"Fictional"

"Moonfish", acrylic on canvas, 12 by 12 inches.

"Moonfish" is my contribution to an exhibit at the Bath House Cultural Center in Dallas, with an opening reception 7 - 9 pm July 10 and continuing through August 7. The show is titled "Fictional" and is in conjuction with the Festival of Independent Theatres.

According to the Bath House press release, the show was "conceived as a collaborative project between the Bath House gallery and the 12th Annual Festival of Independent Theatres. In the same spirit as FIT, which strives to celebrate the talent of local independent theatre companies, the exhibition also has as its main goal to provide a showcase for the innovative, transcendent and thriving art created by local and regional artists."

Based on elements of the plots of eight one-act plays presented as a part of this year's festival, invited artists chose from a list of single sentence "blurbs" to create images. Interestingly, knowing too much about the plays themselves was discouraged, as to avoid work that "merely illustrated the literary works" (hmmm...). The preferred approach was for "the artists to consider the short blurbs for their own inspiration merit in order to create personal, unique and independent interpretations of the phrases." *
Okay, works for me.

I chose "The Boy, the Girl and the Moonfish" from other possibilities including "Reconstructed Alice in Wonderland", "Bible Heroines", "Mystery Girl Scout", "Transforming Muses", "Snake Urban Legends", "A Day Spent in Purgatory", and "Pontiacs, Trains and Disneyland". I knew exactly what I wanted to do from the moment I read "The Boy, the Girl and the Moonfish", which doesn't happen that often.


* The best examples of illustration do just that, but that's a discussion for a different context.