In the department of “Hot off the presses”, The Seattle Times just published a Pacific NW Magazine cover story about Ray and Kirk’s “Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline” collaboration, written by Kirk Johnson himself! Read it here: The real Seattle Freeze: ‘Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline’ explores the compelling topography of the Puget Sound landscape.
“Johnson and Troll have done it again, congratulations!”
“This book is a knockout blend of science and humor, featuring superb artwork, people, and stories about the West Coast of the US and its fascinating prehistory. This book will make you laugh while exciting you with extraordinary science. It revives that sense of childhood wonder about dinosaurs & other bizarre creatures of bygone days.”
–John Long
Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University in Australia, and author of many books, including Dawn of the Deed—The Prehistoric Origins of Sex
“…tales and images that are at once joyfully accessible and deeply informative.”
“In the long and storied history of fossil-hunting, the dynamic duo of Johnson and Troll is unique. No one else has made this grueling work look like so much fun. Once again, they’ve returned from an “epoch” road trip laden with tales and images that are at once joyfully accessible and deeply informative. And the colors! They’ll knock your eyes out.”
–John Vaillant
Author of The Tiger, The Golden Spruce and The Jaguar’s Children
“Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline packs written and visual stories from cover to cover— all infused with a genuine passion for science and the joy of discovery.”
–Susan Ewing
Author of Resurrecting the Shark
Purchase the Book at the Official Ray Troll Web Store! or on Amazon
I’ve got a brand new book out this fall called “Something Fishy This Way Comes”, published by Sasquatch Books of Seattle. It’s a collection of my T-shirt art from the last 30 years featuring the cream of the crop, outtakes, rarities, hits and misses. There are bound to be images most folks have never seen. It’s got glorious fish-filled color throughout all 128 pages along with a witty intro by Sitka author John Straley.
We’ll have signed copies of the book in our web store November 1. Before that I’ll be heading out on a whirlwind mini-tour of the West promoting the book, doing slide shows and book signings in a town near you (hopefully!). Check out the schedule below. Hope to see you there!
The Amazon Voyage exhibit is now showing at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science! It’s chock full of my fishy art.
http://exhibitions.dmns.org/
And Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway is at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, starting October 23.
http://www.ansp.org/museum/future.php
Well folks I’ve been saying it for decades now but here’s definitive proof that yes indeed the lowly ratfish do rule! Sandi Doughton of the Seattle Times recently did a great story all about how my favorite fish have completely taken over Puget Sound. They now make up 70 percent of the biomass found there! Not necessarily a good thing for the ecosystem. Read about the Rise of the Ratfish by clicking right here.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2012531495_pacificpratfish15.html?cmpid=2628
Seattle Weekly:
Alaska artist Ray Troll hit on a good idea in the ’80s, which was to mock our Northwest love for salmon, and from that he spawned—sorry!—a cottage industry of illustrations, coffee mugs, and T-shirts that are now familiar from Dutch Harbor to Portland. He’s both an ichthyologist and an inveterate punster; an illustration called Hook, Line and Thinker, for instance, takes the figure by Rodin and places a fly rod in his hand. Yet it’s not all fish and wordplay in his colorful collection Something Fishy This Way Comes(Sasquatch, $19.95). Like his fellow naturalist-cartoonist Gary Larson, Troll finds much to amuse at the intersection between man and beast (or between pan and feast, if you prefer): overcrowded fishing holes, fishermen weighed down by too much gear, overconsumption, and human vanity. And, like the short, cyclical lifespan of our precious salmon, death is a constant presence in Troll’s whimsical panels. In one poster image, people cavort in the sun with fish and other living creatures; yet beneath lie the fossils and bones of all those who came before—the fertilizer stack to which we’ll all be added. “Life is good,” reads the inscription, but “death is not bad.” BRIAN MILLER
Mike Dunham’s Best Alaska books of 2010 ( Anchorage Daily News)
http://www.adn.com/2010/12/11/1599790/best-alaska-books-of-2010.html
Fairbanks News Miner
Fish first, humans later in Ray Troll’s artwork
by David James/ Books in Review
Ray Troll is Alaska’s surrealist of the sea. His widely popular artwork presents a world where fish sit atop the evolutionary scale, humans are reduced to highly vulnerable observers, and the eeriness of ocean life becomes reality above the surface as well.
The typical Troll painting features a dreadfully bad pun as it’s title and contains a scene that illustrates the joke with psychedelic explosions of color and a cacophonous montage of lively imagery. Troll’s works reveal an entire universe operating right alongside ours, an aquatic wonderland where the ooziness of life is cause for celebration and the things we would ordinarily find repulsive suddenly become enchanting.
“Something Fishy This Way Comes” is a new collection featuring more than a hundred pages of Troll’s gems spanning his 30-year career. And while these days Troll’s works can be found in such high-end venues as the Smithsonian, this book reminds us that Troll remains a popular artist at heart. Despite all the intricacies and scientifically accurate details, the real reason we like Troll’s work is that it’s just doggone fun to look at.
Take, for instance, “Cutthroat Businessmen.” This painting features a trio of cutthroat salmon standing upright on their rear fins on a street corner, dressed in sports jackets and clutching briefcases. Or consider “Combat Fishing,” which takes the well-worn description of overcrowded stream fishing to its literal extreme. And then there’s “Salmon Wars,” which finds another group of fishermen engaged in hand-to-hand combat with their prey. These pictures are very funny, but the fish in them are drawn to anatomical perfection.
Troll first gained renown by trafficking in T-shirts and refrigerator magnets, and many of his most beloved works from these media are featured in this book. Troll classics like “Jammin’ Salmon” (featuring a group of salmon musicians), the popular feminist poster, “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle” (wherein a fish sits awkwardly atop a bicycle), and the philosophical “Life’s a Fish and Then You Fry” are all found here, as is the irreverent “Fish Worship, is it Wrong?” And of course, there’s the perennial favorite “Spawn Till You Die,” still timeless after all these years.
Several themes run heavily through Troll’s work. As a popular artist, he’s naturally drawn to rock and roll, and the musical/artistic puns he pulls in this realm include the lighthearted “Don’t Worry, Be Humpy,” a rendition of a guitar-shredding king salmon titled “Wild King, You Make my Heart Sing,” twirling fish in “Twist and Trout,” and “The Baitful Dead,” which shows a bucket load of live bait emerging from the iconic Grateful Dead skull.
As should be expected from an artist obsessed with nature, political commentary of an environmental bent is also prevalent in his work. “Tanker from Hell” is clearly a response to the Exxon Valdez calamity, and is accompanied in the book by a smaller drawing showing the Chinese yin-yang symbol with a live fish swimming through the clear half, and a skeleton fish trapped in the oily dark side. On another page, “Fish are not for Farming” depicts a Midwestern field full of perfect rows of fish sprouting from the ground while another fish drives a tractor.
Biblical puns are another constant, and include “The Eyes of Cod are Upon You,” “Fish Discipline: Never Spare the Rod,” and — one of the best in the book — “Ichtheology: Thy Rod and Thy Reel Comfort Me.”
Troll delights in spoofing great works of art. “Salvador Dali Varden” places fish in the famed surrealist’s “The Persistence of Memory.” “The Stream” features a terrified fish in a replica of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” And “Hook, Line and Thinker” finds Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” alongside a stream with a fishing rod in his hand. At the other end of the art market, Troll offers twists on movie posters like “Pulp Fishin’” and “King Cod vs. Codzilla,” and a nod to velvet art with “Fish and Chips” which replaces dogs with fish in the famous poker scene.
Most of Troll’s work veers toward sea life, but when he turns his attention landward, he seems to have a fetish for placing humans in the paws of grizzly bears, playing on the fears that dwell just above the subconscious of all who live in bear country.
Evolution is another of Troll’s favorite topics, and this dovetails with a couple more of his recurrent themes, sex and death. Troll is deeply in touch with his inner fish, as he demonstrates in a series of nine facial renderings starting from a simple fish and working its way up through lizards, simians, and on to Troll himself. The sexually provocative “Waiting With Baited Breasts” lives up to its title, while “Life is Good, Death is Not Bad” shows life above ground with the detritus of what once lived supporting it from below.
And then there’s Troll’s advice about life. “The Perils of Nude Flyfishing” depicts a potential scenario that will convince men to keep their drawers on when they enter the stream. “Decaffeinated, Decapitated; Know the Difference” illustrates this important bit of knowledge quite graphically. “It’s Never too Late to Mutate” reminds us that we are all part of the ongoing evolution of life. And several pieces document the hazards of swimming with the dreaded Amazonian candiru (and if you don’t know what those fish are famous for, I’ll just let you Google it).
Troll presents all this with relentless humor and nonstop absurdity. It’s surrealism for the masses. Flipping through this book, one feels like the humans found in an average Troll painting: astonished, amused and slightly frightened. A parallel universe gushes out of Troll’s imagination.
Book reviewer David A. James lives in Fairbanks.
Wickersham’s Conscience: an Alaskan Blog
Ray Troll: An Alaska Treasure
Even if WC weren’t a serious fly fisherman, he’d still be a fan of Ray Troll. It’s not just the horrible puns (“The Fin Art of Ray Troll,” “Kvetch and Release”) or his ability to turn a platitude on its head (“If you must smoke, smoke salmon”). The man is also a fine artist, with a distinct style that manages to accurately illustrate a Ling Cod wearing over-the-top jewelry (“Bling Cod”).
Consider this gem: (cardsharks)
Not only are the sharks accurately drawn, anatomically correct, with several species shown; he’s managed to draw a pretty decent card game, too. And make one of his lamentable puns.
WC isn’t the only one who thinks Troll’s illustrations are excellent. His work hangs in an amazing number of scientific institutions, and he has had art shows in most of the national venues.
Troll has a new book out, Something Fishy This Way Comes, the Artwork of Ray Troll. It’s mostly the fish-focused drawings, but it is excellent, and kudos to Sasquatch Books for a high-quality job.
Work like Troll’s needs to be rewarded. Visit his terrific website and groan over his terrible word play. Buy one of his terrific t-shirts. Purchase one of his books. And if you are ever in Ketchikan, stop by the Soho Coho Gallery and see the Man himself. To quote a better reviewer, “Ray brings a street-smart sensibility to the worlds of ichthyology & paleontology.” And a lot of fun.
Ray Troll is on the short list of Alaska’s State Treasures. If you haven’t sampled his work, start the New Year right with a visit.
Signed Copies now available in the Ray Troll online store.
Listen to our online interview with NPR’s Weekend Edition.
“In Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway, Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll recount their rollicking road-trips through the Rocky Mountain region, and their writing and artwork tell the tale of the fossils, food, and friends they meet along the way. Paging through the book is like being chauffeured by a pair of paleontological prestidigitators across America’s prime fossil real estate.
Kirk’s writing conjures up multiple layers of history from the landscapes they pass through: the ancient environments where sediments accumulated and hardened into rock, the processes that brought these rocks to the surface and shaped the current scenery, and, most of all, the ongoing stories of discoveries made by scientists, collectors, and fossil fanatics throughout this geologic wonderland. Ray’s artwork brings each of these histories to life and mixes them together in a sort of deep-time gumbo: dinosaurs rise from the dead and amble alongside pickup trucks and gas stations, prehistoric mammals pose for portraits, and wide-eyed ichthyosaurs and half-coiled ammonites dreamily float alongside monster movies and cheeseburgers.
Ultimately, Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway is like getting several books in one: geology primer, road-trip travelogue, collection of scientific-surrealist art, and exposé of the “paleonerd” subculture in the American West. If you’ve ever driven down an open highway, looked out at the rocks around you and briefly wondered if there might be dinosaur bones buried there, then you’ll definitely want a copy for your bookshelf.”
Matt Celeskey – Paleo Artist and Chief Curator of the Hairy Museum of Natural History
“ No one- not even the Steven Spielberg- can explain the magic of the Jurassic as cleverly and comprehensively as America’s current Master of the Mesozoic, Kirk Johnson. Now, together with the magnificently eccentric fossil-artist Ray Troll, Kirk reports on a paleontological odyssey that manages to be informative, witty, educational-and enormous fun.”
Simon Winchester – Author of The Map that Changed the World, Krakatoa, and A Crack in the Edge of the World
“ Johnson relates the stories of the great discoveries in paleontology and peoples them with a rogue’s gallery of parched academics and mercenary treasure hunters. In the end, the reader is holding the strongest, most delightful of texts- an adventure story, a memoir, a handbook, a history, a guide. And a refreshing sense that Earth is resilient and enduring.”
Peter Heller – Contributing editor for Outside and National Geographic Adventure Magazines. Author of Hell or High Water and The Whale Warriors
“ I hereby nominate Ray Troll and Kirk Johnson for the 2007 Monty Python Razzle-Dazzle Paleontology Prize for excellence in communicating the joy of fossil hunting. By the time you finish this book you will know more about dinosaurs, trilobites, and ammonites than you ever wanted to, and you’ll never even realize that you were learning all this great stuff! ”
Richard Ellis – American Museum of Natural History research associate, author of The Empty Ocean
Signed copies of the book can be found in our webstore.
“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.” –Publisher’s Weekly
Ray is happy to sign and personalize copies… to order the book click here…
Some Sample pages:
An Alaska Seafood Cookbook by Randy Bayliss with illustrations by Ray Troll. You can purchase it on Amazon here…
