Ray Troll: art with a mission.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi

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While he'll quickly point out he's an artist first, in the same breath, artist and entrepreneur Ray Troll unabashedly admits he was born with the retail gene, "of the shame-of-self-promotion gene," he says. "But I've always had fun doing it."

And for almost 25 years Alaskans have had just as much fun watching him.

Known first--and best--for his series of T-shirts that put an edgy spin on anything that has to do with Alaska fish and the fanatics who worship them, since the summer of 1984 Troll has taken his eye for graphics and ear for quips and quotes and pimped them into a retail empire that now has customers around the globe. It started when he used his undergraduate degree in print-making and serigraphy to produce a limited run of 200 hand-printed shirts that said "Let's Spawn" to sell at a Ketchikan fish festival. Today, it's not uncommon to see one of his easily recognizable shirts walking down the street: Spawn Till You Die. Humpies From Hell. Alaska for the Halibut. Life's a Fish, Then You Fry. Rock and Roe. It You Must Smoke, Smoke Salmon. These are just a few of the universally appealing shirts that took him from peddling fresh and smoked salmon from the cruise ship docks in Ketchikan, to having a comprehensive Web store called trollart. com and The Soho Coho Art Gallery located on Creek Street, appropriately situated above a salmon spawning stream in Ketchikan.

Today, his inventory of merchandise also includes aprons, tote bags, calendars, coasters, cards, coffee mugs, CDs, hats, leather, magnets, mints, chocolates, mouse pads, playing cards, pins, games, posters and books.

As a working artist, his commercial success can be seen on the...