Artist’s Statement: (Gabe Ostley): I had a lot of fun collaborating with Annie Christain on “Mayfly Satellites.” Her poem is dark, strange, creepy, and mysterious and it was a great experience working with her, discussing the imagery and getting the tone and mood right for this animatic. She supplied me with tons of reference imagery that I was able to spring off of with my skritchy skratchy pens and watercolors. Her choice of using the music of Dan Deacon was inspired and was the last piece of the puzzle. The poem is based partly on the story of The West Memphis Three… the rest is up to your imagination….
Poet Annie Christain is an associate professor of composition and ESOL at SUNY Cobleskill with poems appearing in Seneca Review, Oxford Poetry, The Chariton Review, and The Lifted Brow, among others. She received the grand prize of the 2013 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest, the 2013 Greg Grummer Poetry Award, the 2015 Oakland School of the Arts Enizagam Poetry Award, and the 2015 Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry. Tall As You Are Tall Between Them, her debut poetry book, was published in fall 2016 by C&R Press.
Illustrator/artist Gabe Ostley is the artist for DC Comics’ The Hammer, as well as Hero Action Persons, Snatcher Bodies, and My Date With Medusa, published by Devil’s Due Digital. In 2014, he adapted the play, Moth, into a graphic novel for The Cincinnati Review. He was born in Minnesota and graduated from the Savannah College of Art & Design with a BFA in Sequential Art. After working in illustration and licensed characters in New York City, he moved to Hong Kong to the post of Artist-in-Residence for Yew Chung Education Foundation. His work has expanded to include murals and large scale sculptures in addition to paintings in exhibitions around Hong Kong. He now lives in Portland Oregon with his wife and two sons.
