Rapture of the Deep: The Art of Ray Troll
- Book Review,
by Ray Troll
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.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Ever go to the Lost Fin Department to reclaim property? While encountering weapons of bass destruction? Strangely alluring, funny, and thought-provoking art of the fantastic and phantasms: this is the hip and popular work of Ray Troll. In his foreword, David James Duncan describes Troll as a visual philosopher of antic temperament fascinated by Darwinian science. Troll also draws on his love and respect for Alaska's indigenous cultures, and his humor will appeal to fans of The Far Side, as evident in this full-color showcase of the artist's best-known work from the past 20 years, which includes detailed depictions of fossils and giant salmons. Overarching his surreally comic views of fish, both realistic and imaginary, as well as birds and creatures of the Triassic, and expressed in his accompanying commentary, is Troll's abiding regard for and concern about ecology and the state of the earth. Lively and clever, Troll's work will appeal to art and animal lovers, fans of comics and graphic novels, and readers interested in marine life past and present. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
For more than two decades, Ray Troll has been luring, hooking, and landing fans around the world with his zany, irreverent, and often surreal art. Featured in museums, galleries, and books, as well as on immensely popular T-shirts, his work-part natural history adventure and part underground comic-depicts beautiful and accurately drawn fish of all kinds, Northwest Coast totems, Freud and Darwin, fossils, resurrections of extinct animals, and much more. Rapture of the Deep collects some of Troll's best-known art along with many images never before published. The book makes powerful connections between biological diversity, the evolution of life on earth, and the careless habits of people. Rapture of the Deep celebrates Troll's vision with legendary works including "Spawn Till You Die," "Life's a Fish and Then You Fry," and "Bassackwards," in which fish use money, liquor, and literature as bait to lure humans. Troll's running commentary reveals the thought and inspiration behind his art. Writer Brad Matsen, Troll's longtime coconspirator, adds a lively introduction to the art and life of his "sole" brother. Illustrations: 90 color illustrations, 20 b/w illustrations
From the Back Cover
"'Fish worship, is it wrong?' Clearly it is not in this marvelous book that assembles the largest collection by far of the art of Ray Troll. The wide and wildly creative landscape of Troll's talent is in full view here."-John G. Lundberg, The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia "I love this book. RayTroll's art reflects a seductive merging of marine biologist, circuit-riding preacher, anarcho-syndicalist, and fish processor. Ray is a man who not only is in touch with his unconscious, he has also made friends with it and appears to periodically take it out for a burger, chocolate malt, and large fries."-Milton Love, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara "A wonderful book . . . . Rapture of the Deep sneaks a wealth of wisdom about art, nature, and the human condition into a package that will delight people from every walk of life."-Kesler Woodward, artist and Professor of Art Emeritus at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks
About the Author
Ray Troll's art has been featured on the Discovery Channel, in dozens of magazines and newspapers, and in galleries and museums such as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the California Academy of Science. He has created and illustrated several best-selling books, including Sharkabet: A Sea of Sharks from A to Z (2002); Life's a Fish and Then You Fry, a cookbook by Randy Bayliss (2002); and, with Brad Matsen, Raptors, Fossils, Fins and Fangs (1995); Planet Ocean: A Story of Life, the Sea, and Dancing to the Fossil Record (1994); and Ray Troll's Shocking Fish Tales (1993). His next book, Cruising the Fossil Freeway, with text by paleontologist Kirk Johnson, will be published in 2005. He lives in Ketchikan, Alaska. Brad Matsen is an author, documentary screenwriter, and photographer whose books include Incredible Deep-Sea Adventures (2003); The Shape of Life, coauthored with Nancy Burnett (2002); Fishing Up North: Stories of Luck and Loss in Alaskan Waters (1998); and his three previous collaborations with Ray Troll. He lives in Seattle and New York.
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