11/28/2007 - Hotel Palomar, Arlington, VA
Washington Metro Area’s first and only art exhibit painted by elephants.
The evening featured works of elephant art and a presentation and documentary screening by AEACP director, David Ferris. Photos and words by Lexie Moreland http://www.lexiemoreland.com/
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It’s hard for me to not be brutally honest when it comes to visual presentation.
That said, these exquisite elephant paintings were forcefully flattened into poster quality frames and hoisted upon rent-an-easels in front of walls pre-donned with hotel [elevator] art. That is just my honest, and purely aesthetic, review of the presentation.
Although and aside, the Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project is for a great cause, and for the first time in history, and i quote co-founder Alex Melamid on this, “…animals are being taught to paint for their own benefit.” If I didn’t have to directly quote that, I would have abbreviated and pluralized the word “benefit” to read “bens”, hoping to make the elephants seem even more cool and pimp-like in the entrepreneur sense. The mission of the AEACP charity organization is devoted to saving the diminish of Asian Elephants.
I’m obviously no reporter, so when I shook director David Ferris’ suave hand, I only asked what I personally and genuinely wanted to know, “Do the elephants paint on easels like the ones here?” David replied, “No, usually just sticks and things, whatever we can find.” It made me spin my usual 180 and close my eyes to make a sincere wish that these paintings had been displayed on sticks and things, or whatever they could find.
Oh, and on the real, David was extremely pleasant and refreshingly humble. When asked to grace me by posing for a token photograph, he stepped back and directly in front of the most featured painting, which I observed to be and accepted as a surefire representational stance, rather than an artist’s stance, which would be to the right or left or his or her work.
Also:
Art itinerary for the week
apparently?
November 30, 2007 at 4:19 pmis this all some elaborate hoax?
November 30, 2007 at 7:39 pmNo, it’s real… in Thailand nearly every elephant camp has this, and there you can get the paintings for $25-$50 (and another $5 for a Polaroid of the elephant doing the painting). I have one of orchids growing on a hill side. Depending on how much energy the camp puts into training the elephant, the elephants’ trunks are either guided by a human or the only a thing a human does is switch the color of the brush when the elephant runs out of paint. It’s a cool sight, but they’re almost certainly not painting out of any artistic motivation to express themselves — more simply just a memorized series of brush strokes they’ve practiced thousands of times. Still pretty impressive though.
December 1, 2007 at 1:00 pmJesse, yes an elephant did paint that picture, as witnesed it on the web, You Tube, the very same picture. Amazing to watch.
January 11, 2008 at 9:38 amHow can I buy a painting?
April 5, 2008 at 10:59 pmHow can I buy a painting?
oltmann@yahoo.com
so did an elephant make that picture of an elephant? Or those flowers in the top picture? WTF?
November 30, 2007 at 2:40 pm