Many generations ago, the Germans mixed and matched animal parts in theatrical taxidermy and called the result, Wolpertingers. There’s a fantastic hunting museum in Munich containing dozens of the wildest, mounted, reassembled animals imaginable.

My wife, Karen, took me to this museum where I saw an enormous display of stuffed animals that were made of mixed up parts. I wasn’t sure I appreciated killing animals and then making fun of them that way and I turned to say something to Karen as she said, “These animals must have been extinct for a long time; I don’t recognize any of them.”

This is my favorite, and funniest story from our travel times, and I thank her for giving me permission to tell it.

Rhino Color Wheel

A minor example in America is the “Jackalope.” “Sophomoric” humor at its grotesque best, but since I never got past sophomoric humor in my callow youth, I have been working on a thin slice of the fishing book market. I call my Wolpertingers, “Pun Fried Fish.”
Silly fish, silly stories.

Basselope

The western prairie is an enormous expanse of quiet. Out of boredom, the desire for variety and just something to do on a Saturday night, tender relationships developed among the fleet footed antelope and the feisty river bass.

After millennia of “let’s have a party” couplings, the symbiotic result was the fast, fighting Basselope of today, found only in a Montana river that was named for the Basselope by Lewis and Clark who dubbed it “The Little Bighorn.” Bragging fishermen who display trophy size Basselope horns are said to be “running off at the bigmouth.”

Tijuana Bull Bass

Tijuana Bull Bass are known as Brave Bull Bass of Baja. They bubble, snort and charge at Redfish, and go loco at the sound of the Mariachi Trumpet Fish. The bull-fighting Fishadores battle in the Brave Bull Bass arena around Tijuana’s Cape Salsa, where the Picador Pescadores get un-seahorsed by the Tijuana Bull Bass. The Fishadores are awarded the tail, marinated in tequila and served as Bull Bass burritos.

T.J. Bull Bass swim in singles sand bars, drink gin fins and bass beer, talk on the horn, and pick up senoritas with old fish lines at the spawn dance.

Salmon Moose

When millions of spawning Salmon surge their way upstream in Alaska’s rivers, nothing gets in their way. Lovely, young, maiden moosettes, innocently feeding in the water up to their soft bellies, are suddenly savaged by testosterone crazed Salmon like sailors on shore leave.

The result is “antlered lox,” and quite the favorite on bagels with cream cheese and a thin slice of sweet onion. Salmon Moose are quite rare because poachers take the best of the early run, known on the Kenai River as “Poached Salmon Moose.”

Koi Gnu

Heavily scaled, bottom sucking, Gnu-horned carp with mud ugly taste and plain battleship grey color, are called the Congo Gnucarp. It had been hunted, almost to extinction, by Lionfish but Koi-keepers captured a couple and brought them to Hawaii where Koi-breeders bred beautifully brilliant, Koi-Gnu color combinations.

In Kealakukua, Hawaii, King Kamehameha named them, “Koi-Gnu-Koi-Gnu.” The King’s Kealakukua Carp Corp. is located where prettily patterned Koi-Gnu-Koi-Gnu and  Humuhumunukunukaupua’a, go swimming by my little grass shack in Kealakakua, Hawaii, and we dance the Kealakakua hula and sing “Three Kois in the fountain.”

Lake Elk Trout

Many a mystical meeting took place between the enormous lake trout and the philandering Elk that waded in waters across North America. The Elk knew the fishy females as their “finny fertile friends.” The philandering Elk, reeking of phishy perfume, never called them back on the phish phone, now known as “Elk-calls.”

The resulting Lake-Elk Trout, with their huge antlers, cutting the surface of the water like decorative shark fins, swim in wildly undisciplined schools known as “a mess of trout.”

Der Heilbutt

Der Spiked Sieg Heilbutt schwimms in disciplined grupen around Bremen in der Nordsee and are the most aggressive of horned halibut. Foreign fisherman call them “der awful Deutsche flatfish mit der floy floy.” Every twenty years or so they invade French fishing grounds in a flatfish blitz.

Dey are verdammt difficult to defeat but once caught they smecken gut mit Polish wurst und Franzosische fries.

Pointy Pouty Poisson

The fancy, Pointy Pouty Poisson, is the elite of pampered fish that were raised by French royalty during the baroque pesce period. A watery-eyed wuss in captivity, this fussy, finned fop with baroque antlers, became an aquatic menace after the great decorative fish escape during the French revolution.

Their antlers are magnificent but useless as the points all turn inward. They used the flat sides to slap bourgeois fish silly. The Pointy Pouty Poisson is served French fried with antlers on. D’accord?

Rocky Mountain Big Horn Bass

General Custer reported that the lakes in the Black Hills teemed with the progeny of big horn sheep and ewe loving bass. “Young ewes lazily lounging at the water’s edge were often overpowered by gangs of teenage bass intent on proving their basshood,” he said. “Many a cuddly young ewe lost her virtue to these mouth breathing villians.” Custer, was fascinated by the Black Hills Bighorn Bass because they are the only fish that bleats as it eats. His troops used the wooly bass skins for winter coats and the big horns to carry their pun powder.

Thanks for fishing with me…

leo

The Rhino Color Wheel is available for $1,000.
Prices for the fish are: Bassalope, Koi Gnu, are $1000
TJ Bull Bass, Elked Cod, Caribou Carp, are $1500
Rocky Mountain Big Horn Bass is reduced from $3200 to $2800 because of a nick on the corner of the frame. The size of this one is 39×23″.
All other fish available at $1200, except for Salmon Moose, which has been sold.

l still have work at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC, and a new show is being prepared for an October 5th opening.

The appearance of a thing, a thought, mental conception or image, an opinion or belief, a plan or scheme, meaning or significance. Thus spake Webster’s dictionary.

Idea Bulb

The cliché graphic symbol for idea is a light bulb suddenly turning on above a cartoon character’s head. I guess that’s as good as anything. I don’t have a better idea, do you?

I’m not a EUREKA guy. I don’t sit bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night and shout, “I’ve got it!” My wife would say, “What have you got and is it catching?” Ideas don’t pop into my head or turn on like a light. They grow from a smile to a titter, to a giggle, and eventually a belly laugh. An image, an event, a word, a sound; almost anything could be the stimulus for an idea.

Many years and dozens of paper sculptures can happen before I fully develop an idea, and even then, it may not be complete but I simply abandon it to work on other ideas. Frustration can be a great idea killer.

Idea Bulb Cage

Idea is a four-letter word much like an iceberg, with little bitty four letters sticking up above the ocean and an enormous number of words below it. Concept, group-think, word-play, clustered thinking, meditation, long walks, hot showers, thinking out of the box and brain-storming. We have to include “creativity,” an over-used label that demeans real creativity, because it’s so flagrantly used to describe things and activities barely above average and not usually unique, useful, or accepted.

Fantasy Fly

Take my paper flies as an example. They may be reasonably well designed because, after all, I am a grad-u-8 designer of stuff, and you might think them pretty but they are not creative by Mihaly Csikszentmialyi’s definition.

They are only an adaptation of a real idea, which was to make feathered copies of insects, on hooks, for catching fish to feed the family. A unique idea that is useful and accepted by the culture. That’s the basic definition of creativity. Please don’t accuse me of being creative. Clever maybe, damned clever, now and then, and a great thief. I steal from the best, but not creative.

Carousel Cat

Carousels are a super idea that has been realized superbly over many generations and the culture loves them. The original idea was definitely creative. My “cutesy-pie” adaptations are with cats from many cultures as the decorative animals on a fantasy carousel. Here is “Samurai Cat.”

This Samurai cat is so Japanese
His fancy kimono catches a breeze
Mount Fuji and tea
Rising sun on the sea
Haiku blossoms on cherry trees.

The work, and the ideas are in the design of the cats and writing the limericks that carry the story. A lot of fun for any designer, and I hope to finish this children’s book, but really, not a really, really, creative contribution to the culture, not really.

Cowboy Cat

This carousel cat sits in the saddle
Cowboy cat makes cattle skedaddle
With Stetson and spur
Roping cows with a purr
Listening for rattlesnakes rattle.

When you label someone as creative, it becomes a comparative term. That person has to wonder where you have put him or her in those many slices of the creativity baloney. “Where do I rate? Am I one of the ends, somewhere in the middle, way up at the top, and, by the way, how thick is my slice?”

Creative Quote

Often people ask me, “How long does it take to do a paper sculpture, and where do you get your ideas?” I’ve got to say something, so I answer, “one week for the small ones and two weeks for the large ones.” I have no idea how long they take because I am so scattered in my work habits and my studio is so messy, it’s like the inside of a goat. If I used Neil Boyle’s answer I would say, “So far, they’ve taken about fifty-five years to make.”

As for the idea question, they always seem to be there but I have no idea where they come from. As simple as they might be, I hope they keep on coming, but no EUREKAS.
They scare hell out of my wife.

Visiting me was a good idea…

leo

My work is still at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC. Click here if you are interested in my collage classes. New classes are being added.