Halloween 2024: The Zymoglyphic Museum

Written by Jonathan Wojcik




What's the Zymoglyphic museum, you ask!? It's a homemade art gallery in Portland, Oregon built entirely by one man, Jim Stewart, in his own two-story garage and workshop. While always free, it's open just half a day, two Sundays per month, and it took an entire eight eight years for us to finally, finally visit...


The displays are constructed from everything imaginable; bones, horns, seashells, driftwood, dried plants, fungi, taxidermied animals, scrap metal, antique toys and more, cobbled together into charmingly surreal scenes and objects intended to represent "artifacts" and "history" from the culture and ecology of a fictional Zymoglyphic region, each piece intentionally just inexplicable enough to raise endless unanswerable questions about just what, exactly, the Zymoglyphic Region could possibly ever be, who lives there, what lives there, and what any of their customs may mean, though some insight is offered by an official book, The Zymoglyphic Anthology, which you can purchase on your way out.

In the true spirit of the museum, I'm actually not going to explain my favorite exhibits or offer my opinions on them. Instead, I'm going to simply describe what you're seeing, for those who need written description, and accompany each photo with a single paragraph from the book's introduction, "THE ZYMOGLYPHIC WAY: A MANIFESTO."


"Rust Age Figures"

Description: several corroded objects in a glass case. The central figure has a boxy body, mittenlike feet and a single "arm" that holes a gnarled staff, covered in real barnacles. The figure's head is a large metal disk, like a washer, with a cowrie shell lodged in a central hole, resembling a pair of lips. The entire figure, save for the staff and the cowrie, is heavily rusted and flaky.
"We of the Zymoglyphic region stand in awe of the vastness of the cosmos, the miracle of molecules coming to life, the strangeness of life's evolutionary byways, and the peculiarities of the quantum structure on which it all rests, all described in mathematical and taxonomic detail to us by our astronomers, our biologists, and our physicists."



Description: a desiccated, small dead bird, its head bare bone. It rides in a bird's nest that's been fashioned into a "car," with coiled brass wires for wheels.

"Even so, we feel dissatisfied with the limitations inherent in the immutable laws of physics and we look to our artists and storytellers to imagine further an enchanted universe populated with chimeras and mythical beings, the flora and fauna of the jungles, deserts and swamps of our internal continents."



"Sea Spirit"

Description: a flat, irregular chunk of bleached white coral, standing upright on a lump of dried fungal material or possibly a chunk of a large pinecone. The coral has two small lumps near the top, each with a pit painted inky black like a pair o eyes.

"Our principles are not always clear - we have desires for both simplicity and complexity, for lean design and for worlds within worlds, for adventure and domesticity. We value ancient artifacts an fragile ephemera."



Mysterious Being

Description: a piece of a dried root system from a dead plant. It has a warty knob at the top, erupting with a tangles mass of thin tendrils that continue down a central stalk, before the bottom flares into a cluster of broad, flat, antler-like roots. Two yellow, plastic doll eyes have been glued to the upper knob, giving the whole thing the appearance of an alien creature's dried remains.

"We accept that decay is inevitable and we find poetry in it. We believe that the best we can do is slow down the decomposition and examine the process. We counteract entropy with our own acts of creation. Our Museum contains the mortal remains of many beings in a state of arrested decay. Dust and grime bedeck the exhibits and spiders are encouraged to add their embellishments. We accept that the great museum itself will one day be a picturesque ruin, in columns askew, its engines rusted, its halls run to weeds and vines, its exhibits scattered, crushed, and forgotten."



"Illumination Seekers"

Description: two bug-like or reptile-like figures formed from rusty metal pieces, the one on the left possessing rusted clamps like a pair of "pincers." Each has a head made from animal bone; the left uses a chunk of a fish's skull or sternum, and the right uses what may be another fish skull, both with catlike plastic eyes attached.

"Some of us are collectors; we collect the marginalia of the world. We find miniature worlds in hidden places and try to bring them home. We see art in gnarled roots, agate slices, and rusty metal. We are fascinated by the things in the world that straddle the boundaries: hybrids and chimeras, the artist who is a scientist, the taxidermied corpse that seems to be alive."



"Cosmic Receiver"

Description: a large rusty looking "radar dish" assembled from miscellaneous junk, attached to a chunk of driftwood. There are many thin, wiggly, wavy copper wires and springs coming off the wood, a small mushroom and a rusty gear evoking a dial. Next to this dial is a "creature" made from various components. Its body is a dark, fuzzy mass of wood with many open holes and a scattering of yellow doll eyes, making it resemble a black amoeba-like mass with multiple gasping mouths. A dried spinal column rises from it, topped with a dark, broken sphere - a plant gall. A small sign reads "Apparently, there was some shocking news."

"We are also creators. Our goal is to illuminate the correspondences betwen the wonders of the physical world and the phantasms and spirits of our psyches. Our creations are spontaneous, adventurous, wondrous, and wildly inconsistent yet strangely coherent."



Description: a diorama of a "drive in movie," with a number of grimy toy cars, nude plastic mermaids, and rubbery, tentacled monsters (vintage "Ugly Stickers" jiggler toys!) all watching a screen that displays looping imagery. In my photo, it displays nothing but a tiny, dead seahorse in the center of a white circle.

"We submit our collections, our simple creations, and our artifacts, as offerings to our great Museum in the hope that the Museum will find proper places for them in the grand cosmography of its august halls, its exhibits, and its research facilities. We turn to the dusty microcosm of our great Museum to help us with understanding and connection. Like the world, our Museum has its hidden rooms and forgotten corners, and little museums within it."



"Curiosity"

Description: a glass fish tank contains an elaborate scene built from soil, bark, plant roots, driftwood and lichen. Several rubber creatures with googly eyes and aardvark-like noses (these are vintage toys called "Slurfies!") crowd around a cat's skull retrieved from the woods. All around them are multicolored wires. This included an official description that reads "Nosy plastic creatures investigate the remains of a cat. Underground wiring has gone native."

"There is poetry in decay and an authenticity in layers of weathering that cannot be duplicated by a deliberate hand."



"Discovery"

Description: another aquarium scene in the forest. This time, there are two small plastic monsters (I don't actually recognize what these are, but they have clam-like heads and short eyestalks, a little like the Ultraman monster Kanegon) standing around dollhouse furniture in a clearing. An eyeball on the end of a snaking tree root is staring at them. This one's official description says "Two little creatures doing research in the forest find that the forest is observing them."

"here is meaning in a spontaneous sketch, in a quick assemblage of detritus and gnarled sticks found on the same day or found years apart, as if meeting at long last."



"Deception"

DescriptionL an aquarium scene that includes dried, dead seaweed, a dead sea star, shark's jaws, plastic sea creatures, and a pair of dirty sunglasses perched atop an oyster shell, with a long, pale stone sticking out of the shell like a "tongue." Its official description says "Sea creatures sometimes use creative deception and mimicry to lure prey."

"There is a discovery to be had in creating without knowing what the final product will be or why it even exists at all."



"Arrival"

Description: this diorama has many wispy, lacey dried seed pods. A complete songbird skeleton perches on a branch, overlooking the scene. A hatched, empty bird's egg sits in an old nest, and a grimy plastic angel is positioned behind it. An official description for this one says "a plastic angel and a dead bird greet an intriguing but invisible new arrival."

"We embrace the amateurs, the outsiders, the impatient ones, those who create just to create, with no regard for commercial viability or success."


"Mermaid"

Description: a large, dried stingray cut into a traditional "Jenny Haniver," a false "sea monster."

"We abjure polish and shine and will merely tolerate meticulous craftsmanship; we value dust on our objects and take spiderwebs as compliments."


"Albatross Moth"

Description: a framed contribution from guest artist Danielle Schlunegger-Warner, a white moth with a furry body and huge wings. The wings are patterned with wavy strings of text taken from "Moby Dick."

"We are unbowed in our roles as Jacks and Jills of al media, masters of none. We prefer variety to specialization or consistency, understanding that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts."



"Seer"

Description: several abstract figures stand together in a wooden box. I zoom in on the "seer;" another mass of roots. It stands atop several long, thin roots with a small, dense knot at the top like a "body." A single, very tiny plastic eyeball has been attached to this central knot on the end of a short wire.

"The value of a created object comes from its meaning, its creativity, and its ability to inspire creativity in others; not its craft, its precision, its cleanliness, its scarcity, nor the fame of its maker."



Description: the dried test (central body) of a sea urchin, but with all the limbs of a dead crab attached.

"As with the evolution of life from the primordial ooze, let complexity arise out of simplicity by its own accord; begin with nature; collaborate with nature; let nature do the detail work."



Description: the upturned pelvis of a large animal, probably a moose, because it "stands" on a pair of moose antlers attached to it like bird's wings. A brass metal spiral is placed in each socket of the pelvis, like eyes. Atop the pelvis is a tangle of black roots supporting a second, smaller animal pelvis, which also has eyes added to it. The base of this display is a table covered in dried lichens and fungi.

"Collect and arrange, plunge in and create; if your collected objects have personalities, arrange them into mysterious narratives; explicate the narrative later if at all; step back in space or in time, observe what you have made, and tell stories about what you have made."



Description: a view of the museum's interior. Two aquarium scenes below a window, with smaller dioramas and objects between them. The dried body of a small sawshark hangs from the ceiling in front of a sign that says "AGE OF WONDER."

"Be unconcerned that what you make has been made before; likewise be unconcerned that it may be made again by others; it is your own uniqueness that is the essence that cannot be duplicated. As Qoheleth said millenia ago, "There is nothing new under the sun." If it is meaningful to you, it has value; if it inspires others, it has value."


By now, you hopefully agree that this little museum is really special, and so is its "manifesto," which isn't just a piece of "in universe" writing, nor is it just the artist's own philosophy; it's more about everybody, and everything that piques everybody's interest or curiosity, no matter what anybody else might think :)

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