The Ghost Ease

The Ghost Ease

This is an album release poster I made back in February for The Ghost Ease, commissioned by Banana Stand Media! Check out the video below for their excellent song, "Gemini Rise".

I actually created this illustration around Halloween 2015 - hence the spooky vibes. I was listening to the You Must Remember This Podcast, which had an episode about America's first gothic sex symbol, Theda Bara. She was known as "The Vamp", and was an early Hollywood silent film femme fatale bringing men to their knees in such movies as "Sin", "Destruction", and of course "Cleopatra." Fox Studio publicists built up her image to be as exotic and mythical as possible, going so far as to claim her name to be an anagram for ARAB DEATH. Despite this, she was actually a bookish lady - typecast into the witchy-woman roll for the rest of her life.

I'm going to close out with this quote, which is admittedly concocted by the Fox Studio star-builders of her time to support Theda's "big, bad, scary feminist" image - yet still I dig it:

"V is for Vampire, and it stands for vengeance. The vampire I play is the vengeance of my sex upon its exploiters. You see, I have the face of a vampire but the heart of a feministe."

Theodosia Burr Goodman (Theda Bara,) July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955