We were lucky to catch up with Maggs Vibo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Maggs, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I wrote a poem about battlefield apparitions and unseen injuries which funded a trip to the United Kingdom. I was invited to a veterans’ poetry workshop at Oxford Brookes University. The pieces we created, and subsequent published anthology, opened my mind to visual poetry. From this experience, I shifted my focus from written text towards more visual antiheroine lore and grotesque imagery.

Nowadays, my art uses what I learned from archaeological and historic sites to prove how superstitions still permeate within our armed service branches. In my pieces, I dig into the ways conflict uncovers beliefs in the otherworldly. This is accomplished through research into the outcast and delving deep into the role of tropes. As we’ve experienced throughout human history, the Anthropocene Era has outliers to perceived norms. This fodder for scapegoating is a nonstop conversation laced with folkloric elements apparent in my art. By studying war wounds vs. war wombs, I delve into the origin of conflict and its interplay with our modern tyrannical war machine. More importantly, I am interested in how a civilization which works towards its own extinction, can find its way to a rebirth. For this, I return again and again to the myths, lore, and art of the Hawaiian Islands where I live and find endless inspiration.

Maggs, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I conjure scary lore. I’ve lectured at a folk horror convention with artists, writers, producers and filmmakers in the rural gothic genre. I spoke about the occult in colonial America. Topics included Grace Sherwood (the purported ‘Witch of Pungo’), and a witch bottle excavated at Civil War encampment (known as Redoubt Nine). My short poetry films debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and featured cryptozoology and battlefield phenomena. My esoteric practice evolved from memories of my childhood raised on isolated farms in the rural heartland. Later on, as a soldier and war veteran, I researched warrior tropes through the study of ancient ruins in Asia and Europe. I walked the same landscape as Enheduanna and surveyed the places of Homeric and Shakespearean tales—places where our shared cultural lore grasped my imagination. This research led to philosophical experiments with ‘The Headless Way’, and eventually to pieces published in veteran-centric journals. Over a decade after my war experiences, I used the lessons learned to teach our complex military and cultural history. As a National Park Service Park Ranger, my guided tours covered over 2,500 acres of battlefields and showed the correlations between ancient and modern warfare. I was especially interested in the psychoanalytical link between sharing horror, trauma, and stories about post-traumatic stress with the cognitive and behavioral benefits therein. Many attendees of my excursions spoke of anomalous experiences while at historic sites. To me, this tradition of oral folklore exchange creates manifold worlds.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Basically, I’ve learned that there is a reason certain artists become iconic. They don’t steer clear of controversy. Ultimately, you are going to tick people off along the journey if you are staying true to your voice. When I first started writing, I omitted many topics because I thought there was a way to stay balanced. The truth is that life isn’t always neutral. To be a fearless artist, you have to be like our universe with all its explosive qualities. If the thing you are creating makes you feel nauseous, you’re probably making something necessary. This is your gut instinct and it’s meant to make the hair stand up on your arms, cause a nervous tingle down your spine, or wobble your legs. If you’re making something worthwhile, it will sound like an extraterrestrial or a ghost whispering in your ear. This paranormal voice likely has the most interesting thing to say. As you make the thing, you might feel that nobody is going to understand your intention (that it’s just too damn bizarre). I add my name to those artists who tell you that this is exactly the headspace to embrace.

In this initial stage, the delete key is your worst enemy. Bravely tell the story as it wants to be told. Let out the multiverse of madness… and then trim (but only after you’ve had a while to sit in the cave alone). Breathe in the fire and exhale the smoke or inhale the smoke and breathe out the fire. My favorite pieces (so far) are those where I let people see the dark bits scribbled by my psychiatrist. I like the nonsensical word play that comes from trying to make sense of this insane simulation we are trapped inside.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Ugly art is gorgeous to my eyes. Life is dirty and chaotic. Art for art’s sake is necessary and so is art fueled by trauma. It heals in its retelling from generation to generation. If they’ve banned the art, it is probably a masterpiece which threatens the establishment. My favorite art is created by those labeled “unhinged”. I am an outcast. I understand why it is necessary to sit around a campfire and retell psychotic stories (to create the monsters lurking in the shadows while the fire burns so bright that it singes your psyche). No matter how high the pyre, an oral tale can’t be burned into oblivion. Our voices are our fire. Which is why I manipulate fire and ash in my art. Fire isn’t always destructive. It can be used to create new landscapes and build new worlds. Likewise, fragments are a metaphor. Within all human history, archaeological records include bits of fragmented tablets, papyrus, jewelry, bones, scrolls, and pottery. We piece together these fragments to explore (explain + lore = explore). This is the story of us. Fragmentation includes a physical tear. In this way, I tear paper, I burn the edges, I jigsaw the paper into my own Frankenstein. I rub ash all over the artwork—blending the ash with my breath, perspiration, and fingerprints. It is as if I have consumed some of the art and vice versa. My very DNA is part art and part dragon. I am the vessel which holds the heart of which art dwells. I AM art. I AM ash. I AM myth. I AM fragments. I AM whole. I AM lore. I AM.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.maggsvibo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggsvibolit/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poetmaggsvibo?mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggsvibo/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/maggsvibo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@maggsvibo7345/about
• Other: https://www.flickr.com/photos/maggsvibo/ https://www.headless.org/photos/maggs-vibo-photos.htm https://vimeo.com/user39482014