North America’s Wild Places in Fine Art
AMERICA’S
PARKS II is an impressive array of
120 jury-selected pieces of art that celebrates the beauty and wonder of
wildlife in North America’s protected places.
The primary theme of the show is parks of the Southwest (southwestern
U.S. and northwestern Mexico), and both flatworks and sculptures are included. The traveling component of the show is titled,
“America’s Parks of the Southwest."
Over
75 of the best nature artists in the country are represented in AMERICA’S PARKS II. Six top awards went to John Agnew, Carel
Brest van Kempen, Cheryl Price, Morton E. Solberg, Eva Stanley, and Carol
Swinney, and Honorable Mentions went to 26 other artists. But the overall quality of the entire show is
phenomenal, and the jurors were surely challenged in their deliberations. Both Agnew’s and Brest van Kempen’s top
award-winning oil paintings grew out of a unique art experience arranged by
David Wagner, in which 28 artists traveled from around the United States to San
Carlos, Sonora (Mexico) for a week in the field. That art expedition led to its own extraordinary
show on the Sea of Cortez (the Gulf of California). I was privileged to have been the naturalist
on that expedition and daily watched as these incredibly creative people unleashed
their passion and brought the local flora and fauna to life in photographs,
paintings and sketches.
This
second AMERICA’S PARKS show organized
by David Wagner is compelling to me for many reasons. I happen to be a Southwest conservation ecologist,
so the emphasis on the Southwest, and the Sonoran Desert in particular, is
exciting and timely. All six of the top
awards were for pieces capturing the spectacular beauty of the Southwest, and 37
of the entries are from the Sonoran Desert Region itself. There are few places in the world with such a
high diversity of species and natural landscapes as the Sonoran Desert, from
the stunning Sea of Cortez and Baja California Peninsula, to Sky Island
mountain ranges and deep tropical canyons.
Nearly 2500 plant species have been recorded from the Sonoran Desert
Region and, although there are no good estimates of animal diversity, nearly
500 bird species have been recorded from the Arizona portion of this great
desert alone, suggesting that the total bird count for the Sonoran Desert
Region is around 1000 species. The high
diversity of this region is due, in large part, to the fact that it is a
maritime desert, receiving two rainy seasons annually, one being a summer
monsoon season that brings moisture from the Sea of Cortez. The Sea itself bisects the Sonoran Desert
into two nearly perfect halves, Sonora and Arizona to the east, and the Baja California
Peninsula to the west. This great desert
sea is home to well over 6000 described marine animals, including more than
one-third of the world’s whale and porpoise species and five of the world’s six
sea turtles (all of which are endangered).
The Sonoran Desert is also the only subtropical desert in North America,
and we are blessed that it also houses more protected areas than any other
similar-sized region in North America, including numerous Biosphere Reserves
and World Heritage Sites. But, the
Southwest is also under siege, with the fastest-growing population in North
America and being strongly impacted by climate warming. It seems both fitting and urgent that these
special, threatened wild places be emphasized in a natural history art show
such as this.
Many
of the subjects in this show are species of special conservation concern in
North America, including Gila monsters (captured by Priscilla Baldwin, Kim
Diment and Eva Stanley), lesser long-nosed bats (Bryce Pettit), elegant terns
(Anne Peyton), bighorn sheep (Beverly Abbott and Morten Solberg), brown pelicans
(John Agnew), wild turkeys (George Bumann), roseate spoonbills (Anne Peyton), ferruginous
pygmy-owls (Eva Stanley), leatherback turtles (Cathy Ferrell), and mangrove
trees (Mary Helsaple). Many of these
threatened species are presented as bronzes, which greatly enliven the show.
Not
only is the lesser long-nosed bat an endangered species (both in the U.S. and
in Mexico), it is a keystone species that makes a spectacular annual migration
from southern Mexico to the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, following the spring
blooms of columnar cactus that open from south to north, feeding on the nectar
and fruit and, secondarily, pollinating and dispersing the seeds of the cacti. The primary maternity roost for this nectar
bat is in the Pinacate Biosphere Reserve, just south of the border from Organ
Pipe Cactus National Monument (also a Biosphere Reserve), where 100,000 to 200,000
females give birth to that many young every May. The return flight to southern Mexico, with
young in tow, relies upon blooms of agaves, including the tequila agave, which also
needs this bat for pollination. Speaking
as a cactus lover and tequila drinker, I thank you Mr. Pettit, for your
exquisite sculpture of this very important keystone species.
Eva
Stanley’s wonderful sculpture of a ferruginous pygmy-owl is in its natural
Sonoran Desert niche, a burrow in a giant Saguaro cactus. Here, the owl pair mates and then the male
brings the female her food for a month-long egg incubation, after which the two
take turns feeding the hatchings for another month. Sonoran Desert residents lucky enough to have
nesting pygmy-owls in their backyard saguaros thus enjoy this lively “dance of
the pygmies” for several months during the monsoon summer.
Pokey
Park’s beautiful kit fox is an oversize bronze that catches one’s eye as soon
as the gallery space is entered. These
sleek, housecat-sized canids burrow year round in the Southwest, relying on
cooler underground temperatures to survive the summer daytime heat. They generally don’t need standing water,
satisfying their needs with the moisture in their diet of rats, mice and
rabbits. Being strictly nocturnal, the
presence of these rodent-controlling predators is usually recognized only from
the many den holes that can pocket a desert valley floor.
The
leatherback is the largest living sea turtle, with shells reaching over 6 ft in
length and weights exceeding 1750 lbs.
Unlike other sea turtles, these leviathans have leathery shells that are
keeled on both top and bottom, enabling them to move through the water with
great efficiency and speed, despite their size.
Cathy Ferrell’s unique bronze of a tiny hatchling leatherback captures
the foam and sand world that this creature must traverse in its beach run to
the sea. This is the rarest sea turtle
in the Sea of Cortez, and DNA (plus satellite telemetry) have shown that at
least some leatherbacks in this region come from as far away as the western
Pacific (e.g., Indonesia, Papua New Guinea).
Leatherbacks are in serious decline throughout their range, due to
nesting beach degradation and egg poaching.
Three
artists in this show chose Gila monsters as their subject—two bronzes and one
painting. Easy to understand, given the
charismatic habits and colorful sculptured skin of these giant lizards. Gila monsters reach over 1½ ft in length,
have red-orange-black beaded skin, and store water in fatty tissues in their
plump tails. They winter hibernate, but are
active spring through fall when they consume large numbers of newborn rodents
and rabbits, as well as the eggs of birds, snakes and other lizards. They may consume 50 percent of their body
weight in one feeding. These magnificent
neotropical lizards are one of only two venomous lizards in the world (the
other is the Mexican beaded lizard). The
venom is used almost solely in defense, and only rarely in feeding. Although generally slow and lumbering, when
threatened this “monster” moves with lightening-like speed to clamp down on the
aggressor (occasionally a human), grinding open a flesh wound through which the
venom oozes into the victim’s body.
Like
the lesser long-nosed bat, elegant terns also undertake long-range
migrations. Every spring they fly from
their winter homes in Peru, Ecuador and Chile to the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands. Here, they breed mainly on
a few protected islands in the Sea of Cortez.
These gorgeous seabirds are indeed elegant, in both appearance and
behavior—they feed by plunge-diving for marine fishes, and males offer females
their catch as part of the courtship ritual.
This
spectacular collection of art does not glamorize or idealize the threatened
wildlife and wild places of North America.
Instead, it presents a broad palate of beautifully-executed portraits of
some of the world’s most beguiling places and important threatened
species. And it does so with a dignity
and decorum that inspires viewers and rekindles their reverence and respect for
nature.
AMERICA’S PARKS II premiered in Bolivar,
Missouri, at the Ella Carothers Dunnegan Gallery of Art, and from there
traveled to The Wildlife Experience in Parker (Denver), and the Arizona-Sonora
Desert Museum (Tucson). At the time of
this writing, subsequent venues had not yet been determined.
Richard C. Brusca, PhD
Executive Director, Emeritus,
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Research Scientist, University of Arizona
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