November-December 2017 Inside Northside Magazine

dried fish head on his workbench for the same reason.

Always looking for a new challenge, Kilgore’s latest self-education is in the art of Gyotaku fish printing. Gyotaku art, which dates back to the early 1800s in Japan, is created using an actual fish slathered with natural or artificial pigment and then pressed onto a sheet of rice paper. Kilgore explains, “Traditionally, Japanese fishermen wouldn’t keep a fish if it was over a certain size. They were superstitious about the big ones, so they released them. They wanted a way to record what they’d caught. Before photography, Gyotaku was a way to do that. The practice developed into this delicate and beautiful art form.” So far, Kilgore has printed a 3-foot red fish he bought at a Slidell fish market and a smaller blue gill caught by his daughter-in-law, adding touches like seaweed and a custom signature stamp in the traditional Gyotaku style.

“I’m learning Gyotaku by trial and error, like I’ve learned everything else,” says Kilgore. “At some point, I guess I need to stick to something.” After seven decades, that seems highly unlikely. In truth, he has only one fear: “My life is never going to be long enough for me to do all I have left to do.

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