Martin McCoy and Ellie Livingston at The Convent

On November 29, the Convent in Philadelphia was flush with the amazing artwork of Martin McCoy and Ellie (Jo) Livingston.

The Convent is one of the coolest art galleries I have ever visited, situated in a repurposed nun convent in the Fishtown neighborhood of northeast central Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is owned and operated by Jeremy Hush (jeremyhush), an incredibly talented artist and carpenter himself. Over the years, I have visited The Convent a number of times to see Cadabra Records live performances and to see the artwork of artists that Jeremy admires. On November 29th, artists Martin McCoy (martin.mccoy.art) and Ellie (Jo) Livingston (elliejoliv) had some of their fantasy artwork on display at the gallery. Beyond just having their art on display, they were both there in person to meet and talk with people about their work. Anyone who has followed Between the Bolter and Me for a while knows about our extreme fondness for Martin and his work, having commissioned him to create artwork for some of our own projects. My brothers and I have also been fans of Ellie’s work for awhile, from her work creating fantastic creatures for RPG sessions in Ekphrastic Beasts (which Jeremy Hush also contributed) and her more recent work illustrating amphibians and reptiles for the Magic: the Gathering set Bloomburrow. With Philadelphia just a 1.5-hour drive from my home, I cleared my calendar and drove to The Convent to see the artwork and talk with both Martin and Ellie.

Vastarian: The Cults of Vastarian

Vastarian is an open invitational where we are encouraging people to create Imperial Cults that are at war with each other on the cathedral world (Vastarian). While we have shown two cults on the planet (the Church of the Red Athenæum and a faction of Spyreheads), we wanted to do more to give people ideas to create their own Vastarian cults. After some deliberation, we came to the conclusion that some Vastarian artwork would be an ideal way to get peoples’ imaginations flowing. Having worked with Martin McCoy on multiple volumes of 28 magazine, we knew he would excel at creating some concept art for Vastarian. We commissioned him to create a piece of artwork that displayed a host of different cults, to emphasize how eccentric and divergent they can be from one another. Ultimately, Martin created two amazing companion pieces. At the time of writing, you can still get prints of each piece of artwork on his Etsy page!