I take my hat off to Mark Bessire. Ever since I curated Of Monsters and Miracles at the Croydon Clocktower in 1995, I’ve been trying to find a museum or gallery with the will (and budget) to do a follow-up exhibition of fortean art.

Mark Bessire, on the other hand, has pulled it off, with much assistance from FT stalwarts Loren Coleman and Jeffrey Vallance. He created a superbly playful and entertaining cryptozoological art exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art in Maine last year, and this is the catalogue.

It is clear that it was a cracking show. What is unclear is who did what, as all the picture captions appear on page 158. This is definitely an art book, but despite high production values, the catalogue has a fanzine bricolage feel to it. This is no bad thing (its ‘hand-stamped’ page numbers and Courier-like typefaces remind me of the mags I cranked out on Banda copiers nearly 30 years ago), but some of its artistic conceits, like the caption placement, overwhelm its function as a catalogue. Style-mag design tropes – such as pink text on orange backgrounds – are hard on the eyes, and rough (though high quality) matte paper is not entirely friendly to photo reproduction. However, I quibble; it is an excellent volume.

In addition to interesting essays from the likes of Coleman, there are entertaining artworks from an eclectic array of sources, from Rosamund Purcell’s evocative photos of the conjoined twin skeleton and other specimens to a slightly (well, very) barmy horned dog created by the deliciously-entitled Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists. There are also Walmor Correa’s eerie anatomical drawings of dissected mermaids and Mark Dion’s Hall of Cryptozoology, a mock-up corridor of the Charles Fort Institute of our dreams, with doors labelled ‘Bureau for the Investigation of Paranormal Phenomena’, ‘Federal Wildlife Commission Department of Cryptozoology’ and so on, amazing crypto-ephemera from Loren Coleman’s collection and much more. The catalogue does a good job of capturing the crazy magic of fortean phenomena in a way straight reporting and analysis never will, and provides an imaginative window into our world for people who might not have given cryptozoology a second thought or dismissed it as tabloid junk.

There are those who see attempts to explore fortean ideas through artistic lenses, or to place them in a cultural context, as a waste of time (vide the incomprehension that greeted Stewart Home and The Association of Autonomous Astronauts at one UnConvention, and periodic cries that FT should just be about investigating mysteries). This catalogue makes it clear that exploring fortean culture from other directions is a fascinating and fruitful exercise.

Here’s hoping I find a UK gallery soon!