True fiction

He’s been busy. Visitors to local art galleries have marvelled at his detailed fantastical paintings and sketches. Four years ago Duncan Weller earned a Governor General’s Award for the illustrations in his children’s book The Boy From The Sun.

Now this multi-dimensional local artist has his own destination in the sun on the other side of the planet. Having recently been awarded a Chalmer’s Fellowship art grant, next March Weller will travel to Ghana, Togo,and Benin West Africa to research the slave trade and trickster lore ahead of some more literature he’s planning to write.

In the here and now, Weller’s first book of stories for adults has just been published. Eight years in the making, Rocket Fish is actually nine short stories, two novellas and a fable. The author said much of that time was spent on editing and re-editing, to ensure the best crafting of words on every page. His range is formidable: anything from 4,000 to 24,000 words; and an intriguing mix of fiction and true stories from the artist’s own life experiences. 

Take Case 5232.

“I was in Vancouver. A gallery owner on Grenville Street stole the artists’ works, shut down his gallery and took everyone’s works. The police couldn’t do anything about it. So I managed to get together with some of the other artists in the show; we accosted him on the street, called the police, and performed a citizen’s arrest.

"The gallery owner had to admit he had our works and say he’d be returning them; otherwise we would have had a very good and solid legal case against him. What that story is really about is the whole con-art trade in Vancouver; it’s quite extensive. No, the police aren’t really interested in art crimes. In all of North America, I think there are only 13 FBI investigators doing that kind of work in the US. Canada doesn’t have any art-crime investigative units.”

A few of the stories are infused with Weller’s style of humour: For example, how a stand-up comic attempts to deal with certain personal prejudices, such as “nervousness around gay people, and so he decides to kiss a man in the audience as a means of overcoming that. I tried to write a really funny scene around that.”

Next Friday evening, Dec.9, is a great opportunity for readers to pick up an autographed hard copy of Rocket Fish as well as encounter Weller’s large bright visual art in a makeshift gallery in Folino’s on Algoma. Weller’s art will be up there throughout the month of December; people can also meet him there as he works on some new paintings right in the local landmark-superette.

Meantime, drop by Folino’s anytime after 7 p.m. for a copy of Rocket Fish. Or go online to Amazon for the e-book version of Weller’s latest creative craft.