Slow Stories
Bette A. and Brian Eno
Slow Stories brings together storytelling, recorded sound, and painting in a signed and numbered edition of 444.
Each edition includes Bette A.’s hardcover short-story collection, the limited white-vinyl recording 2 Slow Stories,
and one unique painting created and signed by both artists.
Choose the specific painting you would like from the available works below.
The Complete Edition — $444
Each edition includes:
Slow Stories by Bette A. (Jacketed Hardcover, 176 pages)
2Slow Stories a limited pressing, 12-inch white-vinyl with gatefold jacket featuring original music from Brian Eno and narration by Bette A.)
Original painting on canvas board, by Bette A. and Brian Eno, numbered and signed by both artists (20 cm x 20 cm)
Priority shipping
Bette and Brian created the paintings collaboratively across hundreds of canvas-board panels, layering sprayed color, stenciled forms, interruptions, and responses to one another’s gestures. The paintings do not illustrate particular scenes from the stories. Instead, they create parallel visual spaces—suggestive but incomplete, leaving room for the viewer to make connections and form images of their own.
The artists’ proceeds from each edition support the Heroines! Movement, a global storytelling movement around women role models co-founded by Bette A., and EarthPercent, which directs support from the music industry toward organizations responding to the climate emergency, co-founded by Brian Eno.
Choose Your Painting
Each available painting is shown below. Choose the specific work you would like to accompany your copy of Slow Stories and 2 Slow Stories. Every painting is an original work on canvas board, signed and numbered by Bette A. and Brian Eno.
More about Slow Stories
In villages and small cities, mysterious phenomena occur. A box appears at the edge of town and silently demands to be filled with meaning. A skinny little man trudges in from the desert refusing to put down the massive rock he carries on his back. And when a girl is born inside a poor one-bedroom house, a new door appears, leading to a new room, leading to another–while form the outside, the additions to the house are impossible to enter and made of an unbreakable mirrored glass, reflecting the growing rage and confusion of the villagers. Naturally, people must respond.
In other locales, a memorial is raised for twenty-four fallen soldiers, but the story is distracted by one man, who refused to arm himself and fight; and inside a community of disembodied voices, we listen as the creatures try to solve an existential riddle. Meanwhile, there are fantastic discoveries that young people keep secret until they are no longer young, enthralling monsters made of smoke and desire, and a short biography for the last inventor, who, “like the first inventor,” was a woman.
Slow Stories conjure a tension that demands quiet attention, while the narrator’s voice insists that we take our time, and contemplate our own place in the universe. Reminiscent of Calvino’s fabular world building, though tinged perhaps more radically with concerns over safety and sharing, sovereignty and community, Bette’s A.’s voice transports us to other worlds while resonating powerfully inside our own.
In the summer of 2025, author and artist Bette A. visited friend and collaborator Brian Eno at his studio in London. They were starting work on their next joint project, inspired by Bette’s upcoming book of contemporary fables and fantasies. The collection, entitled Slow Stories, describes parallel worlds and recounts alternate histories, while still managing to resonate deeply with our own.
Eno saw something else in their disarming simplicity and uncanny voice: a demand for deep attention. How could this demand, so rare in our modern life, be answered in kind? How could one help engage even more with this expansive world Bette A. had created? Soon, Eno was recording Bette narrating the stories, and composing an aural soundscape to weave with her voice. Then they embarked on a series of jointly created paintings that echoed the multiplicity of worlds suggested in Bette’s work. The result: 2 Slow Stories, a one-of-a-kind, multi-media work of art by two of today’s most intriguing multi-media artists.
The full gallery of available artwork can be scrolled through below. Simply select your choice of signed and numbered original painting by Bette A and Brian Eno. In addition, you will receive a hardcover first edition of the Slow Stories book, as well as the vinyl album for 2 Slow Stories. These recordings are not available digitally, and exclusive to this single printing of 444 vinyl copies.