The Imagination Fully Dilated Blog

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

If it kept coming down, we were sure to drown in it.

Each of us could see what we needed to do individually and as a group to stop it, but few were willing to sacrifice in their personal lives, occupations and politics to make the change.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

My new fiction collection, Boneyard Babies, will be released as a paperback by Lazy Facist Press, an imprint of Eraserhead Press in November of this year. It will debut at BizarroCon, November 11-14, Edgfield Manor, 2126 S.W. Halsey St., Troutdale, OR 97060.

The image above is an excerpt from the cover artwork I’ve put together for it.

The collection consists of ten collaborations and six solo efforts. It includes stories that are constructed in a more traditional manner as well as ones created through the use of a surreal writing game I call Bone-Grubber’s Gamble. They are surreal and dreadful tales of the oddest sort with characters living and dead, biological and mechanical, superhuman and god-like. It is, I believe, a charming companion for lovers of the bizarre and another small statement for the preservation of the grotesque.

My collaborators include writers Jeremy Robert Johnson, Bruce Holland Rogers and Eric Witchey and visual artists-turned-writers Mark Roland and Jill Bauman.

Here are links to information about BizarroCon and Eraserhead Press.

Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

She was proud to be part of the perfume ad while it was glamorous and beautiful, but with the decline of the neighborhood the advertising space lost its value and the beautiful people who admired her moved away.

Now that her location provided just enough cover to be a convenient spot for the homeless to urinate, she wanted out.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Although disaster followed in its wake, people fought for the few seats available on the damned thing.

Those who rode away on it were never seen again and were promptly forgotten.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

With the fall of the great god Calculus, math, the bedrock of science, crumbled and there was no longer any means of testing our understanding.

Both a blessing and curse, anything was now possible.

Artwork—”The Fall of Calculus” a collaboration between Jill Bauman and Alan M. Clark

Text—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Did he have the courage to save his family?

Knowing he had little time left, he flipped through to the last few pages to get a look at the end.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

It had taken Alister years to train them and now they consistently turned out paintings worth millions.

Too bad no one was buying any of them.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

The blue smoke curling gracefully from the end of a cigar or cigarette had always seemed innocent enough.

When Allister accidentally invented the “carcinoscope” and tried it on, however, he saw for himself the hazards of second hand smoke.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Below you’ll find the weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture and read the caption and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If you need a further explanation go to Imagination Workout—What is This?

Trying to make up for all the trauma he’d caused years ago, Mr. Hands, Allister’s childhood bogeyman, came to visit him every night, bringing candy, toys, and severed human parts.

Allister accepted the gifts graciously, but was still deathly afraid of the monster.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

Last week I spend an afternoon with a hired gun, Vernon T. Williams, who recently moved with his family to Eugene. He’d seen my art exhibit at the Springfield City Hall and something about the experience prompted him to contact me and call me out. We met at my studio and discussed creative process, among other topics. While we did so, Vernon shot me, over and over. It didn’t hurt a bit. In fact I had so much fun we became friends. We’ve discussed a possible future collaboration in animation, but what form that will take is not firmed up yet. Below I’ve posted his write up for the shoot as it appears on his blog and some of his incredible photographs. Looking at those photos, it was as if I were seeing my studio for the first time.  What a nice place to work!  To see more of them, visit his blog: Hired Gun – A Photographer’s Journal

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

portrait of the day – alan m. clark

Monday, January 18, 2010

What a truly enjoyable day I spent with Alan. A quick morning shoot turned into lunch, which in turn became the better part of the afternoon.

I encountered Alan’s paintings in a hanging downtown and was immediately taken by the work. Each piece captures a moment in a fantastic story; some dark and mysterious, some with a sly sense of humor. There were several that captured my attention for many minutes as they begged me to complete the story in my mind. Alan put it so well; the best art asks you to bring a piece of yourself to the viewing. It leaves space for you to collaborate with the artist in creating a narrative that is different for you than for any other viewer. His work did that for me in spades. Some of my favorite pieces were to illustrate stories by Stephen King. His depictions from the Dark Tower series captured beautifully the Roland that had come to life in my head over the many years I’ve enjoyed those books.

You should check out Alan’s work, but know that an image on the internet can’t capture the vibrant, saturated colors and the intricate detail that I found so enthralling. They can, however, show you how the color and detail is there to serve a higher purpose; the mood and story that are so beautifully captured by his brush. Unfortunately one of my favorite pieces isn’t even there – a brilliant book cover commissioned to illustrate the King story, “Riding the Bullet.” It’s a striking vision of a ’69 Mustang fastback speeding down the rails of a derelict roller coaster and I was instantly drawn in. It has more layers than a Roxy Music album and reveals more each time you look at it. My son, Shane, was really taken by Alan’s paintings. One of his favorites was a particularly striking piece showing crows picking at a scarecrow.

Alan responded with enthusiasm to my request to photograph him and showed me such gracious hospitality when I showed up at his home studio. I made some photographs I’m proud of that day but, more than that, I got to have some great conversation with a gifted artist. Alan shared with me his time and his talent and I am truly grateful

Hired Gun – A Photographer’s Journal

—Vernon T. Williams