Xenophora - Assemblage Artists of the Deep!

The Peninsula Museum of Art's fall exhibit will be "Obsessions: Selected Personal Collections", including the Zymoglyphic Museum's collection of molluscan collectors from the genus Xenophora. The museum is located in Belmont, CA, just south of San Mateo, and the show runs from Sept. 27 through December 3. A reception will be held at the museum on Saturday, Sept. 27, from 1 to 4 PM, and all are invited to attend.

Xenophora are marine snails that collect shells, stones, coral, and the occasional coin or glass shard. They attach these objects to their shells as they grow. A snail's shell grows by adding to the opening, and the snail attaches objects to this opening as it grows. Some snails consistently choose similar objects, resulting in neat radiating patterns; other collect a wild jumble of dissimilar objects.

A number of explanations have been advanced for the collecting behavior. Xenophora that live in shallower water, where there is enough light for them to be seen, probably use their collections for camouflage. Even in deeper waters the attachments may serve as a camouflage from predators that hunt by feel. Xenophora that live on muddy sea bottoms attach extensions to their shells to spread out the shell's surface area. This can help prevent the animal from sinking into the mud, and keep the shell's opening above the substrate. The additions may also strengthen the snail's relatively thin shell.

There is an unfortunate shortage of solid scholarly information on these animals. The only monograph in the field, Ponder's Xenophoridae of the World, is long out of print and difficult to find. This collection is thought by some museum visitors to be a hoax, displayed as it is alongside the museum's mermaid tank and its denizens being billed as "assemblage artists".

Museum Opens Doors to Public May 3rd and 4th!

The Zymoglyphic Museum will open its doors to the public as part of the annual Silicon Valley Open Studios event. You will have a rare opportunity to see first hand the famous miniature dioramas, the curiosity cabinets, the crab, Xenophora, and viewing stone collections; inhale the heady air of decay; peer into the mermaid tank; lounge in the warm shade of a maple tree in the museum's forecourt, sipping lemonade, sampling crunchy snacks, and discoursing on the meaning of it all with the museum's curator. Note that this will be a solo turn as Mrs. Curator is taking a break this year and will not be participating. The Cafe Ruste will be operating as usual; however, service is restricted by museum policy and local ordinance to persons or other sentient beings under 3 inches tall. For those less vertically challenged, the Museum Shop will have on hand tempting samples of the daring new spring fashions for 2008, as well as enduring and comforting classics.

The museum will be open from 11 AM to 5 PM both days. Directions here. Vehicularly challenged patrons, or anyone so inclined, may take the train to the Hillsdale station and trundle on up to the museum, a healthy 3/4 mile hike.

The Maker Faire, a sort of science fair for mad scientists, inventors, and tinkerers, will be held the same weekend a scant 1.5 miles away from the museum - see directions here.

You can read reports on previous years' events in 2007 and 2006.

Penjing - Chinese Landscapes in a Tray

Penjing are small dioramas that depict idyllic scenes in a tray using stones and living plants, carefully selected and arranged for the desired effect. The art form dates back at least 1300 years in China. Tree penjing was a style that showcased miniature trees, an art form familiar today as bonsai. Landscape penjing is another variety that creates three-dimensional versions of the idealized landscapes depicted in traditional Chinese painting. The stones used are selected for texture and form that represent in miniature a fantastic geology of caverns and dizzying vertical drops. Plants are added to make the arrangement come alive. The scenes are populated only by the occasional hut and the little boats that wend their way through the landscape.

An exhibit of ten landscape penjing is currently on view in the aquatic plant room of the Conservatory of Flowers, the big Victorian greenhouse in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They will be there until April 27, 2008. The photograph above is closeup of one of them and others can be seen at Flickr.

Tray landscapes were popular during the Zymoglyphic Era of Oriental Influence. The only one currently in the museum's collection shows more of an emphasis on whimsical, rather than idyllic, theme and the use of strange dried stuff in place of stones and living plants.

An excellent book on penjing is
Penjing: Worlds of Wonderment: A Journey Exploring an Ancient Chinese Art and Its History, Cultural Background, and Aesthetics. The associated Web site is here

The Conservatory show was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle

Previous Web log entries on oriental nature-based arts:
Chinese root carving
Ikebana - Japanese Flower Arranging

Spring Fashion at the Museum Shop

A gloomy, rainy, mid-winter weekend was brightened by the visit of a pair of charming visitors from Denmark. Lise Kroner (right) is a singer and musician whose work can be heard here. Astrid Sahl Andersen (left) is a storyteller and president of the newly formed "Zymoglyphic Museums danske fanklub". Astrid has an unusual collecting specialty - foster grandparents. The museum's curator and his wife have now been added to her collection.

Lise and Astrid graciously consented to model the museum shop's fashionable new spring line of mermaid-themed apparel, featuring the Zymoglyphic Mermaid. Shown here are the brand new women's black v-neck t-shirt and the familiar women's tank top with a fishy new design, perfect for today's up-to-date young women and those who would emulate them! The full session is captured at Flickr. You can view the full range of museum shop purchase options at Cafe Press.

Chinese Root Carving

The Zymoglyphic Museum's Department of Special Collections has recently acquired for its curiosity cabinet this fine example of a root carving, a folk art tradition that goes back at least 2,000 years in China. Root carving is one of a number of Chinese and Japanese arts based on creating art from nature, with the focus on the natural characteristics of the object. We have previously covered ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging natural objects, and viewing stones, or scholar's rocks, which are complex stones presented for contemplation.
In this root carving, the anonymous artist has created an image not of a specific animal, but a dynamic creature of the imagination, full of life force, complete with hints of bones, sinews, musculature, and body cavities, all done through simple but effective highlighting of the natural features of the selected object.
A related folk art form is the carving of bamboo root, whose whiskery texture lends itself well to making intriguing masks. The museum has recently acquired an example of one of these masks, made by a member of the Tamang tribe of Nepal.

The Rainbow Jewel from Another Planet

The object shown above is the Zymoglyphic Museum's acquisition number 1. According to legend, this mysterious object came to the Zymoglyphic region from another planet, carrying within it the seed of the museum.



My boyhood museum, was, like most modern museums, primarily dedicated to a fairly literal, scientific view of the world. I wanted to identify things accurately and categorize them correctly. However, this particular object is one of a couple of items in that original museum that were relics of an earlier, more fanciful, era. inspired by Superman's museum in his Fortress of Solitude. His museum included an alien zoo, souvenirs of his exploits and his trips to exotic places, and, most interesting to me, an entire city in a bottle, which may have been the inspiration for the creation of the Zymoglyphic dioramas many years later. Normally a very private space, Superman's museum was, like the Zymoglyphic Museum, open to visitors on occasion. In this story from Action Comics #261 (July, 1958), he brings the entire fortress to Metropolis so people can tour it.





One item that I had in my original museum was a bar of some kind of metal that was much softer than it looked. I bent it into an "S" shape and pretended that it was something that Superman himself might have created and displayed as a museum exhibit. The other was this small, multicolored chunk of melted material that I imagined was some sort of mysterious extraterrestrial artifact, possibly related to the "rainbow jewel from another planet" in Superman's museum. The "S" bar is long lost, but the rainbow jewel has survived through the years and is now on view in the Zymoglyphic Museum atop its own little pedestal, framed in the style of a viewing stone, .

Open Studios Report

The curator's web log is finally being resuscitated after withering in a prolonged summer drought. The open studios event for 2007 provided an idyllic interlude for visitors to sample both the museum and the books and metalwork of Judith Hoffman. Photographs of the festivities have been posted to the museum's Flickr account, providing long-awaited proof that the museum does truly exist as a physical entity and not just as a Web site. In fact, the museum is now visible from space, or at least somewhere in that general direction, as shown above (with commentary by Zippy the Pinhead).

The museum's landscaping program was completed in time for the event. The ecological landscape design uses recycled materials and provides a lively counterpoint to the otherwise bland exterior of the museum. A skilled team of spiders maintains the zymoglyphic nature of the landscaping by connecting various parts with webs and capturing random debris in them.

The museum shop reported a 100% increase in its customer base during the event. This singular feat was accomplished by selling a mug to museum colleague and noted L.A. art critic Peter Frank. In the ensuing confusion, museum management failed to obtain from Mr. Frank any sort of trenchant aesthetic analysis of the mug's postmodern, self-referential qualities, perhaps even addressing whether the mug is itself a work of art, and the act of buying one an act of performance art.

The opening also inaugurated the museum's Cafe Ruste, a small shop designed to accommodate customers who are less than three inches tall.

Museum to be Open to the Public May 19th and 20th!

The Zymoglyphic Museum will have its annual weekend of being open to the public on May 19th and 20th as part of Silicon Valley Open Studios! This is a rare chance to see the exhibits in person. Especially recommended are the dioramas, which are difficult to present adequately in photographs.

Previous visitors will be pleased to note that there have been a number of new acquisitions in the last year, including a new diorama and the copper scrolls. If you haven't attended this event in a while, you can see the full list of what's new here.

Also on site will be the delectable metalwork and artist's books of Judith Hoffman

You may wish to make your visit part of a more comprehensive tour of the Peninsula's Open Studios. Tour maps will be available at the museum.

That modern celebration of mechanical wonders known as the Maker Faire is the same weekend and visitors in town for it should note that the Zymoglyphic Museum is located less than 20 short blocks to the south. If you are visiting the Faire, be sure to make the museum a part of your day!

Directions here

New Diorama: Dream House

The Zymoglyphic Museum has just added a new diorama in an unusual style. Zymoglyphic dioramas are most frequently constructed in fish tanks or vitrines; this one uses an old display case to show a modern couple connecting to their "roots" in a most literal sense. For another view of domesticity in a diorama, see The Quiet Parlor of the Fishes

Museum Shop Financial Report and Price Cut

Our accountants have finally gotten around to tabulating and analyzing the vast lack of sales in the museum shop for fiscal year 2006. Since we cannot use any positive integers to describe the sales figures, we are looking into the feasibility of utilizing transcendental or imaginary numbers instead. Our statisticians remain stymied by the necessity of having to divide by zero.

Our marketing department recently convened a focus group consisting of the shop's entire customer base to review our offerings. In accordance with the group's findings, we have added a number of fine items to our once meager product line, including a mousepad and bumper stickers. As always, rebellious young ladies (and their suitors) should take particular note of our "thong" undergarments featuring the controversial and possibly inappropriate "flying dead mouse" design.

Our outside marketing consultant, Harry "The Axe" Warbler, suggested that we "cut prices down to the jugular vein!!" and proclaim "we've lost our heads!!!." His proposed accompanying visuals, while undeniably edgy and eye-catching, were rejected by the good taste committee as unnecessarily graphic. However, we are pleased to announce that prices have indeed been reduced and are now so low we would need to consider cash incentives to convince potential customers to avail themselves of our merchandise. Harry suggests, possibly sarcastically, that perhaps our slogan should be "Please be sure to take advantage of the situation before our peripatetic cephalic appendages are located and properly reattached."