Fantasy Worlds: A Day of Talks - Visualising Fantasy

This event took place on 9 December 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

Brian and Wendy Froud and Alan Lee are three of the most celebrated artists in the fantasy world, with The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings amongst their design credits alongside countless books and illustrations.

Brian Froud and Alan Lee collaborated on the bestselling 1978 book Faeries, an illustrated compendium of faerie folklore. Brian was then invited by Jim Henson to be conceptual designer for the cult films The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986) where he met and later married puppet-maker and sculptor Wendy Midener, who was also working on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth having come from The Empire Strikes Back, where she fabricated and helped puppeteer the original Yoda. Brian's numerous best selling other works include Good Faeries/Bad Faeries and Lady Cottington's Pressed Faery Book, while Wendy has continues to make models and mythic figures and has illustrated The Old Oak Wood series with Terri Windling, as well as collaborating on Trolls Tales and Faeries Tales with Brian.

Alan Lee is globally celebrated for his artwork inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, and for his work on the conceptual design of Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Together the three artists have created some of the most acclaimed mythic artwork and some of the most well known fantasy images and designs of the recent decades. At this special session the artists join writer and editor Terri Windling to discuss their wonderful creative careers.

Terri Windling is a writer, editor, and folklorist specialising in fantasy and mythic arts. She has published over forty books, receiving ten World Fantasy Awards (including the Life Achievement Award in 2022), the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA Solstice Award. She has edited many of the major fantasy writers in the field; writes fiction for adults and children, nonfiction on fairy tales and faery lore, and a long-running blog on myth, nature, and creativity: Myth & Moor.

This event accompanied the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust.