I first became aware of Charles Vess's work when I saw his illustrations for Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Later I discovered his work on Sandman, and for the last four years he's been working on the Illustrated Edition of Earthsea, collaborating closely with Ursula Le Guin.
He gave a fascinating slide show, talking about his childhood in a small town in Virginia. At one point, the interviewer asked him: "Did you live on the same street as Norman Rockwell?" because he described such a typically small town America of the sort Norman Rockwell painted.
He discussed his influences as an artist, starting with the covers of Tarzan novels, and the comic strips Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant. He even showed one of his early pictures, where he had combined a knight from Prince Valiant with a woman who had Dale Arden's face.
Later he showed a bronze statue of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream he had worked on, and talked a bit about collaborating with Ursula Le Guin - that evening he would win the Hugo for that work, as well as a Hugo for best artist.
Then it was back to the Convention Centre to queue for a wristband for the Hugo Award Ceremony, and then the panel about the Morrigan.
The speaker was Lora O'Brien, who had also been on the Irish Folklore panel. She's legally a pagan priestess in Ireland, and teaches. She described her relationship with the Morrigan in this way: "When the gods come to you, and are pissed off with the world, it takes a shitload of work!"
Although the Morrigan is usually seen as a battle goddess, sometimes in the form of a crow or raven, there's a lot more to her than that. "There's nothing fixed about the goddess".
She features in the Irish myth the Tain Bo Regamna, which is a prequel to the more famous Cattle Raid of Cooley. In these legends, the hero Cu Culainn is an outsider to society, at odds with the Morrigan, who knows how things should be done.
One of the sites associated with the Morrigan is the Cave of the Cats, the Uaimh na gCat at Rathcroghan. This is an entrance to the Otherworld and a place of initiation. The entrance is a womblike narrow passage which you have to enter feet first to get down to where the cave opens up to a big cavern.
Lora also talked about how the Morrigan's name was mis-used in computer games - usually as a cool name for some large breasted sexy goddess. When one of the audience tried to explain the thing in one particular game about the character giving birth to a baby demon, Lora countered with "It's fucking disrespectful," adding that Irish people swear a lot, so she wasn't apologising for her language. (It's a classic example of cultural appropriation by the computer game makers).
She finished by saying: "If anything I've said here pisses you off, I'm doing God's work!"
Outside in the real world (and showing on the big screen in Martin's Bar) Dublin was hosting the all-Ireland hurling championship between Limerick and Kilkenny.
So it was quite amusing to see this version of the Iron Throne in the dealers' room:
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