An Elephant a Day 2.0

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The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)

Sunday, 1 December 2013

Elephant No. 80: Guest Artist Lynn Owen

Ellie by Lynn Owen
iPad sketch, 2013
Image courtesy of Lynn Owen

Lynn and I have only really met in virtual terms, introduced by our mutual artist friend Peter Gould. As Peter would say, Lynn's a "funster" and we clicked immediately.

I was particularly thrilled when Lynn sent me Ellie a week or so ago. Not only do I absolutely love it as a work of art, but it's also created entirely on an iPad—something of a departure for an artist who works primarily in acrylics and mixed media.

Crimson Miasma 5 by Lynn Owen
Acrylic on canvas
Source: http://lynnowen.ca/current-gallery.html#

Lynn has an impeccable sense of colour and form, resulting in lush and complex paintings that range across the spectrum from figural to abstract. As Lynn has written about her work:

I aspire to expose the character and spirit of the subject matter—and attempt to bring a new insight and sensitivity to it. My process begins with exploring the tactile properties of my chosen subject. This is where the core of my painting begins. Working with only the textural element of the composition helps me bring out the intriguing foundation I want to capture within the subject—be it to evoke a sense of movement in a figurative piece, the mood of a landscape, or the personality of a piece of fruit. Ultimately I strive to produce work that is unexpected, thoughtful and invigorating.

In my opinion, Lynn's work is all of those things.

Encroachment by Lynn Owen
Acrylic on canvas
Source: http://lynnowen.ca/current-gallery.html

According to Lynn, her earliest encouragement came from her grandfather, who gave her his knee to use as an easel. Growing up in mining towns across Northern Ontario—a blasted, barren landscape, if ever there was one—Lynn taught herself to see the subtleties of texture, and the hidden life in everyday objects. Her work today reflects that careful observation in works that I find strangely haunting.

Strata Series #2 by Lynn Owen
Acrylic and mica on canvas
Source: http://lynnowen.ca/current-gallery.html

Lynn has also been known to provide painted interiors for local restaurants. Not that long ago, she was asked by a friend, who owns the Moonroom here in Ottawa, if she'd be willing to paint a couple of doors at the hip wine bar. In describing the experience, Lynn said laughingly that "What began as a modest work—two bathroom walls—grew into two more doors and a thirty-foot wall. I teased that I was the victim of the biggest scope-creep ever. In truth, I would have painted there forever, if I could."

Crayon Box 3 by Lynn Owen
Mixed media on canvas
Source: http://lynnowen.ca/current-gallery.html

Then there's the serendipitous, as in the image below, which I originally thought was a painting of a couch with ghostly cat. I liked it so much that I wanted to use it in this post. When I asked Lynn about it, I learned that it's actually a photograph of her cat Daly, passing by an unfinished painting. Now, that's mixed media.

couch/cat by Lynn Owen
Unfinished painting with live cat
Photograph courtesy of Lynn Owen

Lynn has been featured in group and solo exhibitions across Canada, and her work is currently on view at a trio of galleries in eastern Canada. She is also part of the upcoming Group of Steven show at Irene's Pub in Ottawa, opening on December 4. To see more of Lynn's work, visit her website at www.lynnowen.ca.

Mica Landscape 3 by Lynn Owen
Acrylic, mica and paste on canvas
Source: http://lynnowen.ca/current-gallery.html

Elephant Lore of the Day
When I learned that Lynn had grown up in mining towns, I started wondering about elephants and the mining industry. I couldn't find anything about elephants being used as heavy equipment for mining in antiquity—or any time since—but I did find a number of mines named for elephants.

There is the Pink Elephant Mine in California's Death Valley: a pink-fluorite mine that began operations in 1946. Because of its difficult location and the relatively poor quality of the ore, it was never significantly worked, and is now abandoned.

Abandoned tramway at Pink Elephant Mine, California.
Source: http://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=249507

There are also at least three abandoned Red Elephant Mines in the western United States, all of which were gold mines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is little information on how the mines got their names, although the one in Colorado was named for Red Elephant Mountain, where the gold-bearing ore was found. In California's case, the mine has lent its name to today's Red Elephant Mine hiking trail.

And then there's the White Elephant Mine in British Columbia. "White Elephant" seems a rather ill-conceived name to give a mine in Canada; however, it wasn't named for the unpromising nature of the endeavour. White Elephant Mine was, in fact, a gold and silver mine which produced 63,170 grams of gold and 9,549 grams of silver in its 1922–1935 heyday. Today, the mine is no longer active, but remains in private hands.

One of the openings to the White Elephant Mine, British Columbia.
Source: http://www.okanaganlakebc.ca/community/ofinterest/
westside_road/white_elephant_mine.htm

So, why name mines for elephants? Perhaps the answer can be found in this rather cryptic statement made by Swedish mining company LKAB in May 2013. Talking about the fact that Sweden has the largest contiguous band of iron ore in the world, a spokesman said:

There's a saying in mining, especially when you're looking for big volume bodies, that if you're looking for elephants, you have to go to elephant land—and in our part of the world is elephant land.

Er, okay.

To read about elephants who actually mine minerals with their tusks, sometimes creating caverns, check out the elephant lore in this blog post and this one, from the original Elephant a Day blog.

Because their tongues are too long to lick salt from the rock, elephants mine salt
from the walls of Kitum Cave by breaking off pieces of rock with their tusks,
then popping the salt-bearing rock into their mouths with their trunks.
Photo: Ian Redmond
Source: http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/wildkingdom/cave_
elephants/field/slide/slide_07.html

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)

Friday, 29 November 2013

Elephant No. 79: Mini Baby Blankie

With Christmas coming, I've been looking around for things I could make fairly quickly. I came across a cute little knitted rabbit toy/blankie in the book 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders, so I decided to see if I could turn it into an elephant.

I won't post the pattern here, as the design is copyrighted, but if you're interested in the elephant adaptations I made, just send me a note.

This is the original "Blanket Buddy", designed by Mary Anne Thompson. It looks large in the photo, but the final knitted version is only about a foot square.

Using a chunky cotton-wool yarn, I began by knitting the body and arms. For those of you who speak knitting, it's a very simple garter stitch pattern with yarn-overs to create the holes, and knitted increases on each side to make the widening triangular shape. The arms are made with a series of cast-on stitches.

The head comes next, with the front and back knitted together, eventually forming a pouch. This was something I'd never heard of doing before, but it worked.

At this point, the original pattern tells you how to make the ears, knitting them right into the head before stuffing. The pattern suggests that you can adapt this to make different ears for different animals. Well, maybe if you were doing a cat or a bear instead of a rabbit. Not so much for an elephant. I tried to adapt the knitted-in ears, but I ended up with long floppy I-don't-know-what ears the first two times, and mouse ears the third time. I decided to regroup.

I began by stuffing the head lightly, remembering that it should be on the soft side for a baby. I then stitched the top of the head closed.

Next, I knitted a couple of ears by casting on six stitches, increasing gradually out to 14, then decreasing gradually back down to eight.

For the trunk—again for those of you who speak knitting—I cast on 12 stitches on double-pointed needles, knitting in the round for about 10 rows. I decreased gradually to six stitches, at which point I switched to an i-cord technique. Before attaching the trunk to the head, I stuffed it gently.

I attached the ears to the head first, as I thought this would make it easier to figure out where to put the trunk. After I'd attached the trunk, I added a few stitches to give it some shape.

To finish this, I stitched on some eyes with white yarn, and tied the arms in knots. And, because this is for a baby and will probably get a lot of wear and tear, everything is double-stitched.

When I was trying to figure out the ears, I almost turned this back into a rabbit, but I'm glad I persisted. The final is pretty cute in real life—and it's soft and cuddly, as any self-respecting blankie/toy should be.

Elephant Lore of the Day

I first told this story in the original Elephant a Day blog, but since it's about blankies for orphaned baby elephants, I thought it fit perfectly with today's post.

At the deservedly renowned David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya, orphaned baby elephants are coaxed to feed by surrogate mother elephants—in the form of rough, grey blankets hanging from trees. Although to us these blankets look nothing like mother elephants, they actually serve an important purpose.

Baby elephants usually arrive at the orphanage following traumatic rescue from life-and-death situations. Distraught and frightened, they often succumb to pneumonia and gastric infections caused by stress. They also frequently refuse to eat. This presents a particular challenge for the people trying to save them.

It was discovered however, that if a baby elephant feels something similar to the texture of its mother's stomach when it reaches up, it can be coaxed to feed. Encountering large expanses of grey hanging throughout the bush, baby elephants will walk over to the blankets, touching them with the tips of their trunks in curiosity. Reassured by the texture, they will snuggle closer and run their trunks over the surface, just as they would do with their mothers in the wild. It then becomes easier to feed them from a bottle.

Baby elephant and grey blanket, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Nairobi, Kenya.
Photo: Worldwide Features.com
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2115392/Baby-elephants-comfort-
blanket-How-huge-grey-rug-doubles-surrogate-mother-orphan-feeding-time.html

The babies remain dependent on the blankets for the first few months, then take the bottle without the blanket, then become tactile with the rest of the herd. When the elephants are between twelve and eighteen months old, they are moved to rehabilitation centres in Kenya's East Tsavo National Park, and are eventually released back into the wild.

Keeper feeding orphaned baby elephant at David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.
Photo: Worldwide Features.com
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2115392/Baby-elephants-comfort-
blanket-How-huge-grey-rug-doubles-surrogate-mother-orphan-feeding-time.html

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)

Sunday, 24 November 2013

Elephant No. 78: Feature Artist Christopher Griffin

Bronze elephant cast in India.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

I first saw Christopher's elephants at Nuit Blanche Ottawa in September 2012, and was quite taken with them. They were the first thing I saw that night, and I really liked the interactive nature of his installation. Not only were there waist-high concrete elephants made by Christopher, but members of the public were also invited to shape small elephants in clay to leave behind.

The concept behind the installation, which he'd called Life is Beautiful, was that it "would be beautiful to discover a herd of elephants flourishing and increasing in numbers" and to "have the public create small clay elephants to cling to the backs of Mother Ship elephants for safety." At the time, I was nearing the end of my original Elephant a Day blog, and I can't count the number of friends who asked me the following day if I'd seen Christopher's elephants. I'm glad I could say yes, or I would have been mighty disappointed.

Little clay elephants on the back of one of the Nuit Blanche elephants.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

The installation was swamped when I happened by, so I didn't get to make an elephant that evening. I remembered his elephants of course, but thought little more about them until I happened to be driving down Gladstone Avenue with a friend. Suddenly there they were, milling about alongside his studio.

Concrete elephant.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

Although Christopher's elephants are highly stylized, my friend recognized them right away for what they were, and said—only half-jokingly, I think—that we should put party hats on them and take photographs. Instead, I decided to contact Christopher to see if he'd mind my featuring him on this blog.

Christopher is a local artist who paints, in addition to working in concrete and other sculptural materials. Many of his paintings feature stylized animals in a bold style that particularly appeals to someone like me, since I tend to be a bid timid about going bold.


Nepean Street Herd—Ottawa Street Series 2013 Mixed media on canvas Photo: Christopher Griffin Source: http://www.christophergriffin.ca/gallery.html

Black HareAsphalt, concrete and oil on canvas
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Source: http://www.christophergriffin.ca/gallery1.html

Walking the Dog (2008)
Oil on canvas
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Source: http://www.christophergriffin.ca/gallery2.html

Part of Christopher's work also includes concrete friezes, created directly on the sides of buildings. In fact, Christopher became famous here about five years ago for having decorated all four sides of his home with concrete, incised with wild and wonderful figures and patterns. Since then, he's gone on to decorate a number of local buildings in a similar way. One of my favourites is this raccoon—part of a frieze on a local privacy wall, which was a rather unprepossessing brick before Christopher got his creative hands on it.

Raccoon from righthand side of concrete frieze at 441 Maclaren Street,
Ottawa—October 2012
Photo: David Barbour
Source: http://www.christophergriffin.ca/concrete.html

Raccoon frieze at 441 Maclaren Street, Ottawa—October 2012
Photo: David Barbour
Source: http://www.christophergriffin.ca/concrete.html

About his work, Christopher has written:

I am inspired by ancient artwork on cave walls, children's art and random markings on concrete sidewalks, roads and buildings. I find the immediacy, confidence and lack of pretense in their character very appealing. I emulate this chaotic beauty in the surfaces of my own work with a description I call "visual noise". Scribbles, gestural markings and accidentals mirror our hectic, image-laden society and provide the spark of inspiration for me. I often use bird, fish and animal motifs in my work because they represent the pure, the innocent and the spiritual.

In addition to making his own elephants, Christopher often donates his time to schools and special events, encouraging people to make clay elephants as a way of exploring their creativity. I particularly love the two elephants below, made by students in a Grade 3 class.

Elephant by unknown artist—Grade 3 class, First Avenue Public School,
Ottawa.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

Elephant by Kalyna Griffin—Grade 3 class, First Avenue Public School,
Ottawa.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

Christopher's elephants have appeared around the world in recent years, from India to Mexico. And sometimes his smaller elephants show up in rather eccentric places. Which, I'm pretty sure, is exactly where elephants like to be.

Elephant at the beach in Yelapa, Mexico.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

Over the past decade or more, Christopher's paintings and sculptures have been featured in solo and group exhibitions across North America. To see more of his work, visit his website at www.christophergriffin.ca

Elephant in drainpipe, Rideau Canal, Ottawa—February 2013.
Photo: Christopher Griffin
Image courtesy of Christopher Griffin

Elephant Lore of the Day

Since Christopher's elephants have shown up Mexico, I thought I'd write today about Precolumbian elephant sculptures.

Although scientists are fairly certain elephants have never roamed Central and South America, there are a number of Precolumbian finds that may suggest otherwise. If not elephants, perhaps the memory of some elephant-like antecedent was passed down through generations of artisans—until the representations became so stylized that it's become easy to dismiss them as anything but elephants.

Archaeologist Alfred Maudslay's drawing of glyphs at Copan, Honduras,
A.D. 400–800. In recent years, it has been suggested that the creatures on
either side are blue macaws, which are indigenous to the region.
Source: http://resrustica.blogspot.ca/2010/02/elephant-glyphs-at-copan.html

There is a lot of vaguely kooky speculation out there about the possibility of elephants lurking in South American jungles—and even roaming open lands in the United States—as recently as 500 years ago. Most scientists, however, believe that anything resembling an elephant died out in the Americas at least 10,000 years ago.


Precolumbian figure (no date given) described in an auction catalogue as a "coati head fragment." Source: http://s8int.com/WordPress/wp-images/pre%20co%20elephant.jpg

Not being a scientist, archaeologist or crypto-zoologist, I'll let you make up your own mind about this well-known trio of Precolumbian "elephants". To read one of the more comprehensive online articles featuring ancient elephants in the Americas, click here.

Elephant-shaped pot (no date given) described by
its home museum as a "toy".
Collection of the Museo antropolgía de Xalapa,
Xalapa, Mexico
Photo: Zecharia Sitchin
Source: http://www.sitchin.com/elephant.htm

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Elephant a Day is Changing

Leaf collage elephant by Sheila Singhal
Elephant No. 50—October 22, 2013
Source: http://elephantaday2.blogspot.ca/2013/10/elephant-no-50-
leaf-collage.html

New contracts and preparations for Christmas are taking all of my time these days, so I've decided to take a break from daily blogging about elephants. I'll still be sharing the work of anyone who sends me an elephant image or story—and even occasionally posting elephants of my own—although perhaps not on a daily basis for the foreseeable future.

Rather than renaming the blog An Elephant Once in a While, I'll be keeping the Elephant a Day name since, as someone pointed out, that's the way this whole thing started. And who knows: at some point I may go back to daily blogging—although hopefully not daily making, so that I can concentrate on producing more finished art.

In addition to viewing new posts via this site, you can track the blog via Tumblr, via the Elephant a Day website, via Facebook, and via Twitter. You can also view the crazy 366-day blog experience that started it all here.

In the meantime, don't forget to support worthy elephant charities. Elephants are critically endangered in many parts of the world, due to poaching, habitat loss and human-elephant conflict. If you love elephants, please consider making a small donation to one of the organizations working so hard to ensure that elephants have a future.

See you soon!

Vincent van Gogh Elephant by Sheila Singhal
Elephant No. 9—September 11, 2013
Source: elephantaday2.blogspot.ca/2013/09/elephant-no-9-
vincent-van-gogh-elephant.html

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)

Monday, 18 November 2013

Elephant No. 77: Art by Elephants

A Splash of Colour by Jojo the elephant.
Source: http://www.elephantartgallery.com/paintings/1319.php

As I've mentioned before in the lore section of this blog, people often ask me whether or not elephants can really paint. What I usually tell them is: it depends.

Elephants naturally trace abstract swirls and patterns in the dust with their trunks, and often do this in a repetitive manner that is unique to each elephant. This means that, when handed a brush and paint, many elephants will take to the activity immediately, tracing similar patterns on paper.

It is unlikely that elephants have a good colour sense, and they have surprisingly poor eyesight, so keepers usually choose paint colours for the elephants. However, what few people realize is that some elephants genuinely like painting. In many zoos and refuges around the world, painting is part of elephant-enrichment programs. In properly designed and managed painting programs, elephants are never forced to paint, and only elephants with a true interest in the activity continue.

They're Building Over There by Wanalee the elephant.
Source: http://www.elephantartgallery.com/paintings/9131.php

Training usually begins with teaching an elephant how to hold the brush. Many elephants will naturally curl their trunks around the brush, but some programs modify the brushes to allow them to fit comfortably inside one of the nostrils, which seems to make the elephants happier, and gives them a greater range of motion.

Next, the elephants are taught how to stand near the easel and how to daub paint on paper. Just as some elephants take readily to banging their trunks around on a piano, some elephants really appear to enjoy the feeling of slopping paint onto paper.

Aquatic Serenade by Jenny the elephant.
Source: http://www.elephantartgallery.com/paintings/1309.php

What elephants do not do naturally is paint landscapes, vases of flowers, or self-portraits. Training that forces elephants to produce things that are recognizable to humans is unnatural. Not only does this type of painting require brushstrokes that are both physically and mentally difficult for elephants, but the training itself can often be coercive in nature. Such paintings are designed for the tourist trade, not as a form of elephant enrichment.

The video below shows an elephant producing a painting of an elephant holding a flower. While it's astonishing to realize that an elephant can be trained to paint something like this, it's still not natural.

In the past, some elephants have taken up painting for a while, only to grow bored with it. In those cases, a sensible enrichment program allows the artist his or her space, perhaps introducing another medium—such as mud—or realizing that the elephant artist has produced his or her life's work and will likely choose not to paint again.

And, if you think that elephants can't possibly understand the connection between what they're doing with their trunk and and the image appearing before them, remember that elephants are among the only animals able to recognize themselves in a mirror, and are among the few with a significant understanding of cause and effect.

To read more about the abstract art produced by elephants at the National Elephant Institute in Thailand, click here.

My Best Shot by Jojo the elephant.
Source: http://www.elephantartgallery.com/paintings/1335.php

Elephant Lore of the Day
My friend Nahal sent me this photograph yesterday, which she took of the door to the Linda Modern Thai Restaurant in Toronto, Canada.

The three-headed elephant depicted on the door is the Thai version of the Hindu elephant Airavata, which was the mount of the god Indra. In Thailand, the elephant is known as Erawan, and usually has three—or even 33—heads, as it looks like he has here. The heads often have more than two tusks apiece—as they do on the door below—and some traditional statues show Indra riding Erawan.

To learn more about the Linda, considered one of Toronto's finest Thai restaurants, click here.

Doorway to Linda Modern Thai Restaurant,
North York (Toronto), Canada.

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)

Boon Lott's Elephant Sanctuary (Thailand)
Wildlife SOS (India)
The Elephant Sanctuary (Tennessee)

Sunday, 17 November 2013

Elephant No. 76: Glass Canes

I bought a bag of something called "glass gems" for my original Elephant a Day blog and never used them, so I thought I'd finally try making something with them today.

They looked interesting enough in the package, but when I poured them out, I realized it was going to be difficult to make an elephant out of them. Aside from a few slightly rounded pieces, most of the glass was sticklike, meaning that making an elephant was going to be about as much fun as making an elephant from popsicle sticks. Sigh.

I used clear marine silicone to glue things together, as I figured it would be the most likely thing to form a permanent bond with glass. I think this is what I used to make an elephant from marbles in the original Elephant a Day blog.

I started by gluing two pieces together for the elephant's back. So far, so good. The silicone takes about a half-hour to form a bond strong enough to allow you to move on, so I worked on different parts of the elephant concurrently.

I worked on the head next, which was a bit of a pain. The head itself is made up of three layers of glass, surrounded by three ear "sticks" on each side. The head sandwich was easy enough, but keeping the ears together required me to do one side at a time, propped up with other bits of glass to keep it from collapsing while it set. The trunk, on the other hand, was a breeze.

While the head was sorting itself out, I added a pair of glass curves to the lower body, along with some legs. The legs were also a huge pain, and had to be detached and reattached so often that I nearly gave up on them. And, although I tried to splay them enough to allow the elephant to stand up, they didn't stay that way, no matter what I did.

I attached the body and head next, which required a great deal of propping up and binding together while it set. It collapsed so many times that this whole thing almost ended up as a pile of colourful powdered glass.

To finish the elephant, I stuck on a broken bit for a tail. This was probably the easiest part of the entire exercise.

It looked interesting when it was all put together, but it was incredibly messy. There was a film of silicone over everything—and once silicone is stuck to glass, it wants to stay stuck. I must have spent at least two hours scraping away errant bits of silicone so that the glass would be shiny again, and so that it didn't end up with raggedy blobs of silicone all over the place.

In the end, I like the way it turned out as an object, but I would be very reluctant to try this again. It took too much propping up, fell apart too often, and took too long to clean up. And it doesn't stand up.

Then again, it looks pretty in a window—and I still have almost an entire bag of glass left to play with—so I suppose never say never.

Elephant Lore of the Day

In Chartres Cathedral in France, elephants are among the few exotic animals featured in the stained-glass window depicting the story of Noah.

Seen approaching the ark from the righthand side, about a third of the way up the window, the elephants have tiny mouse-like ears, and are primarily recognizable by their tusks and long noses.

Given that Chartres Cathedral was built between A.D. 1194 and 1250, the artists who produced the stained-glass windows would likely never have seen an actual elephant, and would have had only anecdotal descriptions and other equally erroneous depictions to go by.

That being said, I love this pair of elephants. Who knows: it may even inspire me to finally try my hand at stained glass.

Animals approaching the ark, two by two.
Noah Window, Chartres Cathedral, France, ca. A.D. 1205–1235
Source: http://www.medievalart.org.uk/chartres/47_pages/Chartres_Bay47_key.htm

To Support Elephant Welfare

International Elephant Foundation Elephant's World (Thailand)