"Back in 1996 as Phish was finishing the recording of their 6th studio album "Billy Breaths" they approached me to see how I might interpret a particular fish eyed lens selfie taken by a certain bass player on a computer camera in the recording studio. On its own, Mike's nose is a majestic thing of beauty... a veritable wonderland of luxurious real estate. In the context of a 1996 fish eyed computer lens it suddenly took on other worldly dimensions. At the time I was doing my own odd take on 20th Century Cubism, so the band sort of half expected to see a Picasso-Braque Cubist interpretation of this image. For this piece though I decided to return to my Surrealist roots and I penciled a preliminary drawing that had the feel of an alien sea creature. A crustacean multi-beast washing ashore. I spent the next two weeks reinterpreting the image into a large colorful oil painting. I drove up to the Bearsville studio on the final day of mixing and stepped out of the car to see the band gathering around in the driveway to see the piece. Their expressions suddenly mirrored the painting itself. I remember Jon Fishman saying "Man that nose is really heavy metal!...". I met the producer Steve Lillywhite who gave me a demo in how to use an Etherwave-Theremin. I played ping pong on the upper deck of this amazing barn turned recording studio with Trey, the resident table tennis shark of Bearsville. Later on we all relaxed and listened to the final mix of Billy Breathes on a seriously amazing sound system.
Needless to say it was a memorable day for me. So...return to present day, and see me up on a ladder digging through a crawl space and opening boxes to find several old drawings including this sketch from 1996. Only the "Nose Knows", how the Schnoz of Destiny wound up in that dusty old box. It's a miracle anything survived those days, especially me. So its my pleasure to release a limited edition print of this fortuitous find." -- DW
