50 Places

Subscriber's to the Fiji Island Mermaid Press Book of the Month Club should already have "50 Places I've Already Seen". It's an autobiography of sorts, playing off of the popular "1000 Places You Should See Before You Die". Part of FIMP's way of seeing things is to try and love the place you're at - that's something I learned from dogs and babies. So this book celebrates those places that you probably didn't plan your trip around, but are awfully darn wonderful anyway. Everyone's list would be different - a self-portrait.


The artist as a young man, searching for the fountain of youth at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum
The image above didn't make it into the book, but is undoubtedly a formative one. I think that's the first place I encountered the Fiji Island Mermaid. It's amazing that I can type this blog entry, considering what those crocodiles were doing to my hands.


In other news, the Zero Sum Art Project continues on its merry way, with Zero Sum #16 currently up for sale. Visit the auction on eBay to see the entire painting/collage.

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. . .