One Delightful Day – Sept. 10th, The Philosopher’s Stone

This weekend, Lizzie and I traveled to Seattle to work with Dragonfly Designs by Alisa on some Steampunk photos, and also to work with some beautiful models for my illustrations of Mozart’s “Der Stein der Weisen” (The Philosopher’s Stone”.

Lizzie and I at Fort Casey, during our trip to Seattle.

“The Philosopher’s Stone” is an opera written in collaboration by Mozart, Shikaneder (Who wrote The Magic Flute) and their friends (who also starred in the opera). The opera is essentially the video game Final Fantasy set to music. Set in a fantastical Oriental land, a Genie descends upon what I can only describe as a Hippie Commune with a magical bird. The bird will sing for the most virtuous maiden, and so all the ladies fight over it. However, when the bird sings for the hero’s girlfriend, the god of the Sky carries her off and the hero has to go on a quest to get her back.

Nikolai, Sierra and Meilyn Saychow hang out while I adjust fabrics.

The models wore costumes that I made with my new helper Catey Lockhart. We dip dyed the ladies dresses, and made bows out of brocade. The Genie appears in a costume based off a statue of Siddhartha and Maitreya Buddha that I saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bird cage is decorated in Lucite flowers.

To illustrate the opera Der Stein der Weisen, the models are dressed as the Genie, who descends from the sky with a magic bird, and the Maidens, who fight over who gets to keep the bird.

We photographed on top of a hill at Gasworks Park in Seattle — we were facing away from the factory, if you were worried about conflicting themes. At one point a little girl wandered away from her father and up the hill to see the “Costume People”. She decided that she liked Costume People, and had her picture taken with the girls, and then wandered off.

A little girl saw us on the hill, and wanted to go meet the “Costume People”.

The previous days were used to shoot Steampunk photos. I will share more about that with you when Alisa blogs about it! But until then, here’s an outtake that Lizzie took of me shooting the Steampunk Photos:

That’s me shooting with Jadi and Christopher in costumes by Dragonfly Designs by Alisa for our upcoming photos!

See you all again soon!