Spawn Till You Die

"From Publishers Weekly Alaska artist Troll's knack for making intricate, playful drawings of all things fishy has led to an empire of books, magazine illustrations, museum shows, gallery displays and decorated t-shirts. This large-sized, full-color volume presents an overview of Troll's drawings, complete with commentary by the artist. Some of the pieces are amusingly tongue-in-cheek (""Rebel with a Cod,"" ""Weapons of Bass Destruction,"" ""The Lucky Fish Gets the Cheeseburger""), while others are beautifully surrealistic. But the most impressive are his grandly composed fish-scapes (""Fishes of the Amazon,"" ""Bottom Fish of the North Pacific,"" ""A Ratfish Called Troll""), in which layers of perfectly-detailed fish are arranged into brilliant panoramas. Matsen's lively introduction provides lots of useful information about Troll's life and aesthetic leanings, making this a must-have book for any serious fan of the artist. Admitting you're obsessed with fish isn't easy. Especially since there aren't any support groups or meetings you can go to, or therapists who specialize in fish addiction. How does a guy like Ray Troll tell his kids he's spent eight hours a day for ten years drawing pictures of fish, filling up notebooks and scratch pads with endless renditions of ratfish, long ago abandoning the pretense or that metaphor has anything to do with it? Some of us are just different I guess, but it seems like a lot more people are tumbling to fish life of one kind or another, losing control with our finny neighbors. Brad Matsen author of Titanic's Last Secrets, Jacques Cousteau: the Sea King and Planet Ocean: Dancing to the Fossil Record As a visual artist who has popularized many scientific concepts, especially those relevant to natural history and evolutionary theory, he has reached broad audiences in ways that can affect public support of and education about science. And without either of these - public support and education - science would not happen so easily. -Dr. Tony Martin, Emory University If there were such a thing, Ray Troll would be the Artist Laureate of hallucinatory fish images. -John Straley, poet and author of detective fiction Ray is a different kind of paleoartist... he's a scientific surrealist. His art, while often paleontological, is infused with the rest of life. In his images, extinct animals visit the modern world in daydreams, as if R. Crumb had time traveled back to the Cretaceous. -Dr. Kirk Johnson, Paleontologist and Director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History When I study the way Ray depicts fish, the fish in my own life become more vivid and delicious and dear to me. When I ponder the length and detail of his artistic engagement with fish, and then consider the resilience and complexity of the creatures capable of inspiring such an engagement, I feel far fewer fears for the intergalactic Future of Fishes, Life, Ray, me, and Fish-lovers everywhere. -David James Duncan, author of The River Why and the Brothers K"