One of my hobbies: Plants that eat bugs.

May 18, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

I've always been fascinated by carnivorous plants. Venus flytraps, sundews, bladderworts, pitcher plants. All of them. The strange behavioral cross between plant and animal, the mysterious fragility, and tons of attitude. I've always thought of it as a pretty amazing thing that these plants exist, I suppose in the same vein as being impressed by jellyfish (they have no brain...but they hunt? what?)

It was only in the last few years that I actually started acquiring them. Right now I have two sundews, and 5 venus flytraps. I'm probably about to order a few more sundews, because they're a. gorgeous and b. truly amazing at totally decimating fruit flies in the summer months. Seriously, right now the larger of the sundews has about 20 fruit flies it's eating (thanks to a bad batch of bananas that doubled as a cruise liner for the pests).

particularly villainous sundew, in the colors of house lannister. Not a coincidence, I'm sure.

Sundews manufacture a very sticky dew that entices insects with its sweet smell and taste. They fly in, land for a snack, and are stuck like fly paper. The leaves of the sundew curl around the insect, and bam. Food chain.

Venus flytraps are the most well-known carnivorous plants, with their dramatic jaws and quick closing motion when hapless prey climbs inside. They're really interesting to watch, and all the venus flytraps in existence herald originally from the swamps of Eastern North Carolina.

The plants can be tricky to keep alive, being very picky about the quality of their water and soil, but I've had good luck with them fortunately. In keeping with my usual fascination with slightly macabre, predatorial themes, I'm looking forward to getting the newest additions soon.

Trying some new things lately: Viking candles

May 12, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

If you follow me on social media at all, you've seen lately that I launched a new line of Viking-inspired candles. I've been making them for several months now, but finally decided it was time to take it public.

It's not truly "Viking" if there's not a weapon of some sort somewhere.

The official line title is Shieldmaiden Candleworks, so feel free to check it out. I'll post the links to both stores at the end of this article. What I really want to talk about is why I've decided to go in this direction.

I spend quite a bit of time wrangling wee ones, and when I'm not doing that, I'm generally doing something on the computer (most of the time something creative, sometimes not). I enjoy and love both of those facets of my day, but I think there's an essential part of my process that was missing something.

That missing ingredient was creating something with my hands. I enjoy painting and drawing, and other creation of that sort; but doing something with our hands that doesn't require such cerebral contemplation is, I think, a pretty important part of being human that it's increasingly easy to miss out on. So I started making candles, and I'm really loving it.

The more automated our lives get, the harder it is to reconnect with the "maker" facets of our personalities that, until the industrial revolution, were a universal part of the human experience. That need to create and work has stayed dormant within, in my opinion, and I wonder if some of the listlessness many of us feel in the modern age is a result of missing out on that hands-on, physical experience.

I'm not saying doing things on computers isn't important. I'm not saying that people are living their lives wrong, or admonishing. But again, there's so much clutter and chatter to get lost in during the modern age, I think creating physical objects is something that we may not realize we aren't doing, but we can tell we're missing something.

I certainly know it's true of me. Having a craft that requires me to think, that shows me physical accomplishment, that I can share with others, and that I can replicate....well, it's definitely made a part of me that was dormant feel alive. And I'm happy to have the chance to share that with others.

If you are interested in seeing the fruits of my labor, go to:

www.shieldmaidencreative.com/shop or www.etsy.com/shop/shieldmaidencandles

Eye in the Sky: A movie review (sort of, though there are a FEW spoilers), but more of a reflection

April 16, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

This last weekend my husband and I celebrated our anniversary. As part of the celebration, we went on a date to see the movie "Eye in the Sky" with Helen Mirren (my liege and Queen), Alan Rickman (I think this was likely his last movie, though I don't know for sure), and Barkhad Abdi, who played the main pirate in Captain Phillips (and was phenomenal at it, as he was here, playing an agent for the British in Kenya).

There she is. Strong and beautiful as the day is long.

I'll give a very brief, and hopefully mostly spoiler free, synopsis. In this movie Helen Mirren plays a UK Colonel who is acting as liaison working in the US with the Air Force. The US has the drones the Brits need to surveil (and possibly, if things happen to escalate, strike) targets in a terror plot occurring in Kenya.

Amazingly, things do escalate, and it quickly moves from surveillance to the necessary strike question. All of it is thrown off when a little girl sets up her bread selling stand right within the kill zone (who has a very progressive father who wants her to learn to read and study science right in the middle of a rebel zone. So of course our sympathies are hedged on their side, because they are just trying to live their lives and all that jazz....though the father is also working for the terrorists, so we have the old "just trying to make ends meet but overall a decent fellow" conundrum thrown in for good measure).

Rickman, looking at an idiot politician with disgust and incredulousness, no doubt

Now I'm not going to go into all the nitty gritty details here, but this movie did a good job of bringing some messy questions and morality in warfare topics out in the open. Surprisingly, they did it in an awfully pragmatic way, devoid of most of the pie-in-the-sky hand-wringing and "we are only here due to a lack of hugs from the Western Powers" implications they usually beat us over the head with. Although, there was that moment where the drone driver was freaking out over a bunch of questions that I didn't find entirely plausible. But besides that pansy, it was very well handled. Even the young female co-pilot was pretty down to earth.

In one brief movie (just over an hour and a half long), they manage to address in a coherent and fairly conceivable narrative: Dealing with bureaucrats trying to make political gains, relations between allies (the US came off as very professional and calculated, which I supported), supporting those who support us, acceptable collateral damage, mission drift, and the people who are doing everything they can to realistically get a nasty job done vs. the people who don't really care about that. The best quote from the whole thing is by Alan Rickman's character, Lt. General Frank Benson: "Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war."

Check it out of you want something interesting, about warfare (drone warfare in particular), and not morally black and white. In other words, some of my favorite things

Wildfire

March 24, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

Today I'm going to write about something a bit more serious, happening in my home state of Kansas. There is a large wildfire burning in southern Kansas and Oklahoma, southeast of Wichita. They've had to evacuate a few towns, like Medicine Lodge and Sun City, both of which I've been to. The ash and smoke are obscuring the sky and falling all the way up in my hometown of Lawrence, which is a few hundred miles away. It's truly an apocalyptic vision, and all the more disturbing when the livelihoods that have been wrecked are taken into account.

The fortunate thing is that the area is mostly pastureland, and not densely populated. But it's wreaking havoc nonetheless, having destroyed so far over 400,000 acres of land. The fire isn't anywhere near being contained, and continues to balloon outwards, devouring more communities in its wake. It's very early in the season for a wildfire, but there has been a drought that has been going on for years now. Unfortunately this is most likely a harbinger of more woe to come this summer in the region; don't forget that naturally Kansas is mostly beautiful rolling prairie (ie, grass), and a burn off is hard to slow down.

The people of Kansas are by nature stalwart and down to earth, accustomed to hardship and hard work. I love the people of my homestate. Overwhelmingly friendly, kindly interested in others, interesting and diverse. But my heart aches for the circumstances they are up against with this record-setting fire, and the likely scenario of more to come.

One of my strong memories when I was a child was of visiting my grandparents in Harper, Kansas. My parents and brother and sister and I all went on a short day excursion to visit Sun City. It was very small, with a one block long downtown; clearly a farming community. I remember two businesses downtown. The first was a closed down pool hall; it wasn't particularly unique at first glance, but we went and looked in the windows, and to our surprise we saw all the pool tables were still there, with pool cues and balls on them as though left in mid-game. But the entire scene was covered in a quarter of an inch of dust! It was such a surreal image, that never left. I wish I had my camera then! After we took in that sight, we went to a saloon across the street, where the proprietor was a kind old farmer. We lingered a bit and he talked to my parents; he gave us kids some water. That was my only trip to Sun City, but it's never left me.

The sun-baked southern portion of Kansas has always been beautiful to me. Cottonwood trees, rattlesnakes, wheat fields, the omnipresent winds, and huge blue skies. It's no wonder that Wichita was so instrumental in the beginning years of flight (so many companies were there: Cessna, Lockheed, Boeing, it really was the center of the industry); the best views of the sky are in Kansas, how could someone who lived there not want to explore them? 40,000 foot stormfronts can be seen for hours before they hit. I love that area, and always will.

I hope they get the rain they need, and are blessed for harvest season. And I'll be keeping an eye on this wildfire, praying for those caught in the face of its devouring maw, and offering assistance in anyway I can. Keep the firemen in your prayers too, fighting field fires is a terrifying job; extremely dangerous as well. The only solace I can take is maybe after this burnoff, the ash will help make the fields fertile for a great harvest next year.

Spring is here!

March 20, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

It's official: Spring is finally here! Even though in our neck of the woods it has decided to show up with 40 degree weather and a bunch of rain. Despite the inclement weather, I decided to do a bit of portraiture to welcome the warmer days ahead.

Lately we've been planting for the growing season, and I've been drawing a bit more. So that's been keeping me both busy, and outside (two of my favorite states).

One of my favorite creative forms is portraiture, however. Especially children, since they are so unpredictable and impulsive. You never know what you'll get when photographing little mites, but you're guaranteed to get something you didn't expect.

Flexibility and good humor are the main ingredients to successful portraits with really small children.

All in all, children are just a wellspring of happiness and impulse, and those are two of the best thing I can think of.

JRR Tolkien, fantasy, and a simpler life as inspiration

February 23, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

I am undoubtedly not the first person to think of Middle Earth as a place of refuge from modern hustle and bustle, technology, and the minutiae of modern life. In fact, JRR Tolkien himself viewed it that way; the Lord of the Rings trilogy was in many ways written as a response to the industrialization of the Oxfordshire surroundings he loved so much. This harkening for more simplistic times is something that resonates with many of us in the modern age.

Sometimes when I'm heads down in coding, I've spent too much time gaming, or I'm just exhausted from the most recent infuriating 24 hour news cycle tempest in a teapot, I find myself reading the Sagas of the Vikings, Lord of the Rings, or losing myself in the rich and incredible illustrations of amazing fantasy artists like Alan Lee (who also was responsible for much of the aesthetic of the movies) or Brian Froud. Unsurprisingly, my places of solace have also trickled irretrievably into my own artwork and hobbies.

Nazgul by Lee. Look at that beautiful gestural line work in graphite! The Nazgul speak deeply to the reptilian fear of the unkown and threats in the night.

This need for simpler societal rules, a commune with nature, and a black and white moral code draws me back again and again, as does the reflection in the artwork associated with this lore of elegance, muted colors, and well-executed simplicity. My personal theory is that this resonates so deeply because much of our ancestral history ("our" in this case being humanity) had much more in common with that sort of environment than the modern, too quickly fabricated one. There's a part of every human that seeks out the wind in the trees, a crackling fire, and staring at the stars and wondering about our origins. Rising with the sun, modeling our lives on harvest seasons, and protecting our loved ones from the darkness beyond our doorsteps. I think this essential calm reflection is ever harder to find (and one reason I am very much enjoying living in the country again).

Warmth, firelight and solace: Another Alan Lee Illustration

Do you find yourself detaching from the modern world? What environments do you seek, and what stories resonate in your heart? I'd love to know.

Femmebot Fatale: Humanity, Technology, and the Future

February 10, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

Last night we watched Ex Machina, an excellent movie about a femme fatale robot in the very near future. It's beautifully shot, in austere locations that really did a great job building an atmosphere of isolation, modernity, and the relationship of man to nature.

The film is a visual feast for the eyes, with a palette of greys, charcoals, warm golden honeys, and cold, unblinking indigos. It's exceptionally executed, with perfect visuals and acting. The female robot, Ava, is a hybrid between a coquettish female, all doe-eyed innocence and wide-eyed wonder, under a veneer of subtle, newly discovered sexuality. This is cross-bred with clearly visible technology and futuristic calculation; her body almost looks more like human-shaped alien armor than human physiology. And this is the contrast that sets up the plot.

Ava ends up being a femme fatale, ultimately using her female wiles to manipulate a hapless male and achieve her own goals. This theme is one that has been popular in science fiction since the very beginning of the genre; one of the first movies I ever saw (and technically one of the first movies in general, really), Fritz Lang's Metropolis, centered around this very same idea. It's one I find myself drawn back to as engaging; clearly in the human psyche there is a part that is very cognizant of the power a gorgeous female can have over a male, and the weakness this can cause in what is normally seen as a rational being (and clearly, disaster usually ensues).

What's interesting in this genre as of late, and sci-fi movies in general, is the warnings that are getting louder and more frequent about AI and its ultimate potential dominance over humanity. Honestly, I see these warnings as having a lot of truth to them, and it's something I worry about myself. In our quest to placate ourselves with banality and ease, we easily hand over responsibilities and mental tasks to machines. Increasingly it becomes harder to tell the difference between them and us, and I can see the horizon line getting closer. Most of the programming community either openly acknowledges it, or addresses it by looking askance at the issue (most likely because it's a huge topic that is pretty scary, since it looks as though it's a future we are barreling towards). When humanity is confronted with a potential scenario they are afraid of, but don't know how to address, that topic bubbles to the surface as "fiction", and art. And thus we see this genre expanding. Transcendence, Ex Machina, Her, Oblivion....these movies all speak to these fears. In the 1950s and 60s science fiction movies overwhelmingly dealt with fears of nuclear war. Our fears now are AI.

The femme fatale-as-machine genre gets directly to the heart of the issue (no pun intended) in the most emotional of ways. In all things, humans are least rational when it comes to love. The entire world has been upended by star-crossed lovers of human nature, throughout history. Recently General Petraeus had his entire career waylaid by a love affair, and had to step down from being head of the CIA after one of the most successful martial careers since Vietnam. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Marilyn Monroe and JFK....there's no shortage of stories where love or lust have been the undoing of powerful men. When you combine the acknowledgement of the power of women and the fear of what effects that can have, with the cold calculations and limitless intelligence of AI....well, throw in the fact that AI females wouldn't actually need humanity for love, breeding, or have much of a reason to keep us around....it makes for pretty good story.

Aesthetically the hybridization of the female form with post-Industrial age love of machinery, and you have some potential for amazing creativity. It's a match made for the sensibilities of the modern age. Soft feminine beauty, cold machinery, fear of ultimate power and intelligence: a heady mixture that our media just can't leave alone. I expect as we grow closer to the nexus of AI and human power in the future, the genre of femme fatale robots will just continue to thrive. And I'll be watching it all with my hands over my eyes, and a sardonic grin on my face.

Outerspace, Innerspace

February 2, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

The last few weeks I've had Outer Space on my mind quite a bit. Space travel and the space program have always been a big inspiration to me, both as a person, and creatively speaking as well. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I'm a scifi nerd, either (Ha! There's one for the cheap seats). I've always felt incredibly lucky to have been born in the century where the entirety of humanity got to experience Outer Space for the first time in a tangible way.

My first favorite movie was 2001: A Space Odyssey. I remember an astronaut speaking to my class in 3rd grade, and I got to hold a shuttle tile. Growing up in Kansas, with some of the best views of the skies in the country, I have clear memories of staring through a telescope with my dad in a field, finding craters on the moon. Seeing the smudges of the stars of Pleiades, resolving themselves into distinct and separate shapes.

Even now, I'm lucky enough to live within a smattering of miles of Wallops Flight Facility, and have finally gotten to see with my own eyes, rockets launching into space. It's an incredible age that we live in. The last few weeks have been big ones for me in terms of inspiration. David Bowie died, and though of course I didn't know him as a person, it hit me harder than I would have realized a few weeks ago. "Space Oddity" has been a favorite of mine since the first time I heard it. The helplessness, the sense of mission, accepting responsibility for inevitability, and the ultimate sacrifice of self in lonely dire straits. What a picture to have from just a few lyrics.

Just a few days ago on January 28 was the 30th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, yesterday was the 13 year anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia disintegrating over Texas. Apollo 1 had the fire on January 27, 1967 that killed 3 crew members.

There have been a lot of sacrifices for all the advances we've made, and many of them within a few days of one another. Lots of scientific and technical strides exist entirely due to the Space Programs and what they've uncovered, but for the rest of us, they've allowed us to dream and see and breathe and just exist in a world that touches the rest of the universe. We know we are part of a galaxy, and not an island. And that's an amazing thing.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite photos, of Anna Lee Fisher, one of the first female American Astronauts. She was also the first mother in space.

Beware the Ides of January

January 25, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

It seemed as though winter just wasn't going to hit this year, but I had a vague memory of feeling that way in previous Decembers, so I thought it was best to hold out as best I could. Sure enough, this week, a blizzard struck, and I had as much winter as I could bear for a couple days. I find myself enjoying the inspiration of living in a place with all 4 seasons, distinct and separate. Much of my inspiration comes from the landscape and nature in the Maryland countryside near where I live, no matter what the season. The color palettes are some of the most distinctive effects.

The cool silvers and deep grays of the winter, with the bright vermillion sprinkle of the occasional holly tree. The slate gray of the angry bay, austere and lonely. And finally, the monochromatic splendor of the ice and snow covered moonscape I have before me right now. It all goes into the hopper on creative sourcing, and I welcome it.

I enjoy the silence of the cold winter nights, with the crystal clear sky showcasing the stars in their most magnificent brilliance. Solitude and isolation are two of the situations in which I find myself most inspired to create, and as such I try to capture those moments when I can in my personal scrapbook, to be called up at a later date to recenter me.

Without further ado, a picture of the surface of the moon (or, Hoth, or, my yard after a blizzard. Whatever works.)

Thanks for stopping by,

Welcome to Shieldmaiden!

January 20, 2016 Phaedra Loftis

Hello and welcome to Shieldmaiden Creative! I'm excited to share the new website with everyone, and look forward to making more posts in the future. I'll be sharing new design and photo projects I'm working on, as well as the smaller side projects I do on my own time to brush up on different skills. In the next few days I'll be posting up a few of my recent pet projects; please check back!