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I have been working on a flatfish themed art project! There will be more to announce soon and great fanfare: I promise. However, for now, to tease the wonders that are to come, here are a number of small flatfish artworks that I have been making at lunch and on the train and during similar spare moments. Wordpress hates me with undying vehemence (which is to say, if I label a picture with its name, their program drags it off-center and makes it look ugly), so I am going to write the name in the body of the tex beneath each little fish, and write a short blurb. Please, please let me know what you think, even if it is a one word assessment and I will keep working on my big presentation! Oh–the picture at the top is: Bongo Flounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper) it depicts a bongo turning into a flounder through the auspices of the horned god. A baffled yokel hunter watches in astonishment. Morphing animals are a big problem for me (sigh), so this image has deep personal meaning.
Baterpillar fluke (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): A Sumerian walking at night sees a mystical fluke surrounded by nocturnal garden creatures.
Arcane Flounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): An Armenian mystic walking at night contemplates the intricacies of a magical flatfish surrounded by arcane creatures.
BustaFlounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): a flounder parties too hard and is forced to re-live the disgraces of the 1980s New York art scene. A chained mastiff and disappointed prawn look on with weary resignation.
Flatfish in the Night Garden (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): through the intercession of various ancient deities, a hive of bees is allowed to plleneate at night. The relentless geometrical shape on the shimmering dab’s back indicates that such a work ethic may have inscrutible consequences.
Gnome City Flatfish (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, colored pencil and ink on paper): A small colorful city is overtaken by a fungal outbreak as winged beings fly by.
Hopefully you have enjoyed this little flounderful gallery. Like I said, get ready for some exciting news (hint, hint: the launch of an ancillary site for Ferrebeekeeper). keep on commenting and i will keep on floundering. Thanks!
The Blossom Monster Sculpture (last year, after I had just made it)
Last year, for a cherry blossom viewing party, I laboriously built a human sized blossom monster out of papier-mâché. But what does one do with a blossom monster when the party is over and the blossoms have fallen? I really meant to throw him away. Yet, somehow, whenever I went to discard him, something else always came up. He was lurking in a different part of the garden..or it was not garbage day. There was always and excuse to save the fluorescent monster, no matter how threadbare he got.
But winter was not kind to him: he had sunk to the ground and his legs were coming off. One of his glitter lantern eyes was gone. It really was time for him to go (plus I made a new group of blossom monsters to celebrate this year’s cherry blossoms). So I had to toss the poor art creature (a fate which will seem instantly familiar to arts professionals).
However, once I threw him in the garbage he gained his creative fulfillment. Indeed the pathos of the discarded monster was quite moving. His last act was his finest and now I will forever think of him like the maimed protagonist of a Caravaggio religious painting, with divine light shining on his fallen countenance.
The Precious Night Turkey (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, Mixed Media)
Longtime readers know that one of my favorite animals is the turkey. I am not alone. We Americans have a whole month dedicated to devotions of the magnificent bird: the turkey is literally at the center of our third (or second?) most important festival. However there is a distinctly Aztec aspect to the turkey’s key role in the holiday. The fowl is not just a sacred animal of autumn—it is a sacred sacrifice of the dying year.
I love turkeys. I love their appearance. I love their personalities. I love their furtive mastery of the eastern woodlands. I…uh…I love their flavor. A lot. This strikes me as a noteworthy juxtaposition of its own: a troubling aspect not of turkeys, but of humankind. Our kindness is always streaked through with appetite. Our admiration is dark and terrible.
Anyway, I figured I had better make an artwork to capture some of these mixed feelings (and as a personal devotion to the consecrated bird). Here is a picture of Chalchiuhtotolin, the jeweled night turkey of the Aztecs. You can revisit the post here—the deity is a trickster, a sacrifice, a shapeshifter. I made it with paper cutouts, markers, colored pencils, and rhinestones—in the artistic style of an alimentary schoolchild, er, I mean an “elementary” schoolchild. I wanted it to be like a Faberge jeweled egg, glistening in the purple night, but perhaps I should have made it more Aztec instead of Rococo.
Ominously, as I was pasting it all together I accidentally tore off the head (you can see the seam of where I glued it back if you blow up the work). It was an artistic mistake—but it works perfectly to capture the true ritualistic nature of November’s spirit animal.
ferrebeekeeper 