While filming videos for his cult rock band Devo in the 1980s, Mark Mothersbaugh bought a collection of old fun house mirrors from an amusement park and experimented with pressing someone's face or body part against them to double the image. In 1999, hedecided to produce the same kind of symmetry using photographs, and his hobby quickly became the obsession he calls Beautiful Mutants.

After exhausting his family photo collection, he searched antique shops and online auctions for old photographs, including daguerreotypes and photo-booth strips. Using antiquarian handcrafting and modern computer technology, he has created hauntingly symmetrical images. Cover the left or right half of any of the photos, and the image appears normal. Viewed in its entirety, it's freak-showmaterial.

"Even from as early as [the first time I saw] The Wizard of Oz, I had a fascination with freaks of nature," Mothersbaugh explains. "What can I say?"

Freaks aren't the only things that fascinate Mothersbaugh. Although he's best known for fronting Devo, which recently played the Macworld Conference and Expo and will tour this summer, the 57-year-old artist and musician wears many hats besides the flowerpot he plants atop his head while playing "Whip It." He has written scores for films such as Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums and theme songs and music for video games, cartoons and TV shows such as Pee-wee's Playhouse and Rugrats. In between music gigs, he juggles art exhibits such as Beautiful Mutants, which will open this week in Lauderhill, and Postcard Diaries, which will hit Miami in March.

In the early 1960s, Mothersbaugh began mailing hand-drawn post cards to art figures including Robert Indiana, the pop artist who invented the iconic "LOVE" logo in 1964, and Irene Dogmatic, who was involved in the correspondence-art movement. "There were all these people you could trade mail art with in the old days, and I used to do that. But then, I started keeping them when I realized they were turning into a diary," he explains, adding that he has completed about 350 books, each with 100 drawings. "I tend to get into things all the way when I do it."

Six years ago, for example, he sought a rug for his home. Unable to find one that impressed him, he designed one and now has 85 that he describes as "odder than anything out there." He recently exhibited them and is considering selling them, along with matching art, to a hotel chain.

Even before Devo, Mothersbaugh was influenced by multifaceted artists like Andy Warhol. "I liked the idea that he worked in all different kinds of medium and technology," he says. "He directed films and was a fashion designer and was the best party-thrower in Manhattan in the early '60s." While Warhol had The Factory, Mothersbaugh has Mutato Muzika, his neon-green West Hollywood studio that's perfect for pursuing his passions. "I have this studio that, by wondrous luck, is circular," he says. "It looks like a Mayan calendar or a 1970s birth-control packet if you look at it from the top. I have different rooms."

If he's working in one room and encounters an obstacle to consider for a bit, he'll proceed to another. "If you forget what you were gonna work on, you just keep walking and you'll eventually get to the right room," he adds.

This is where he created Beautiful Mutants. On his Web site, Mutatovisual.com, Mothersbaugh writes that the "subtle, potatolike qualities of the human form allow the tenants of these bodies to hide within their asymmetric muddiness."

Asked to explain, he bursts into laughter and then reveals the description was a way for him to discuss the project. "On one level," he says, "it was a guilty pleasure to sit there and chop faces in half patiently for an hour until you find just the right bisection. When I talked about it, I was drawing from other sources of symmetric-looking images including Hermann Rorschach [the Swiss psychiatrist of inkblot fame] prints. I was trying to figure out why [the mutants] made me feel the way they did … both really enjoying them and being kind of sometimes just really repulsed."

But the Mutants grew on him. "Quite a few of these pieces are hanging at my house right now or in my studio," he says. "They're like friends, characters to have around you. If you're looking for someone to look at every day, you could do worse than 'Grandpa Cyclops,' for instance. They become part of everything. I only notice they're odd when somebody comes to my studio and remarks about it."

Mothersbaugh believes the photos' subjects would no longer be recognizable to their families. Nobody has contacted him to claim one of the mutants as an ancestor. Even his own relatives don't immediately recognize themselves or other family members in some of his photos. The objects in the pictures are what initially capture their attention. "[It's] like, 'Oh my God. I didn't remember Mom smoked so much,' " he explains. " 'Look at thattabletop. That takes care of our childhood — a glass of scotch, a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes, an ashtray full of butts and a babybottle, all sitting on the table.' … Then, it's like, 'What did you do to my face?! It'sruined!'

"I feel like, more than anything, I created a family with these characters," he says.

The family is growing, as is Mothersbaugh's obsession with Postcard Diaries. "This summer, when I make the mistake of not working out when Devo goes on tour and I go into cardiac arrest onstage, knowing I have only two minutes left, I'll probably see if I have one more piece of paper in my pocket and a pen, and I'll do one last drawing," he says. "[Postcard Diaries] doesn't have an end unless I cut off my hand in a lawn-mowing accident or something, and even then, I might find some perverse way to still draw."

Beautiful Mutants will open with a reception 7-10 p.m. Saturday and run through March 16 at Bird and Bear Boutique and Gallery at Tate's Comics, 4566 N. University Drive, in Lauderhill. Call 954/ 748-0181 or visit Bearandbird.com. Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

More Mothersbaugh

1. In addition to his show opening this week in Lauderhill, Mark Mothersbaugh will have another, Postcard Diaries, opening March 8 at Harold Golen Gallery's temporary space in Miami. Visit Haroldgolengallery.com.

2. In September, his 278-page Beautiful Mutants book was published by Grand Central Press. Visit Grandcentralartcenter.com.

3. Mothersbaugh will not attend either of his upcoming South Florida exhibits.

4. Web site: MUTATOVISUAL.COM

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