Garden of Alicinations wins a thimble!

 

I am delighted to share that Garden of Alicinations has received the Best Micro-Short Film award at the Action/Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Thriller Festival in Los Angeles.

Although the film is just over a minute long, it grew out of a research journey that has accompanied me for many years. Long before working with artificial intelligence, Alice had already become a central figure in my artistic practice, appearing in books, illustrations, objects, and visual experiments.

When I began making films with AI, I realized I could finally bring into motion worlds that had previously existed only as still images. Garden of Alicinations emerged from the meeting of two lifelong passions: Alice, as imagined by John Tenniel and Gertrude Thomson, and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Rather than adapting Lewis Carroll's story, I imagined Bosch's garden as Alice's unconscious, a place where dreams and metamorphoses unfold according to their own logic.

Ironically, the greatest challenge was not creating images, but removing them. Using Photoshop and AI, I spent days digitally emptying Bosch's painting, removing hundreds of figures to make room for Alice to experience her own journey through that extraordinary landscape.

 

The film features an original soundtrack by Paulo Beto, whose music brings rhythm, atmosphere, and depth to this dreamlike world.

Watching the audience respond with so many different interpretations was one of the most rewarding parts of the experience. I have always hoped to create works that remain open to the viewer's imagination.

I am deeply grateful to the festival for this award, to everyone who watched the film, and to all those who continue to follow my work. And perhaps the greatest discovery this film gave me was realizing that Alice's garden has also been quietly blooming within us.

 

 

  

Alice and the Seven Keys 

Amazon 

 

 

 

In my collage book Alice and the Seven Keys (A Mascote, 2022), I reimagine Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights as a landscape where Alice could naturally wander. Rather than focusing on the painting's moral or religious interpretations, I explore its dreamlike logic, hybrid creatures, impossible transformations, and playful absurdity, drawing parallels with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Through collage, Bosch's garden becomes an extension of Alice's imaginative world, suggesting that both Bosch and Lewis Carroll created autonomous universes shaped by curiosity, metamorphosis, and oneiric imagination. 

 

Read about this book according to Semperlux here. 

 

 

Alice: 150th Anniversary Edition 

 

 

Bosch also appears in Alice: 150th Anniversary Edition (Lewis Carroll. Translated by Maria Luiza X. de A. Borges. Collages by Adriana Peliano based on John Tenniel's original illustrations. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2015). In this edition, Tenniel's Victorian illustrations are reimagined through collages that incorporate references to the history of art, including Hieronymus Bosch.

In the image titled Alice Puzzle, Alice's body no longer obeys conventional anatomy, transforming into a composition of paradoxes. Multiple heads, extra arms, impossible objects, dice, chess pieces, and Penrose triangles coexist within a single figure, as though Alice's identity were constantly being reconstructed. The collage brings Carroll's nonsense into conversation with Bosch's world of hybrid bodies and improbable combinations.

Bosch also reappears in the Caterpillar scene. Rather than simply illustrating Alice's conversation about identity, the collage transforms the Caterpillar into a distinctly Boschian creature. It assumes a hybrid body, somewhere between human, insect, and machine, surrounded by fantastical architectural forms inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights. Alice stands before the figure as if witnessing a metamorphosis in progress, reinforcing one of Carroll's central themes: identity as something fluid, unstable, and constantly changing.

 

 Reado about this book according to Semperlux here

 

 

Lewis Carroll na Era Vitoriana 

 

Amazon 

 

 

 

In Lewis Carroll na Era Vitoriana: Outras Histórias de Alice (Lewis Carroll in the Victorian Era: Other Alice Stories), written by Katia Canton and illustrated by Adriana Peliano (DCL, 2010), Bosch is not used simply as an artistic reference, but as a world into which Alice can enter. Throughout the book, characters such as the Caterpillar, Humpty Dumpty, and the White Rabbit are reimagined within scenes inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights, blending Carroll's nonsense with Bosch's dreamlike creatures, hybrid beings, and fantastical landscapes.

Rather than illustrating Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the book places Alice in dialogue with the history of art, treating Bosch as a visual language of metamorphosis and imagination. In retrospect, this approach anticipates Garden of Alicinations, where Bosch's garden becomes the dreamlike landscape of Alice's unconscious.

Read about this book according to Semperlux here.

Alice unbirthday cake

 

Shared by Katie Woodhull in the Facebook group Alice In Wonderland Art/Quotes.

I have a soft spot for Alice in Wonderland cakes and edible sculptures, but this one feels completely different from the usual tea-party aesthetic.

Instead of bright colors and whimsical characters, it transforms the story into something that looks as if Wonderland has been forgotten for a century and slowly reclaimed by nature. The crystallized pages resemble ice, sugar, or mineral formations growing from an ancient book. Moss spills between the pages, faded roses emerge from hidden corners, and Alice herself appears like a memory trapped inside the object.

What I love most is that it doesn't simply illustrate Alice in Wonderland — it reimagines the book as an artifact, a relic discovered in a secret garden somewhere between dream and decay.

Alice por Daniel Leite Almeida

"Memórias cinematográficas - Primeiro longa 🎥 Obra criada em 2017 por @halwildson Usada em apresentações do filme em rodadas de negócio antes da sua produção Alice dos anjos (2021, Ficção, 76 minutos).

Musical infanto juvenil, aventura, fábula. Função: Direção, roteiro, montagem e produção executiva.

 Lançado no Festival de Brasília e premiado com seis candangos, releitura de Alice no país das maravilhas de Lewis Carroll, uma menina no quintal da avó segue um bode preto, cai em um buraco, descobre um mundo mágico em pé de guerra contra um coronel que quer destituir as terras de povos tradicionais para a construção de uma usina hidrelétrica."

 

 

Alice in a steampunk universe

 

The video presents Alice in a steampunk universe, building a visually coherent world of gears, machines, and industrial landscapes that dialogue with the imagery of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The work appears competent and carefully constructed, not only because of the quality of the AI animation, but also because of the consistency of its atmosphere and narrative. There is a sense of creation that goes beyond the mere generation of images, organizing a world that unfolds with intention and continuity. At the same time, one quiet question lingers: beyond the familiar visual codes of the steampunk imagination, what new facet of Alice emerges here, and where might the author’s own singular imaginative voice begin to appear?

Alice by @surreailist

 

@surreailist creates short videos that resemble dark fairy tales. The imagery echoes classic cinema and folklore, but follows an unstable emotional logic where beauty becomes excessive, romance turns uncomfortable, and care begins to feel almost threatening.

His work draws on a tradition of surreal and transgressive cinema, recalling filmmakers such as Andrzej Żuławski, Wojciech Has, and David Lynch, along with visual echoes of artists like Francis Bacon and Max Ernst.

Artificial intelligence makes it possible to bring these references together in brief sequences filled with retro textures, theatrical staging, and occasional hints of gore, unfolding in hypnotic, anachronistic loops.

Rather than telling stories, the videos operate as sensory descents that gradually pull the viewer away, until one realizes they are already inside the rabbit hole.

Curiouser and curiouser

 

 

A new ballet based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass will premiere at the Hamburg State Opera on June 20, 2026.

The production, titled Wonderland, is choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky and created for the Hamburg Ballet, with music performed by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg. The stage design is by Sebastian Hannak, costumes by David Szauder, and dramaturgy by Vivien Arnold.

Carroll’s two books, published in the 19th century, remain a recurring source for reinterpretations across different artistic forms. The characters of Wonderland, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts, continue to circulate as cultural figures far beyond the original texts.

This new ballet revisits Alice’s journey through a world governed by its own logic, a place that has often been read as dream, parallel reality, or exploration of the unconscious.

Premiere: June 20, 2026
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg Ballet

Tim Walker Through the Looking-Glass

 The photographs by Tim Walker resonate with the imaginative world of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass through their playful distortion of space, scale, and narrative logic. The giant chessboard immediately evokes the chess game that structures Carroll’s mirror world, where movement across squares becomes a metaphor for transformation and passage.

At the same time, the images echo the visual atmosphere of John Tenniel, whose illustrations shaped the iconic look of Alice’s universe. Walker’s staging, however, pushes this imagery into a theatrical and slightly surreal territory, blending historical references with childlike imagination.

The presence of Edie Campbell moving across the oversized chessboard suggests a contemporary Alice navigating an unstable landscape, where fashion, art history, and fantasy intersect. Like Alice herself, she appears both participant and observer inside a world governed by strange but compelling rules.

In this way, Walker’s images do not simply illustrate Alice; they recreate the sensation of entering her world. Perspective bends, the familiar becomes uncanny, and the viewer is invited to step onto the board and wander through a dreamlike terrain where history, play, and imagination meet.

 

 

 

 

ALICE COLLECTORS: Natalia Bragaru

part 1/2 

@kidsbookexplorer 

www.kidsbookexplorer.com

 Based in Australia and born in Moldova, Natalia Bragaru is a passionate explorer of illustrated literature who turns each book into a window of wonder. A finance professional by training, she transformed her analytical precision into a refined curatorial eye through her blog KidsBookExplorer, an acclaimed space where more than 150,000 visitors have discovered her thoughtful reviews and visual journeys. 

Her collection began around 2012, when her five-year-old son played the White Rabbit in a children’s theatre adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Searching for the perfect illustrated edition for their reading sessions, Natalia fell down the rabbit hole herself, from Helen Oxenbury to Maggie Taylor, from Robert Ingpen to surrealist artists like Švankmajer and Silberman. Today, she owns over 100 editions of Alice, 70 original artworks mainly by Australian and Russian illustrators, and a few rare Snarks that add a touch of mystery to her shelves. 

 Here we show part of her collection displayed on bookshelves and in thematic arrangements, often grouped by country, as well as her brilliant sculpture inside a book, a piece that evokes Robert Ingpen’s Magic Bookcase. Her interviews with artists such as Gavin L. O’Keefe have been published in Knight Letter, the journal of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. 

Natalia represents the Savvy Reader type of collector: one who integrates Alice into a broader constellation of art and children’s literature. Her Wonderland is not only a personal collection but also a space of learning, inspiration, and dialogue where stories continue to expand the imagination of all who enter. 

In addition to her curatorial work, Natalia has served as a Judge for the 2024 and 2025 Book of the Year Awards by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, in the categories of Picture Books and New Illustrator. These awards, among the most prestigious and long-standing in Australia, have been held annually since 1946, reflecting her deep engagement with the world of contemporary illustration and storytelling.