who Became an Art Deco Ceramics Sensation

When English ceramic artist Clarice Cliff first started designing pottery in the 1920s, her work was so out there, the styled garnered the name “Bizarre.” But the curious and colourful decorative pieces with abstract shapes and pastoral scenes soon gathered an impressive following. Ahead of her time, Cliff’s rise to fame during the mid 20th…

A Life Less Ordinary with a Real-Life Snow White

Deep inside one of the last remaining primeval forests in Europe, in-between Belarus and Poland, stands an old hunting lodge straight out of a fairytale. For over 30 years, ecologist Simona Kossack lived in this secluded glade without amenities nor electricity or running water and with an unusual band of forest friends. There was a…

All You Need is the Opossum Lady (the Undisputed Queen of Youtube)

This picture may not need any explanation. It is arguably perfect as it is. But in these strange and uncertain times, I had an inkling that this might be exactly what we all need. So allow me to formally introduce you to Pearl de Wisdom, aka the Opossum lady. She has been making spiritual opossum…

A Lesson in True Bohemianism with the Witch of Positano

Every so often, an original is born; timeless, defying genre and completely of themself. Vali Myers, artist, dancer, environmentalist, bohemian and muse, was as original as they come, inspiring writers, artists and musicians from the streets of a post Second World War Paris to her bohemian coven in the wild canyons above Positano. Forming friendships…

Her Tarot Cards Came to Life

Poking out of the treetops in Tuscany, and spread across Etruscan ruins, is the sparkling masterpiece of French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, Il Giardino dei Tarocchi — The Tarot Garden. De Saint Phalle acquired the land in the 1979 through a close friend, and from the get-go her intent was to transform its 14-acres…

Sculpted in Paris, a Black Women’s Legacy Finally Comes to Light

In the 1960s, Barbara Chase-Riboud chose Paris as her home and sanctuary away from her upbringing Jim Crow America, and yet frustratingly, for too long, her genius remained quietly overshadowed by the tumultuous tides of history. The Philadelphia-born artist and writer may not be a household name, but her artistic and literary contributions are as…

Uncovering Hollywood’s 1920s “Antichrist” Photo Shoots

Somewhere in a dark room almost a century ago, an image emerges of a woman with her skeleton lover. Beside it, another of a gyrating goblin, a pin-up worthy witch, or some other creature from the wonderfully twisted mind of photographer William Mortensen. Today, Mortensen is praised as a pioneer of his profession, a Tim…

The Extraordinary Guests of Charles Babbage’s Saturday Night Soirées

Forget your standard 19th-century dinner parties, where everyone sat around sipping sherry and discussing the weather. If you were lucky enough to snag an invite to Charles Babbage’s Saturday night scientific soirées, you were in for a wild ride through the brainiest and most bizarre conversations that Victorian London had to offer. Picture a mad…

Free the Nipple, says History

Nipple slips must have been a real problem in the 17th century. Or rather, not so much a problem per se, as an everyday practice. If you’ve ever walked around a portrait gallery of Renaissance European art or watched a few period films set around that time when the cup did truly runneth over, you…

An Educational Haven at Harlem’s Little Black Book Shop turned B&B

Kurt Thometz’s bookshop was not the norm. Harlem’s white-owned all-Black bookstore almost seemed like a glimpse into an alternate universe where blackness dictates the principle narrative of society. It was “provocative”, “dangerous” even, to be confronted by such an unfamiliar dynamic. Rare book collector, Kurt Thometz, opened Jumel Terrace Books on the lower ground floor…

1 2 … 83 OLDER POSTS