Elephant Art
The Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project (AEACP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to aiding people in need and to saving the diminishing number of Asian elephants left on our planet through its work with domesticated elephants. The AEACP raises funds through the sale of artwork created by elephants in order to generate money and create awareness for the people and elephants of Asia.
One of the elephants is eight year old Hong. She has a very curious nature. She loves to investigate everything and once managed to use her trunk to open the door of a truck. This kind of curiosity made Hong a natural candidate for artistic instruction.
Two years ago, Hong began painting with her mahout (teacher), Noi Rakchang, and has steadily developed her skills. After learning how to paint flowers, she moved on to more advanced paintings. She now has two specialties. One is an elephant holding flowers with her trunk, and the other is the Thai flag. An elephant with so much control and dexterity is capable of amazing work. Just for clarification, with these realistic figural works, the elephant is still the only one making the marks on the paper. The paintings are made from a learned series of brushstrokes.
The majority of works created by the elephants are painted on recycled elephant dung paper. The paper is created on the grounds. It is beautifully textured, odorless and environmentally sound. With 90 elephants on site, each of which eats an average of 300 – 500 lbs. of food daily, one can surmise that a fair amount of cleanup would be necessary. There has been a new movement as of late to reuse this elephant by-product in larger elephant facilities throughout Southeast Asia. The dung is processed, bleached, screened and dried into a paper-mache type material. The beautifully textured result is being used to create a variety of wonderful products such as paper, picture frames, bookmarks, jewelry boxes and even hats. Yes, “art from both ends of the elephant.”
[via] www.elephantart.com
When I was looking through Youtube for a good video of Hong I found this. I cannot help it. I find it so funny that I just had to add this to our site. Elephants are amazing. Enjoy if you have not seen it before!
