just about the halibut

Fish Statement

Relationships are real to us. We have friends, lovers, and family.

We change. Things fall apart. New things grow and form. Through it all, what connects us all is connections themselves. And these connections define us. My art revels in the unexpected connections between things.

Mondegreens, puns, mishearings, coincidences and eggcorns are my well of water. I love boots in puddles, rain in wells, wet dreams, and wet shoes on new paths.

Bio

Billy Halibut is known to some as moxanot, the French as Abubussto, the English as Billy Baguette, and to his students as Mr. Eel. Billy has been writing poetry and illustrating since he was five. Billy began to publish a blog as moxanot when he was in middle school. Now he calls it a newsletter, Call Me Fishmael.

Billy cares about Truth, Loyalty and Integrity, and Curiosity. He seeps into puddles. He lives for the reality created when someone believes.

Billy fills notebooks with words and images. In as many places as possible, Billy brings a notebook and an array of pens.

Billy likes the world. He feasts his ears: rain on tin, a crooked water district building’s courtyard meadow, an orange cat basking in the sun atop a pedestal.

When Billy was 5, he met DXH drummer XAQ Halzel, with whom he improvised action figure plays and drew original characters, from the menacing to the hilarious.

At 11, he met Walter Carefare, who became his artistic partner. From glue gun sculptures to conceptual art. One of Billy’s collaborative pursuits with Wendall Carefree was New Frontiers: The Oceans Within Us, a neo-museum exhibit that leads visitors through their own climate change fears. But they didn’t do that one until they were like 22, so this is not chronological, but the editing function of his website hosts sucks, so he is leaving it here.

When Billy was 19 he became the PR director and emcee for a music venue called Ground Zero (predating 2001, note, not a reference to 9/11—all referred to the club as ‘GZ’). Billy got tired of always going on and on about his accomplishments because they were just for fun. Don’t get the idea that he got good at any of these things. He just liked doing them, so let’s continue this biography! Billy wrote poems about each Open Mic contestant. Billy built his love there for performance, and for audiences. He met game designers at GZ like the Arcane Kids, musicians like Chris Dudek aka Magick Creature, and Ben Esposito, and others like Kevin Lee aka Fred Davis and Garrett Smelcer aka [[]]. After college ended, Billy met the artists Doug Van Nort, Pauline Oliveros, IONE, Heloise Gold. He pursued and received a certificate in Deep Listening. During that certificate program, he met and formed a dream pod with Noam Lemish, Jane Rigler, and Bjorn Erikkson. He misses that program, it was lovely for him to find out how to listen to his instincts.

When Billy was 22, he met Thierry Taule. Thierry was an older artist, a painter, making color field paintings and hilarious Rated X illustrations. Theirry made his stuff from the emotions of the moment, and the desire to create something beautiful, to take in the smells of paint, and to do it as a tribute to the simple beauty of the world, and also the beauty of its degredations. He got his early inspiration from Helen Frankenthaler, and loves to talk about anything funny or art-related.

At 22, Billy joined The Yes Men in New York City, working with Igor Vamos and Jacques Servin on their film The Yes Men Are Revolting. He met artists Mary Notari, Keil Troisi, the user Crux, and worked in Laura Poitras’s office, and at the offices of the NYU Hemispheric Institute (thank you so much for all the free food, and the nickname ‘Grey Poupon’). Ah shit, Billy’s biography is turning into Name-Drop Soup. Yuck. I will have to go back and fix this…when I have the energy for it.

At 24, Billy left New York for rural Maine, to help family take care of his Mormor (‘mother’s mother’ in Swedish). Billy started the business Compututor to teach people to use computers for what they want to do. In rural Maine he has worked for the curator Cordula Mathias, owner of Mathias Fine Art, the home of painter Brenda Bettinson, took singing classes from the vocalist/composer/writer/priestess Andrea Goodman, and worked for activist and scholar/writer/activist Shoshana Zuboff.

Billy’s Mormor was a teacher of Rug Hooking, Color-planning, and Wool Dyeing. Mormor Ebba taught Billy the basics. Billy took part in her world by waking up late and stumbling into her hooking circle with a coffee and an original design. Most rugs are designed by someone other than the hooker. Some members of the hooking circle included an FDR descendant, a nurse, a housewife, and a former D.C. lobbyist or some such. Fascinating company!

At 26, Billy moved to Portland, Maine to start working in behavioral health for Pathways and NAMI Maine to be a emotional laborer for kids and their families. He later began working in Poetland Public Schools as a tutor, then an ed tech, and then earned a teaching certificate in a 2-year education program. Billy spent a lot of time writing and drawing, and writing down ‘Role Modeling’ in the clinical notes. Working with kids is a lesson in beets, limes, and life.

At 34, Billy left public schools and teaching. Billy joined two makerspaces, Open Bench Project, then Factory 3. Billy started to make art daily and share it. In Poetland, he began to spend time with artists like Daniel Freedman, Grace K., Josie Colt, Coco P., Jeannette B. & Ricky Lorenzo, William Hessian, and Abbeth Russell.

Billy plays the drums in a band called Puddle Kid. This is his first band. He is learning the drums.

Billy at 35 took a new role as Professor Zuboff’s part-time executive assistant. At 36, he moved on from that role.

One of Billy’s current interests is in making games. Tangents is a card game that crosses the ancient game of Go with a classic game of Dominoes in a tribute to a lost childhood friend. Leaks is a social game where players quest as jokes to find meaning in a world of leaks that link cartoons with dreams and political reality with magical realism. The aim of Leaks is to have fun, but its secret edutainment goals are group building by learning others’ sense of humor, and working together to make people laugh.

Billy writes the subscription newsletter Call Me Fishmael in which he regularly draws and writes, sells prints and improvised drawings and poetry at markets and on the street, sells subscriptionz to handmade postcard art (since 2014), directed a puppet show at Poetland’s Mayo Street Arts, writes and performs in sketch comedy group Hey Party People!, does improv with the Poetland Improv Incubator, takes improv classes and is joining a team facilitated by MIST, and is learning the guitar. He is developing a choose-your-own-adventure game based on Leaks with the artist Kevin Lee.

Billy is spritely, Billy is strong, Billy is spinely, Billy is song.