Through Folklore and Flame: Joining the Gothe Residency’s Dark Folklore Exhibition

There are emails—and then there are portals.

The kind you open slowly, heart pounding in your chest like an ancient drum, knowing something might change forever on the other side.

Mine arrived with the subject line:
“Exhibition Acceptance & Next Steps.”

It still doesn’t feel quite real to write these words, but here they are:
My work has officially crossed the Atlantic and is now part of the International Dark Folklore Exhibition at the Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery.

For the first time, I get to say it aloud:
I’m an international artist.

🖤

A Gathering of Shadows and Storytellers

This isn’t just any exhibition.

Curated by Dark Cornwall and the Gothe Residency of the Arts, the International Dark Folklore Exhibition is a hauntingly beautiful convergence of creatives whose work delves into the mythic, the forgotten, the liminal. It's a celebration of the stories whispered in the dark, the archetypes buried in blood and memory, the art that springs from the intersection of the personal and the primal.

It brings together visual artists, writers, musicians, folklorists, and craftspeople from around the world—each one offering their own interpretation of what it means to carry the weight of myth forward into the modern age.

When I first stumbled across the Gothe Residency’s Patreon, I felt a jolt of recognition. As if I had walked through a door and found others already gathered around the fire—inking, carving, binding, weaving.

This wasn't just another art group.

It was a community rooted in reverence.

Why the Gothe Residency Resonated

There’s a line from the Gothe Residency mission statement that still echoes through me:

“We aim to explore and preserve the myths, rituals, and cultural heritage of the world—especially those that have been ignored, distorted, or buried.”

This is exactly the heartbeat of Modern Medieval Press.

At its core, my work is about more than technique or style—it’s about stewardship. I don’t just make linocuts or woodblock prints. I create portals. Each piece is an invitation to remember, to reconnect, to reimagine. I draw on medieval forms not for nostalgia’s sake, but to breathe life into forgotten ways of knowing, to anchor us in a time when the sacred was woven into the everyday.

The Gothe Residency speaks to this same impulse—this desire to preserve and protect while also reviving and reimagining. There’s an honesty in their curation that I rarely see: a willingness to hold the dark, to honor the shadows as sacred, to admit that not all folklore is tidy or easily translated.

It felt like home.

What It Means to Be in This Show

The exhibition itself is everything I could have hoped for—a living altar of story and art. It opens on Saturday, August 16, at the Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery, and will feature an incredible range of experiences: live music, storytelling, tarot readings, cultural talks, and the artwork of over 30 artists who work in the realm of folklore and the strange.

The curators—Vincent Gothe and Morgana Weeks—have poured soul into this event. Their attention to detail, their care for artists, and their insistence on anchoring creativity in something deeply human… it’s rare. And it’s deeply moving.

Being part of this feels less like a career milestone and more like stepping into a lineage.

Art That Isn’t Just Made—It’s Remembered

One of the things I love most about the Gothe Residency is their reminder that folklore is a living tradition. It’s not a museum relic to be cataloged—it’s something we carry in our blood, in our symbols, in the way we speak to the land.

Modern Medieval Press was born from that same belief.

When I started carving my first block, it wasn’t just an aesthetic choice. It was a prayer. A spell. A return to a slower, more sacred pace of creation. I’ve always believed that the work we make carries memory—not just our own, but collective, ancestral, cultural. And when we bring that memory forward with intention, it becomes something more than decoration. It becomes devotion.

That’s why this show means so much. It’s not just that the work is being shown internationally (though I’ll admit, I’m still reeling from that). It’s that this show honors the kind of art I make—the kind that doesn’t rush, doesn’t pander, doesn’t ask for validation from algorithms.

It asks only to be felt.

A Glimpse at What I’m Showing

My piece for the exhibition is titled “The Beast of Bray Road.”

It was carved from both folklore and fear—rooted in American myth, but shaped by the visual language of medieval bestiaries, cathedral vaults, and newspaper broadsheets. It holds tension, reverence, and a certain feral mystery.

It felt right to offer it to this exhibition—an echo from one continent to another.

🖤 [Learn more about The Beast of Bray Road →]

An Invitation to Walk Through the Door

If you’re anywhere near Cornwall, I hope you’ll attend the opening event. I would give anything to walk those museum halls in person and see the work of my fellow artists, to hear the old stories retold with new tongues.

And if you’re not—just know that the stories still find their way to you.

That’s the thing about folklore. It moves. It waits. It whispers.

And thanks to exhibitions like this—and residencies like Gothe—it continues to live.

I’m still a little spellbound.
Still holding my breath, just a little.

This is one of those moments that feels like more than a line on a CV. It feels like confirmation. Like a quiet “yes” from the universe. Like a signal that the path I’m carving—sometimes slowly, sometimes in the dark—is still true.

To those of you who have been walking it with me: thank you.

Your belief, your presence, your willingness to step into the old stories with me—
That’s what makes all this possible.

🖤
Rachel
Modern Medieval Press