making deer strong again

Deer sketch, 2020

The deer we see in our yard are small.

For many generations, hunters have killed the biggest deer; they have mounted the largest racks on their home walls.  Their selection, unnatural, favors the small and the weaker deer.  I think this practice is going to change among our generation's young hunters.

In forestry there is a practice of worst-tree, single-tree selection.  You go in the woods, look around and take out enough low-grade trees to pay for getting them out.  You're not trying for a bonanza.  Every 15 or 20 years you do the same: take the worst, leave the best.  Every time you go back, the quality is better.  I read about this tree selection practice in Orion, Spring 2020, in a conversation between Wendell Berry and Tim DeChristopher.

Look at me, Look at you

House finch

The House finch, amid the sparrows, shows some red.  House finches are common at our feeders; yet, they are noticeably fewer.

This is a small work on paper.  I did not know when I started that the bird would turn around.

Sheep in our world

This marvelous marble Ram's head is from the 2nd century AD, Roman, now in Chicago at the Art Institute.  Notice the hand above!  (The hand probably belonged to the man about to perform a sacrifice to the god Mars.)

An astonishingly fine book:  Eating Stone; Imagination and the Loss of the Wild by Ellen Meloy.  It's about bighorn sheep,"'wilderness' holdouts" since the late Pleistocene, now living in small enclaves of wild country in the American Southwest and Mexico, on the verge of extinction, again.  Do we intervene? If so, how? Who are these sheep?  We see them through Meloy's deft telling.  She tells us that to see them was a blessing.  The book is a gift.

Bo

Boshan Xianglu

Western Han, c 200 BC

This incense burner, about the size of a large fist, depicts a world of creatures, plants, paths, and immortals, which, when activated, becomes enshrouded in mist-vapors as if it is a high mountain.  I visit "Bo" whenever I visit the Art Institute in Chicago.  Still, after more than 2,000 years, the small lead-glazed earthenware jar can project an amazing 3-D landscape almost moving, almost burning again for us!

The disk behind Bo is a mirror.

a moving still-life

This is a painting of Wang Shimin by Zeng Jing, from 1616.  The famous painter here is thoughtful, posed with fine, mudra-like fingers distractedly holding a fly-whisk.  He is in fact in mourning, his wife has died.  Amazing to me is that his head moves.  Or my eyes move from side to side of his face looking for another ear and so there is my movement around his head.  Zeng Jing suggests this slight movement in a still sitter by painting Wang with one ear.  Gosh!

Courtly Hunts

If you are a member of a Court, Nature does not frighten you much: you are in a rarefied, guarded and pampered place.  Take a look at these playing cards from the early 1400's and you can see, in an amazingly artful way, this notion of Nature playing out a Hunt/Game, sometimes bloodily depicted, while the Court--King and Queen and some attendants--participate gracefully.  The four suits are Falcons, Ducks, Hounds, and Stags, and the "Face" cards are the Court.

You can see more of the wonderful cards at this Metropolitan Museum of Art site.

Zakouma

Elephants at Zakouma (NYTimes photo)

Elephants are doing better in Chad at Zakouma National Park.  And six black rhinos have come to Zakouma this month from South Africa.  These are successes.

www.african-parks.org/the-parks/zakouma 

See also:  The New York Times Sunday Travel: May 20 2018,
"Killing Field to Haven,"  a wonderful account by Rachel Nuwer of her visit to Zakouma.

REST IN PEACE, SUDAN

  
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/rhino-sudan-extinct.html




We love you and we will miss you.

Sudan the Rhino

Yesterday, Sudan's health had improved slightly; he seemed to savor a mud bath in the rain, his caretakers said.  Sudan is 45 years old, and since 2009 he and two females--Najin and Fatu--have lived at Ol Pejeta Reserve in Kenya, cared for and protected 24 hours a day.
Sudan is the last surviving Northern White Rhinoceros.
You can view him here:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43300713
I have made a sketch of him: the sketch channels, a bit, life, I hope.

Mallard

There is a duck sanctuary I contacted in order to try and save a mallard.  Matthew returned my phone call and patiently talked through the steps I could take for the rescue.  It was nighttime.  The next day I could not find the injured mallard on the lake or around it.  Chances are not good that the mallard has survived the freezing cold.  I painted this mallard.  Here is the sanctuary's link:
http://www.michiganduckrescueandsanctuary.com/

Mallard, with thanks to various photographers, especially S. Javorsky

Does all art, no matter how small the painting, try to lift us out toward resurrection?

Lions, Tigers, Bears, and Elephants

We went to the Wild Animal Sanctuary last week.  Please go there, to the website that is (click on the name).  For the animals, more than 800 acres now are set aside as a haven--safe, vast, restorative.  Lions, tigers, bears, mountain lions, bobcats, foxes, sheep, llamas, birds, a camel, and all:  we viewed them from up high so as to reduce their stress.  After bad lives, good people are helping them.

The same week I read about a rangers-and-armed forces, anti-poaching-and-community strengthening brigade in Mali for the protection of elephants.  Sgt. Djibril Sangare, a ranger with the brigade, said he has learned how to stay calm under the constant threat of attack, finding strength in the mission.  Sgt. Sangare said, "The work, it is love."
(See the New York Times, October 29, International, p. 8)

Mountain Lion sighting

Our government confirmed a mountain lion sighting: June 21 in Bath township.  We used to have mountain lions in Michigan.  We've had some sightings in the past few years, but not this far south.  The land is NE of Lansing.