Mindy Fisher: Ornaglyphist for Hire

A Short Explaination

An Ornaglyph is a single comic panel that can serve as an individual piece of art....or it may be grouped together with other Ornaglyphs to create an original comic strip. The hieroglyphic non-language allows the looker to use their imagination to come up with a meaning of their own.

How to Get Your Hands on Some Ornaglyphs

There are several ways that you can purchase an Ornaglyph (or four). First of all you can go to mintimindi.etsy.com and simply purchase one using paypal. Then you may also check my itinerary link to find out where I will be showing my work and you can buy directly from a gallery. Last, but not least, you can contact me directly. Some of the paintings are not available at this moment because they are off in a show...but not all of them will sell and maybe the one you like will be available at a further date. Or you can contact me about doing a custom painting or digital drawing.

The History of Ornaglyphs

Ornaglyphs are not something new to me even though I have only been making them since February of 2007. In 1997 I created a mini-comic called Mwaguzi. Mwaguzi is a swahili word that means interpretation. Within the comic book I had created a story without words and used made up symbols that resembled hieroglyphs. I encouraged my audience to write me to tell me what the characters were saying in the story and to give me ideas for future issues. I never got past issue number one.

A few years went by and I went to college and didn't work on any other comic books until after I had graduated. The summer after I graduated I started working on a comic, with my partner, called Undeciluna. Most of the story used typical English dialogue except for a story that ran along in it that used my past Mwaguzi style non-language. It was a story about an alien girl that dreamed about birds, which came alive to kidnap humans. The second chapter I had named Ornaglyphs, which was a word I had made up out of two different languages: Latin and Greek (Undeciluna is Latin and Italian). I had actually made up this word to make fun of my publisher who I thought made up words all the time...but that's another story. I got to issue two of Undeciluna but have had writers block ever since.

Fast forward to February of 2007. My boyfriend had been playing around with Second Life, which is a 3D platform, kind of like a video game with no point. Some of the users create the content, while others use it as a second life. He suggested that I try selling my art on there and he suggested that I do art that was Mwaguzi style. I whipped up about 10 stream of conscience drawings in The Gimp and uploaded them and rented out a tiny space for the equivalent of fifty cents a week. I held an event so that people could talk to me about what I was doing with the art. It didn't take long for me to make back all the money I had spent on uploading and the rental space plus enough to keep my gallery up for a couple more weeks. I worked my way up to being able to run a nice sized gallery with hardly any investment. I constantly made new drawings and raised prices on older drawings to encourage people to buy them when they were cheap.

A couple months ago I started making non-digital paintings in the same style. After the great response that I got in Second Life I felt encouraged to promote my tangible art (for prices that will translate into putting real food in my belly)! I think that for my work SL is a very relevant place to show it because it is populated with people from all over the world, many of whom do not speak English.

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