Theo lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts with her spouse Ruth and four cats in a charmingly old house calling itself Saint James Cottage. It stands by natural magic. A native Charlottean and enthusiastic somnambulist, she grew up within a half mile of PTL’s broadcast studio and Billy Graham’s mother, watching Star Trek and Batman in a Peter Max bathrobe. When science sacrificed the moon program she turned to Dungeons and Dragons.
After illustrating a new edition of a four hundred year old book The Chemical Wedding for John Crowley and Small Beer Press, Theo discovered she is the eleventh great grandniece of Robert Fludd, aka Robertus Fluctibus, an alchemist and physician who in the year 1616 rushed to defend in print the original authors. He also wrote that building wooden robots is impossible with mathematics alone. It requires “the co-operation of natural magic.”*
Theo has a BA in Archeology from Bryn Mawr College and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. She studied drawing, sculpture and painting at the Art Students League, NYC while working in an old German cabinet shop. Her first day there an aged Austrian said “One hundred years and you’re the first woman we’ve seen.”
Currently her studio is in Easthampton, Massachusetts at One Cottage Street. So far as anyone knows, she has been in New England for less than one hundred years. The Chemical Wedding is set to be published in 2016 AD.
You can reach Theo Reen Fadel at inquire@theofadel.com
*Craven, J. (1902). Doctor Robert Fludd (Robertus de Fluctibus), the English Rosicrucian : Life and writings. (p. 44). Kirkwall: W. Peace.