The label below will be present in the exhibition alongside this piece. It is provided here so that fans submitting fanworks know in advance how fandom will be discussed in this project. However, fanworks do not need to take into account the below information and should be inspired by or responding to the piece of art alone: 

Tim Ebner 
American, b. 1953 
Untitled (Wolf, Alligator and Fish), 1997 
Oil on canvas 
48 x 42 in 
2000.10.7 
Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton 
 

Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1953, Tim Ebner currently lives and works in Los Angeles. When Ebner created Untitled (Wolf, Alligator and Fish), the animal images were a departure from the abstract minimalist work he was known for. His rich application of paint draws focus to the process of painting, making the subjects of the piece secondary, and drawing out “the tension between the formal elements in a painting and the strange possibilities.” Inspired by children’s books, gardening manuals, and religious imagery, Ebner’s animal subjects are strangely humanized, endowed with human hands and clothing, as well as eyes that reveal a depth of feelings. By placing together characters that would normally exist as hunter and hunted, Ebner contrasts comradery and dread, epic and fanciful, and creates open-ended questions about humanity and spirituality, or lack thereof. 

New Texts 

Fans are inspired to create a wide variety of new texts, such as blogs and podcasts, fanfiction, fan art, cosplay (dressing up as a character from a fandom), music, and fan videos, edits, and compilations. Fans create these new texts in order to insert themselves into the world of their fandom, to expand its scope and, and to display their mastery of fannish knowledge. New texts are often where fans show off and explore their own alternate readings of their fandoms.