FrankiVerse Cafe: Artifex Edition Issue 1
FrankiVerse Café: Artifex Edition — Issue 1 is a visual art zine and narrative art book that lives at the intersection of handmade creativity, AI-assisted exploration, and mythic storytelling.
This issue blends oil pastels, illustration, digital art, and experimental AI imagery with original short-form fiction and field notes from the FrankiVerse Café — a liminal gathering place where creativity doesn’t have to choose sides.
Inside, you’ll find:
• A playful reimagining of the classic “two wolves” parable, told as a Glossimer News report involving a hot dog croissant, a portal malfunction, and a Grateful Dead concert circa 1977
• A café-side witness account from FrannyLynn, whose quiet morning ritual accidentally sets the tone for an interdimensional incident
• A curated collection of original artwork spanning handmade and AI-assisted processes
• Reflections on creative duality, process, and permission — without moralizing or gatekeeping
This publication is intentionally visual, nonlinear, and exploratory. Some pieces were created slowly, by hand. Others arrived quickly, through curiosity and play. Many passed between the two until they stopped caring how they began.
Artifex Edition is not a how-to manual or a manifesto.
It’s a field journal from inside a creative ecosystem where tools coexist, stories wander, and imagination is allowed to eat snacks at the table.
As one of the FrankiVerse’s guiding phrases goes:
All roads lead to Eldorado.
This book is one of those roads.
For more stories, art, and open tables in the FrankiVerse, visit frankiwashere.com.