Around the same time, a Troll friend and fellow artist, Juneau-based William Spear, had begun selling enamel pins of his paintings. He suggested that the two collaborate, with Troll providing a piece that could be sold as wearable art to tourists traveling through Southeast Alaska.
Digging through his work, Troll returned to his salmon drawing, changed the caption to “Spawn Till You Die,” tweaked the image and offered it to Spear. “I did a very reduced version of it for the pin,” he recalled. “But the pen and ink drawing, I made it into a T-shirt. And the rest is kind of history.”
Troll’s T-shirts quickly became popular farther down the coast in Seattle, where musicians in that city’s then-nascent grunge scene started wearing them onstage. From there the shirts and the drawing spread across the country and Troll was on his way to international renown. “If there’s one thing I might be known for when I’m dead and gone,” he said, “it would be that image.”
More than three decades later, that drawing, wildly popular in Alaska, has provided both the title and cover art for a career retrospective recently published by Clover Press. “Spawn Till You Die: The Fin Art of Ray Troll” contains more than 200 examples of his now iconic drawings and paintings, which blend scientifically accurate depictions of living and extinct animals with surreal scenery, pop culture references, psychedelic colors, zany humor and endless puns. “You’re looking inside my brain when you go through this book,” he said.
by David James, Anchorage Daily News | Read more:
Images: Ray Troll
[ed. An Alaskan institution.]
