The folk tale of Little Red Riding Hood has a long and varied history in its telling, which does nothing to diminish the charm of the following photographs, which have a distinctive mood and charm all their own. Thanks to our friend J. Stirling for sharing these images. Enjoy.   Please click on the images to enlarge them.    If you go off to the woods… Be sure you take some lunch with you…   My apple was delicious! I’m so glad I brought some along.  The woods are a wonderful place for memories and secrets…   But now it’s growing dark. Time to go home before the Big Bad Wolf finds me. Besides, I’m getting tired and I miss mommy and daddy!    

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We’re pleased to bring you more work from Woodsybug aka Nicole Beauchaine. You may remember her guitar art from last year. Well, her stop motion films are another of her super-fun creative outlets. Here are just a few of the videos she has to offer on her Youtube page. Some are spooky, Halloween-y films, while others are sweet and touching, while others are just plain cool! Enjoy. * * *                         * * * Nicole Beauchaine is a Boston-based guitar designer. She says, “Art is the tool I use to discover myself, and the confidence I gain from knowing who I am. Thanks for checking out my work, commissions are welcome anytime! www.woodsybug.com”

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We’re delighted to have Daniele Maguet and her wonderful Galerie ZonZon in Brest, France, as an art partner with the Fictional Café. Every so often, Dany will suggest an artist whose work is going on display at her gallery for us to present here in the Café, and it is our pleasure this month to welcome Isabelle Zutter. She lives and paints in Montpellier, France, which is 10 kilometers inland from the Mediterranean Sea. Although the city has roots back to the 1300s, it is a very hip place, home to three universities and a vibrant community of the arts. Isabelle has shared her artist’s statement with us: “My Mediterranean is in Montpellier, but it might as well be in Athens, Casablanca and Barcelona. The light and contrasts I play with rely on odors, sounds that we share…

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Editor’s Note: Alyce shares a little bit about her art. “Art is not just an object… a painting or a sculpture. It is a culmination of human energy, human emotions… joy, grief, hope or hunger… all things that connect us as humans. When these emotions and energy come together as a piece of art or music the ordinary is made special. That is why art becomes an experience between the “creator” and the “experiencer”. A connection is made. We are joined through our humanness. Always striving to infuse my images and music with a quiet power, I invite the experiencer to contemplate, to feel… to make a connection. The act of making something that never existed before is mystifying.” Crow Dance   Restless Waters   Water Lillies   Water Reeds   Fox Phantom   *…

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                                    * * * Jessica Edouard is a historical romance novelist from the Pacific Northwest. She created her website, Send Sunshine to “touch as many people as possible with a vision of positivity and squelch our acceptance of negative influence.” You can find more of her writing on her website or at her Etsy shop.

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Editor’s Note: Just as Paris is alluring, fascinating, filled with wonder to a visiting American, so is New York to the foreign visitor – in this case Francoise Menebrode. Some people spend their time filling their eyes and ears with the sights and sounds of travel, but for a visual artist, the richest experiences are found looking through a camera lens. Francoise captured her visual impressions of New York from behind her Nikon, then devoted herself to hours in front of her computer and Photoshop, rendering her images into unique works of art. Herewith are her evocations of one of the world’s greatest cities. Please click on each image to see a larger view. * * *                       * * * Francoise Menebrode is a photographer,…

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Editor’s Note: Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord creates handmade books out of morsels of matter from the world around her. She says: “The Spirit Books bring together my love of the book and my response to the natural world that we see and to the invisible one that lies behind it. I find evidence of that deeper world not in wide vistas and scenes but in small objects that I gather. While I enjoy the expanse of the horizon as I walk along the beach, I am drawn to the scattered piles of shells and driftwood I see on the sand. As I walk down the street on a glorious fall day, I find myself looking down at the fallen stems of the chestnut rather than up at the blazing orange maples. It is in the subtle shifts…

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Editor’s Note: Earlier this month, Jack traveled to the French countryside for a little workation (that’s work-vacation). He discovered an art gallery and immediately knew he wanted to feature some of the art on the Fictional Café. Galerie Zon Zon curator Danièle Maguet generously agreed to let us feature some of the work that the gallery has up this month in Brest, which sits on the coast in Brittany in Northern France. Without further ado, we present the paintings of Sylvie Vanlerberghe. * * *             * * *   Sylvie Vanlerberghe was born in Marseilles in 1963. She moved to the the Yvelines department of Île-de-France, Paris, in 1986, where she still lives today. Sylvie works in various studios in the Paris region, and currently teaches painting in Gambais…

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Springing                                       * * *   Danielle Benedetto is a high school senior who loves to manipulate images using over a dozen apps on her iPhone. In addition to photography, she also enjoys reading, walking around the lake in her town and philosophy. She will be attending Emmanuel College in Boston in the fall where she will study neuroscience.

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