Found Art

The idea was to go to the Coronado library, check my e-mail, and spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon not doing much of anything at all. I had been in San Diego, on the island of Coronado, for only a couple of weeks when I first discovered the island-town's library. It was what all libraries should be. It was the proto-library, the Ur-library, Plato's Ideal Library (okay, Plato didn't specify libraries when he was talking about his idea of the "ideal," but it meets the philosophical essence of the notion). There were spacious halls lined with books, secluded nooks situated with chairs and tables, a sunny patio with wireless internet (motto: Providing a Place to Sell Sunlight Since the Mid-Nineties) -- it was a place that was warm and cozy in the winter; bright, open, and cheerful in the summer.

Unfortunately, it wasn't open yet.

On the other side of four lanes of Coronadan traffic (motto: Don't Sue Me, I'm a Lawyer, Too) from the library was a park. Lined with palm trees and old cedars but with plenty of grassy swatches open to the sun, it seemed a likely place to sit and read my book while waiting for the library to open.

I Froggered* my way across the road, dodging the occasional wild Mercedes, Lexus, or Ferrari driver (motto: My Other Car is a Mercedes, Lexus, or Ferrari, Too). But when I made it to the safety of the park, panting, I saw the art and put aside for a while my notion of reading a book. There were glazed ceramics, splashy watercolors, moody photographs, those weird wind-driven wooden chickens -- the ones people put up on stakes in their front yards and whose legs or other body parts spin around crazily anytime there's a breeze but that don't serve any real purpose other than to scare off any mental health professionals who might otherwise be inclined to stop in for a chat and some biscuits -- and enough reproductions of the city's famous Hotel Del Coronado, in enough different media, to fill up an art gallery all on their own.

Apparently, every other Sunday local artists gather in the park to chat with one another, display their craft, and maybe even sell a piece or two. I wandered, window shopping and pretending that I could tell the difference between an "oil on canvas" and a rutabaga, until I came upon an unusual collection of…well, for want of a better term: fish art.

Not art done by fish, although that wouldn't have surprised me. Given the amount of money flowing through Coronado it seemed likely that somebody had shelled out enough cash to genetically engineer a trout that could paint at least as well as Picasso. If not better. But no, this was the Japanese art of Gyotaku, or fish printing, as practiced by a not-so-Japanese local artist named Don Hubbard.

I now quote from the flyer that one gets if one stands too close to the exhibit (say, ten feet):

"To 'print' a fish you must first rid it of mucus by washing with vinegar or detergent [eds. note: probably not something you should do right after breakfast]. Carefully dry the surface, and also inside the mouth and under gills and fins. You then apply paint or ink to the fish, but avoid putting paint on the eye or eye socket. Once the paint has been applied, rice paper or fabric is rubbed or pressed on to make the impression." Then there's something about hand-painting the eye, since you hadn't used any paint or ink on there earlier (as per the instructions). Then there's something about price, but that's where I stopped reading.

The resulting prints, though, were quite interesting. I would have liked one or two for my kitchen walls, but since I'd stopped reading the bits about price because said prices started somewhere in the low 100s, I bought a shellfish cookbook the artist had written, instead.

Still, I decided that maybe I'd go out and do some fishing. And if the trout I caught couldn't paint at least as well as Picasso (if not better), then I might try out some Gyotaku for myself. If that didn't work out, well, at least I had the cookbook.