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The Phish Universe is a rabbit hole of inside jokes and self-referential art, but none speaks to me quite like the dount pattern from Jonathan Fishman’s iconic mumu. It resonates as pure Phish for me—encapsulating the irreverent fun that nothing quite like a drummer in a mumu, playing the vacuum can. It’s innocuous enough to wear to work— to those not in the know it’s just a funky polka dot—but Phans will automatically recognize it & comment.
My love for the mumu and its donuts began in 2012, when as a newlywed my husband asked me to make him a Fishman mumu for Halloween. We hand cut all the pink donuts out of felt and hot glued them to a blue linen mumu I had made. To up the silliness we decided to make it a couple’s costume of Fishman and a Fish Man. Not many folx got the double inside joke but we had a blast.
The pattern has populated our lives ever since on pint glasses, socks, robes, and covid masks. And the original mumu makes a reprise every few years for Halloween. This past holiday season, while shopping for my hubby I realized that we’ve basically run the gamut of donut merch and have run out of new and interesting ways to keep the donuts in our lives. So, I decided to start painting them. I’d already been painting a Jammin’ series of Phish music visualizations and this seemed like a great new direction to take alongside that work.
The Psychedelic Donuts are mixed-media abstract paintings created while listening to a specific live Phish Jam (listed in each painting description). They visualize the flow-state that the jams put me into and reference both the music and the visceral experience of being bathed in Chris Kuroda’s stunning show lighting. I envision the lights and the music as emanating from the donuts themselves.
While the Psychedelic Donut Series comes intimately out of Phish’s music the paintings speak to a wider audience as pieces of abstract fine art that can resonate with any viewer through pattern and color. This work doesn’t just belong with your show memorabilia, so go ahead and make that Donut a large centerpiece in your living room, it has something for everyone—friends and phamily!
