©2001, Minton Enterprises LLC
All rights reserved
With this gallery we are taking the internet
to a whole new aesthetic level and our industry to a whole new dimension.
Today, we open the doors (actually, the windows) to the first-ever Cyber
Animal Art Show celebrating the works of painting pachyderms, porpoises,
penguins, pigs and a rhinoceros. Admission is free.
The art show's opening was timed to coincide with the American Zoo and
Aquarium Association's (AZA) 2001 Annual Conference in St. Louis, Missouri,
in September. At these annual meetings, officials representing virtually
every aspect of zoo and aquarium operations get together to share ideas
in husbandry, fund raising, marketing and physical plant, discuss issues
facing animals both in the wild and in collections, and celebrate successes,
all in an atmosphere of warm collegial fellowship.
In the same spirit we present our art show, a representation of successful
enrichment and fund-raising programs at zoos throughout North America
(see the three stories that follow). We further encourage these efforts
by linking the contributing zoo's own web sites to each of their artists'
works: when you click your cursor on a painting, we will take you to that
zoo.
This project, however, is much more than a publicity forum for zoos. When
you stroll through our galleries, you likely will develop a sincere admiration
for some of the talent we've put on display. We chose a wide range of
styles and species for this collection, and through that diversity you
will discover that while some animals were obviously playing with a paint-covered
brush, others seemed to use a discerning eye to portray their environments
and moods.
I would like to thank all the zoos that participated in this ground-breaking
project—maybe that should be bandwidth-breaking project—and
the artists themselves for opening our eyes to a greater truth, which
is the prime objective of all art.
Sunset Sam made a splash with his artsy behavior. Photo courtesy of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium
That rich feeling
Animals have been painting in some form since at least the early part
of the 20th century. More often than not these were publicity stunts,
little more than circus-type acts exploiting the animals. In the early
1960s, a keeper at the San Diego Zoo in California, noting an elephant's
natural behavior of drawing in the sand with its trunk, included painting
among one of her charges' behavioral enrichment program. This amounted
to the elephant pushing a large housepainting brush across a canvas much
like a big sweep broom.
At the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona, a precocious elephant named Ruby was beginning
to grow into an unruly adult, and keepers began seeking some way to keep
her mind engaged. Hearing of the San Diego painting pachyderm, Ruby's
keepers decided to introduce her to the hobby. They had not seen the manner
in which the San Diego elephant worked, so the Phoenix keepers went to
an art store to buy supplies for a more aesthetic take on the craft of
painting. But Ruby caught on and soon became a celebrated artist in her
own right.
Though not the first, Ruby is certainly a trail-blazer: you could say
that our gallery—which has a room devoted to Ruby, who died in childbirth
three years ago—celebrates an art movement known as Rubism. Word
of both her effectiveness with an artist's brush and painting's effect
on her behavior spread throughout the zoo community, and soon other zoos
were teaching their elephants and other animals to paint.
Painting is just one part of an overall enrichment program zoos and aquariums
use to build trust between keeper and animal, and to keep the animal from
getting too bored and stressed and consequently engaging in self-destructive
behavior. Mshindi, a black rhino at the Denver Zoo in Colorado, would
need blood samples taken to monitor his health; because rhinos generally
react violently to being stabbed with needles, he would need to be anesthesized
which, for a rhinoceros, is an even greater health risk. So, keepers work
with Mshindi on different commands and responses that ultimately lead
to the rhino presenting his ear on command for bloodwork or presenting
his foot for a nail filing.
"His painting evolved from this role of the keeper as Mshindi's primary
care physician," said Suzanne Balog, the zoo's public relations manager.
"Mshindi's really smart. He'd learn new behaviors quickly, and the keeper
always has to keep up with him." So he doesn't get bored with painting,
they let Mshindi paint only a couple of times a month.
In the case of Ruby, the mission was so focused on her enrichment that
Dick George, then the Phoenix Zoo's public relations manager, kept the
story of her painting from the press for three years. "I remember arguing
that we couldn't send the story out because I thought it would appear
exploitive of the animal," George said. Then a National Geographic photographer
visited Ruby as part of a global trek photographing elephants. "He came
to me and said, 'Don't you know those animals are going extinct? Screw
your ethics. Sell the paintings and get her story out so all elephants
can benefit.'"
Fame and fortune
Chicago has its cows, Cincinnati its pigs, Toronto its moose, parades
of painted fiberglass sculptures. Tampa, Florida, has the Tour of Turtles,
with local companies and agencies customizing turtles manufactured by
The Resource Factory. One entry in the tour comes from the Clearwater
Marine Aquarium, whose turtle was painted by Sunset Sam, a 22-year-old
Atlantic bottlenose dolphin.
"Sunset likes to be challenged and likes to learn new things," said Coni
Romano, senior marine mammal trainer at the aquarium located in the Tampa
suburbs. "We had heard of other animals that painted, and we thought,
'Why not try it? Maybe he would like it. And he did." Using an illustrator's
paint brush with a rubber tip to fit in his mouth, Sunset Sam raises out
of the water to paint on canvas, T-shirts, hats or fiberglass turtles
on the pool's deck. The aquarium sells some of his wares in its gift shops
while other pieces are auctioned. Guests may also pay to paint with Sunset.
All proceeds go back to the aquarium to carry out its mission of marine
rescue and rehabilitation, some of that paying for Sunset's own care.
Many other zoos have used their resident artists in clever fund-raising
efforts. Mshindi's works are auctioned off to help support a rhino conservation
project in Kenya. The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in Ohio is selling its
elephant paintings to defray the costs of the 21st annual Elephant Management
Association Conference scheduled at the zoo next September. The fingerpaintings
of Charles, a silverback western lowland gorilla in Toronto, Canada, raised
$40,000 Canadian (US$25,000) in 1995 toward his own new habitat, the world's
largest indoor gorilla enclosure, which opened at the Toronto Zoo this
April. The FortWorth Zoo in Texas is taking part in that city's 23rd annual
Gallery Night tomorrow by putting up a display of paintings by featuring
a collection of Wilhelm Kuhnert paintings, a German wildlife artist at
the turn of last century, and a collection of paintings by Rasha, a 28-year-old
Asian elephant.
"The animal is deriving pleasure from (painting)," Romano said of Sunset
Sam, one of whose paintings was presented to former First Lady Barbara
Bush during a visit in 1999. "It's enriching for them and improves their
environment."
In more ways than one.
Sedgwick County Zoo patrons got custom-designed shirts from Cinda Elephant and totes from Lucille Pig. Photos courtesy of Sedgwick County Zoo.
Sure realism
So the animal has fun, the zoo's achieve funding and education goals,
and the public lays down big bucks for these novelty paintings. Does it
qualify as true art? A Tamworth pig can rub its paint-covered snout over
a canvas and create a picture that looks strikingly like smudges of paint
across a canvas. But give that painting a name, as Sedgwick County Zoo
in Wichita, Kansas, did for one of Lucille's pieces in our show, and the
painting becomes an expressionistic masterpiece. This, however, is judging
art with no more astuteness than the famous repartee between Hamlet and
Polonius over the shape of a cloud that Hamlet finally declaims is shaped
like a whale. "Very like a whale," sycophant Polonius replies.
But pause and ponder awhile the works in our Reflections gallery. Mshindi's
self-portrait is obvious, but only if he utilized a mirror. Balog saw
one of Mshindi's paintings that "I swear is a warthog," she said; but
the zoo's warthogs are not visible from the rhino's habitat. Still, Mshindi
is particular about his paints. Some days he consistently drops the yellow-dipped
paint brush from his mouth without using it, some days it's the red he
consistently declines. "Some days he just won't use certain colors," Balog
said. "If that's temperamental artist, I don't know."
More intriguing in the Reflections room is Sunset Sam's work "My Cousins."
The trainers could make out the shapes of a horse's head, a polar bear
and a snake or a stingray, all creatures Sunset Sam likely has never seen,
even in his pre-rescue wild days. But in the middle is the unmistakable
image of a whale breaching the water.
Couldn't be, Romano said. Even before Sunset was rescued on a sandbar
17 years ago, Romano said, he wouldn't have delved into the deep domains
of the big whales. "He's never seen a deep-water whale that would jump
out of water." But, truly, it is very like a whale.
Which brings us back to Ruby. George, who has a master of fine arts in
photography and teaches at Arizona State University when he's not working
at the Phoenix Zoo, is certain Ruby knew what she was doing on the canvas.
"She ultimately began to choose which color she wanted from a pallet of
seven different colors and an array of four or five different brushes.
I saw one canvas that was Wagnerian, purple, brown, blue, black; it looked
like a thunderstorm. The very next one was delicate pink and blue and
turquoise in vertical stripes like cattails. I have seen her be interrupted
and go back and finish the gesture she'd been working on. I've seen keepers
turn the canvas 90 degrees, and Ruby went back to the same point she had
been working on. She had a definite sense of what she was doing and where
she was going to go with it."
Ruby in fact prompted several studies concerning elephants' eyesight and
whether they can discern colors, studies which are not yet conclusive.
Certain colors that passed through her environment were often the colors
Ruby chose for her subsequent paintings. In a room of our gallery devoted
to her work, we've included a photo of a little girl holding the painting
Ruby did while the girl was visiting the elephant.
And when you question "Is it art," part of your answer should be "Whose
art?" George tells the story of a certain nationally famous televison
news reporter checking out the Ruby story on a visit to the zoo. After
reviewing the paintings, the star reporter sniffed, "When she takes up
realism, then you let me know." To which George replied, "Who says this
isn't realism to her?"