Dr. Z’s Traveling Carnival Of Wonders

At well over 65 hours (not including research) this piece has the distinction of taking the most amount of time to complete. With pirates and tikis within my repertoire it was a logical progression and only a matter of time before I researched the sideshow carnivals of yore. 

I learned that there were four kinds of freaks. By the way, “freaks” was the term they themselves preferred. Being odd was their bread and butter, and some lived the lives of revered celebrities. Anyway, four kinds...you got your biological freaks. These are your giants, your dwarves, your conjoined twins, your lizard men, your lobster men. These folks were born this way and couldn’t do anything about it...other than try to profit from it. Many of these type are represented here, the tall man, the half-man, the conjoined Chinese twins (cleverly named Won and Tu) and the tiny man...easy to miss, right next to the giant in the oval vignette. His name is Dr. Z and, like many sideshows of the time, he ran she show, thereby making it seem less exploitative.

The next kind is self-made freaks. These are your trapeze artists, sword swallowers, magicians, fire eaters, tattooists, and some would argue the strong man and the fat lady. There is nothing inherently odd about them at birth, these were folks fascinated by the lore of the sideshow and acquired certain skills in order to be a part of it.

The next kind...and a rather un-PC variety, the exotic freak. These folks sold tickets and attracted crowds simply because they were anything but white. Often their “exoticness” was over-emphasized with props and costumes. Chances are, Papa Doc there in the upper corner wasn’t really a voodoo priest, but rather a day laborer done up in exotic get up. This is extremely exploitative by today’s standards, but a Congolese man named Ota Benga lived as a “missing link” exhibit in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in 1906.

The final kind of freak, and one I chose not to portray here was the “circus geek”. This was the original meaning of the word “geek” and it was the most depraved of them all. Generally they were winos or drug addicts who would do anything for their next fix, so they were put in cages and made to bite the heads off chickens, fight each other, or act in any other such depraved manner. They were acquired when the carnival came to town and left there when they departed. They were dispensable, considered the lowest of the low, and the other freaks did not interact socially with the circus geek.

Instead I portrayed the phenomenon that went hand-in-hand with the traveling sideshow, the Curio Shop. Generally these were fabricated hoaxes made to dupe rubes, the most famous of which was the Fiji Mermaid, a mummified monkey corpse grafted with a fish.

I created this piece as a celebration of a phenomenon gone by rather than for exploitative reasons. The “KT” on the side of the train represented Katy, the girl I was dating at the time, the one I moved to Mercer Island with, I liked to hide her name in my creations, but, as circumstances had it, by the time the painting was completed, I was no longer with her.

Measures 24" x 36" - SOLD