Digging Pitt Gallery, Zero Sum #10, and an apology

If you're in Pittsburgh, you should put a visit to Digging Pitt Gallery on your list of things to do. Not only are the exhibitions consistently interesting, but the director John Morris maintains an extensive set of flat files, making the artwork of over 140 local, national, and international artists available to anyone who comes in the gallery. And as of recently, I'm one of those artists, so there you go.


If you want to see what's looming in the sky above this happy postal worker, you should visit the auction for Zero Sum #10 on eBay. It's a nice chunky collage of a painting.

One of the curious and amusing features about this blog for me is that the counter at the bottom allows you to see what brought people to the site - how they were referred. Ideally they would arrive here having done a search on google for, say, "nice chunky collage of a painting", and be happy to have found something related to their online quest. Sadly, it seems that for some reason a large proportion of FIMP's visitors arrive here looking for information on one of two topics - the Fiji Islands, or Mermaids. Quite a few are looking for instruction on how to draw mermaids. And despite the fact that this is the Fiji Island Mermaid Press, they find no relevant information whatsoever on their topics of interest.


Barnum's mermaid, as depicted in the New York Herald in 1842

One of these days, I need to discuss the origin of this grossly misleading title. For now, I'll just tell you that the Fiji Island Mermaid was one of P.T. Barnum's exhibits, a gaffe made up of the top half of a monkey sewn to the bottom half of a fish. I'm a big fan of Mr. Barnum, his display of this object, and his encouragement of the public to debate its "reality". It reminds me of a lot of things I find interesting about art.

So, my apologies to those web-surfers who have washed ashore on FIMP and been grossly disappointed. I'll have to work up a "how to draw a Fiji Island Mermaid" one of these days. . .

Zero Sum #8

If you've been thinking "Gee, it's been a long time since I've seen a mixed-media painting that included a quail, four postage stamps, and a zeppelin hangar", than you should go check out Zero Sum #8! Get all the vital stats, and even consider buying the thing, by visiting the Zero Sum auction on eBay!

A Mime of the Times

Subscribers to the FIMP Book of the Month Club will be receiving "A Mime of the Times" in their mailbox any day now. You know, they say you should be a life-long learner. This month I learned not to trust people at the costume store when they tell you how easy it is to wash that stuff off. And I learned why so few mimes have facial hair.