April Mei Pink

About the Artist

In 1989 my 7th grade class took a trip to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It was already one of favorite places to visit and I got right to work. I used two rolls of film to photograph almost every specimen display. My mom had them printed out at the drug store so that I could tape them all around my desk. They accompanied the xerox copies of zoological and botanical illustrations from our old encyclopedias. Fantomeka are the common and uncanny animals that we study, mythologize, and inhabit. They are the animals we spoke to as children, and the animals we eat. Cocooned here amid the flora and fluid of a childlike dream.