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Jen Kiaba

Occasional dispatches from an artist and writer about making things, noticing things, and following strange threads through art, story, landscape, and the creative life. Sometimes I'll leave you an image to carry away.

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A haunting, ghostly photograph of a translucent woman approaching french doors in the dark of night.
Featured Post

🕯️ Haunted Lantern #6 - The Things That Creep In Through Cracks

Hi there Reader, Back before the Wayward Cottage, in the days of the wayside carriage house, there were many a night where I found that I could not sleep. Perhaps it was the wind that whistled through a door in the bedroom that opened, inexplicably, out onto the roof. Maybe it was the moonlight that would peek in through that door. Either way, there were plenty of sleepless nights. And so I donned an vintage nightgown, wandered downstairs, and take eerie self portraits. Like one does,...

9 days ago • 1 min read
A mysterious woman plays an abandoned piano in the woods

Hi there Reader, Come take a walk with me today, a ways down the road from the Wayward Cottage.There’s an old abandoned property there, slowly being reclaimed by the woods. Years ago, when the place was still inhabited, an artist installed a piano beneath towering trees. Above it hung a chandelier of illuminated glass orbs. Inside the piano he placed a speaker, and for a single day it seemed as though the piano itself were playing a haunting sonata. And then everyone left. The doors were...

16 days ago • 1 min read
An antique clawfoot bathtub sits in a dark, unfinished room with exposed wall studs and wooden floorboards. Bright daylight pours through two windows behind it. A pale hand hangs limply over the near rim of the tub, while the rest of the person remains hi

Hi there Reader, Welcome, come inside the Wayward Cottage today. Well, as it once was fifteen years ago. We had to enter through the basement, go up the basement stairs, and break through a wall that once was a door when we first arrived. But luckily, the front door is usable now. Her bark is worse than her bite. Promise. Come, let’s meander upstairs. I want to show you something. It’s a beautiful clawfoot tub, mostly hidden behind faux brick paneling. I’m not sure why it was tucked away like...

27 days ago • 1 min read
Weathered handmade wooden ladder leaning against a tall tree in an autumn forest, surrounded by slender trees and a ground thick with fallen golden-brown leaves.

Hi there Reader, Today I'm taking you up into the woods. There are no paths there that the deer haven't made. Instead there are ridges and rock formations, an abandoned house, traces of a forgotten road, and eventually, a swamp. I've spent over 15 years wandering and photographing these woods - occasionally being lucky enough to find a morel mushroom or two for dinner. The woods themselves feel full of history and stories, waiting to be discovered. One fall afternoon in 2013 I found a rickety...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Weathered stone gateposts and a low stone wall stand at the edge of an overgrown field surrounded by bare trees. The house and estate the entrance once belonged to are no longer there.

Hi there Reader, Welcome back to my Wayward Cottage at the edge of the woods. Before the Wayward Cottage, I lived in an old carriage house that had once belonged to a grand estate. Think: questionable kitchen in an old horse stall, bedroom in the hayloft. And more giant spider visitors than I care to recount. The place was rather wayward as well, now that I come to think of it. 😏 The mansion itself was long gone. All that was left was an empty field. There wasn't even a foundation. But this...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read
An old tree with strange bark, like lacing

Hello there, Welcome to my Wayward Cottage at the edge of the woods. Can we take a look at this tree together? A strange, beautiful tree in Woodstock, NY. It’s the bark of a tree I encountered on one of my wanderings long ago. It struck me because it looked as though the tree were bound in a corset of its own making, encountered in the process of breaking free. I’ve been back to this part of the woods many times over the years, now with my daughter. And yet, years after taking this photo, I...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read