Pictures from the Steampunk Bizarre Exhibit

by Jason Harris

The 2011 Steampunk Bizarre Exhibit at the Mark Twain House and Museum ends Sunday, Jan. 15 with a showing of Stream Driven: The Movie, and a panel of artists talking about their work being shown in the exhibit from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. The event is free and refreshments will be provided. Musician Eli August will be performing during this event as well.

A brochure at the event describes Steampunk as “an art movement inspired by great literature writers such as Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley to name a few.”

The exhibit is curated by local Connecticut artist Joey Marsocci, proprietor of Dr. Grymm Laboratories to bring together 21 international Steampunk artists of all styles and mediums to celebrate one of the greatest writers and ‘inventors’ of time travel, Mark Twain,” the brochure said.

According to the Mark Twain House and museum website, “Dr. Grymm and the gang will offer one last chance to socialize among brass bolts, bubbling brain tanks, fantasy paintings, fantastic weaponry and backpack-borne Tom Sawyer fence-painting gear, all inspired by quotations from America’s bad boy author — you have to see it to believe it.”

The website quotes Steampunk aficionado Miss Kitty that “Steampunk is the future as imagined through the eyes of the past. It is mechanical gears and boilers, dirtiness mixed with the shininess of brass and copper with the deep red of cherrywood. It is a time for tea and gadgets, airships and ether.”