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Artist Kay Belardinelli's blog.

Silhouette of a Snake

Jul 9, 2025

Title page of a book with a stamp in the corner that reads Franklin Society.
“North American Herpetology, or, a Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States”.
Snake coiled very beautifully into itself with a white background. The snake is black with white patchy stripes.
A beautiful illustration of a Coronella snake.

For Mar’s final album cover, I wanted something with a strong snake protagonist, representing death and rebirth. An iconic visual with many little details.

Paper cutout of the snake colored in black so her eyes and stripes are no longer visible.
The snake illustration is copied, cut out by hand, then filled in with ink and charcoal.
A live snake poised and coiled around the arm of the artist.
This is Rheia, a local ball python.
Dried skin laid flat on a white surface, its brown spots and tiny honeycomb texture clearly defined.
I took some old skin that Rheia had discarded, then cut some pieces out and flattened them.
The snake shape again, with the skin texture laid on top, some of it spilling outside the edges of the snake.
The dead skin is layered over the silhouette to create texture.
The snake with the texture darkened to almost black, and a gray photo of an industrial building in ruins is in the background.
The layered snake is edited digitally for a more subtle look, and layered over a photo of industrial ruins.
Unfinished words painted on paper in black ink, reading Ruin is Rebirth.
The title of the album is painted with brush and ink over and over.
The layered image cropped and fitted onto a cassette tape jcard with some added text.
The final cassette tape cover design crops the snake collage for the cover, with handwriting along the spine and the track listing on the back.

More about Ruin is Rebirth on Mar’s website.

Ruins

Apr 27, 2025

A long skinny snake on a worn white background.
The ruins of a fortress on an island of tall grasses with a huge clear sky.
Engravings of five very different snakes. One is halfway through swallowing a lizard head-first. One is coiled into a tight circle. One has a face like she's laughing.
A person disappears into marsh grasses, walking along a thin white wall that stretches from the camera to the center of the image.
A messy table of unfinished art, with a fresh drawing of a snake, an old etching of the same snake cut out, a large blurry photo of an abandoned building, a paint brush, the name 'Mar' cut out, and a small pile of dry snake skin.
An industrial building burnt to bits, piles of old steel and wooden planks in piles.

burn a fire

Dec 6, 2024

A cassette tape. The cover shows a triple-exposure photo of the artist playing guitar.

I have a new tape out today. Sunday December 8th there will be a tape release show at Lost Bag in Providence.

burn a fire to old rotting things.
burn a fire to feel the warmth and glow.
burn a fire to survive the night.
burn a fire to my entire life.

Voices on Tape

Nov 20, 2024

Experimenting with texture and warmth by putting music onto reel-to-reel tape …

Vocals isolated, playing back from the tape.
Me sitting in front of the reel-to-reel machine with a laptop on the floor and headphones around my neck.
Close-up of a reel-to-reel machine with the reels moving.

The machine was old and the reels I was taping over were Christian sermons from the early 80’s. Sometimes the sermons would mix with my music, in reverse.

Sample of the sermons getting scrambled.

Living Room Floor

Aug 24, 2024

My last Mariassunta album took months to record. In a windowless room, alone with a narcissist.

We had a ritual in which my music was slowly sanitized and my sense of reality distorted.

The artist sitting on the floor holding a guitar in one hand and reaching towards something in the foreground with the other.
Guitar pedals, a laptop, and an open journal spread out over a carpet

I recorded my next album on the living room floor, the vocals in the bedroom.

It took a couple hours. I’ll keep the imperfections because I love them.

Sample of a new song, recorded at home.

Old Ways

Aug 10, 2024

Mar track, work in progress.

“DONE WITH THE FAKES”

This footage is from a livestream of “a Prairie Rattlesnake rookery (MegaDen) at an undisclosed location in Colorado. At this rookery, hundreds of snakes overwinter, shed their skins, and bask in the sun. Dozens of pregnant snakes spend the summer here preparing to give birth and care for their babies.” In this edited recording, a snake sheds her skin while a companion assists.

Serpent Goddesses and Dead Saints (Summer Reading)

Jul 24, 2024

A stack of library books on a wooden shelf, with titles like 'Goddess' and 'Cult of the Dead'.
A snake in a tree and a woman gaze intimately at each other, the latter holding an apple in her palm.
Closeup of 'Eve' by Lucas Cranach the Elder