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THE ARTIST AND THE PLANETElaine Torres-Tineo

“In wildness is the preservation of the world”-Henry David oreau

THE ARTIST AND THE PLANETA project inspired by a series of art and conservation workshops sponsored by the Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization NJ Chapter at the Cre8sArt School in Fort Lee, New JerseyElaine Torres-Tineo (Project Director)Jason Weisbrot (Illustrations)All proceeds to benet e Lawrence Anthony Earth Org., NJ ChapterCopyright 2021https://www.laeonj.org/

When I was a little girl, I spent my summers at the Jersey Shore staring at the blue horizon and lling my art notebooks with color drawings of shorebirds, butteries, and hibiscus owers. Sometimes in the aernoon I listened to family stories of whale-watching tours and wildlife sightings along the maritime forest. e most interesting of the stories always happened during the spring high tide, those moonlit nights when hundreds of horseshoe crabs crawled ashore to lay their eggs, as they have been doing for millions of years.e eternal return of this ancient specimen was a time of celebration and joyful gathering, as troves of family photographs would attest. It was these family albums that also introduced me to my great grandparents and their siblings. ey were insular people from the Atlantic coast with peculiar drawls and well-known stubbornness, yet always eager to pose surrounded by water and wildlife. In these photos, I learned to identify the ora and fauna of the cape: among them the loud osprey, the diamond-back terrapin, the great blue heron, and the peculiar and prehistoric horseshoe crab. One of my favorite pictures, that of my great-grandmother Andrea posing with an injured snowy owl with her four sisters proudly looking on, was restored, enlarged, and exhibited on the west wall of our living room and surrounded by old maritime maps, miniature seascapes, sun mirrors, and a beautiful blue mermaid.

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Long before I heard about John James Audubon and his ambitious art project e Birds of America, I had completely lled various notebooks with drawings of a mind-boggling diversity of shorebirds and songbirds that I rst encountered during my summers at the Jersey Shore. ese early notebooks were lled with oystercatchers, piping plovers, ospreys, common loons, egrets, and the bird that I would forever associate with the horseshoe crab, the amazing red knot. e red knot known for its epic migration, a journey that started at the southern tip of South America, and nished at its breeding ground in the Canadian Arctic, including a stop at the shore to rest and fatten up on nutritious crab eggs. e bird’s concerning decline was later attributed to the overharvesting and habitat loss of the horseshoe crab. Yet, it was the American oystercatcher that was my rst love, with its skinny, pink legs, little red eyes, and red-orange bill poking at shellsh or munching on sea worms. Sightings of the oystercatcher always grounded me with feelings for the shore’s wildlife, especially its many bird and ower species. Of the songbirds, I had a special fondness for those that were colorful and familiar from my home in the suburbs of North Jersey, especially the goldnch and the northern cardinal. e male cardinal with its brilliant red plumage and striking black face was always a welcome sight during the winter months when the landscape was dark and gloomy, and my summer vacations seemed a distant memory.

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Toward the end of the summer season, when the days got cooler and the nights longer, sightings of large monarch butteries became more frequent, and groups were oen seen nestled in the dunes and uttering around wildower gardens. ese were the rst signs that the monarch’s migration south was soon approaching. Like the red knots, the monarchs were also known for their epic migration. Leaving their breeding grounds in the northeastern United States and Canada and ying to their ancestral wintering grounds in the volcanic mountains of central Mexico, where they congregated by the millions on oyamel r trees and hibernated. e monarch’s arrival in early November coincided with the Mexican festivities of the Day of the Dead, an event of much anticipation and celebration when long-dead family members returned for their annual visit, masquerading as monarch butteries. is part of the monarch’s long journey was rst told to me by my sentimental and superstitious grandmother with much certitude and emotion. Years later, when we heard of the decline of monarch populations, I helped her plant large patches of orange milkweed and common violets to help sustain the monarch’s migration. During the waning summer days, our backyard deck replaced the porch as our favorite gathering place, and sometimes during the early-morning hours I saw my grandmother there, nursing her sadness, watching the birds and the butteries in the company of the dogwood, the red oak, and the tulip tree.

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It was in middle school when I became an art student in earnest. During those years I learned the basics of drawing and painting and tried out a variety of media such as acrylic paint, pastels, and watercolor. I recreated famous art works by Matisse, Van Gogh, and Warhol and was also introduced to art history. Learning about cave art from the Stone Age, I was fascinated by the Neanderthals and their early depictions of animal migrations. While I was going through my Van Gogh period, my father planned a family outing to a sunower farm to celebrate my mother’s birthday. My mother was a big admirer of Van Gogh, and recognized all of his paintings and had read all of his letters. We invited my best friends from art school and, during our long ride to the Holland Sunower Farm, Mother shared many details of his art and correspondence while ignoring the more troubling and tragic aspects of his life. Van Gogh inspired many artists with his sunflower paintings, yet he was far from my mind once we arrived at the sunflower farm and I found myself surrounded by a sea of yellow under bright blue skies. Bees and butterflies were whirring in what I imagined was utmost happiness while the crowds seemed mesmerized by the surrounding abundance and repetition. It was stunning; there were thousands of sunflowers, and in every single one there were thousands of tiny flowers looking at the sun.

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“We live in a rainbow of chaos.” —Paul CézanneWhen I was een, I participated in my rst national art show. Entitled e Artist and e Planet, thirty-ve works of art of all sizes lled the One Planet gallery near the Whitney Museum. Biomes from all the continents were represented, and my entry Rainbow Forest—a canvas of the rainbow eucalyptus trees, complemented paintings of seascapes, wetlands, ice caps, and wild animals. Sadly, not all was beauty and wonder. Some artists were also intent in showing the degradations of our planet, and themes of white coral reefs, plastic pollution, deforestation, and species extinction made up half of the exhibition where color and chaos met in a bewildering manner. Yet, one image seemed to fascinate for its size and brilliance: Traveling Prayers, a painting of waving prayer ags painted in luminous colors surrounded by the ice-cap mountains of the Himalayan Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau seemed to be everyone’s favorite. Aerward, there was a reception for the artists and their families at a nearby Chinese restaurant. It was a friendly gathering and, being the youngest participant, everyone seemed cordial and happy to make my acquaintance. e attention was welcome, but there was also an atmosphere of familiarity that made me feel at ease. In that room full of complete strangers, I had the impression that I was in the company of childhood friends and that these artists whom I barely knew would be my friends forever.

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After the art exhibit, I started thinking about my first art show. I knew this was premature, but it did not diminish my enthusiasm and I spent hours daydreaming about this show: the catalogue that would accompany the exhibit, the reception, the photographs, the accolades. It was wonderful. During this time, I also became interested in wildlife advocacy. Many of my new friends were participating in international wildlife art contests and donating their artwork to conservation groups in Africa that protected big mammals, and I was very impressed. I was comfortable drawing color and diversity typical in birds and flowers, but big animals were nonexistent in my notebooks. Relating to wild animals that I could only know through photographs was a challenge, but this is how I started drawing big mammals and spent most of my junior year of high school looking at wildlife books and magazines. In the process, I was very surprised to learn that big mammals were mostly endangered. The largest animal that ever existed (the blue whale), endangered. The largest of the cat species (the Siberian tiger), endangered.

The largest primate (the eastern gorilla), critically endangered. The largest rhino species, (the Sumatran rhinoceros) endangered. The African elephant, endangered. The Masai giraffe, endangered. This was crushing news. It was a phenomenon called the The Sixth Extinction, and I found it incomprehensible. However, I also learned that the largest land mammal of North America had escaped extinction. The American bison, a survivor of the ice age, had roamed the grassland of the American West for centuries, but by the early twentieth century hunting and habitat loss had made its future dire. Yet, pioneering conservationists like President Theodore Roosevelt were determined to save it and now it once again populated the northern Great Plains where it has lived since prehistoric times. The bison inspired me, and I spent most of my winter vacation trying out ways to illustrate its resilience as mystical and supernatural. My winter dreams however were reserved for my first art show and the wild call of the osprey.AndreaAndrea

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My Winter Dreamsof cloudless skieswhen ocks of orange birdsare not far behindthe goldnch and the butteryand the wild call of the ospreyand far belowthe salty sandswith bivalve clamsand horseshoe crabsawait the morning tideand the day renewswith lovely hues of the color blueembracing the horizon

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As individuals we are responsible for more than just ourselves and our own kind. There is more to life that just these. We must each one of us also bring the natural world back into proper perspective in our lives and realize that doing so is not some lofty ideal, but a vital part of our personal survival”- Lawrence Anthony (1950-2012)Born in 1950 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Lawrence Anthony was a passionate environmentalist and wildlife conservationist. His life, vision and many conservation undertakings are memorialized in his books Babylon’s Ark (2007) about his eff orts to save the animals in the Baghdad Zoo during the early stages of the Iraq War, The Elephant Whisperer (2009) about his relationship with a herd of wild elephants, and The Last Rhino, published posthumously in 2012, about his eff orts to save the rare northern white rhino species from extinction by meeting with leaders of a rebel army. All co-written with author Graham Spence.In 2003 Dr. Anthony founded The Earth Organization. After he passed away in 2012, The Earth Organi-zation was renamed in his honor. With more than 20 chapters worldwide, the Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization continues to work towards the achievement of his vision – a healthy, safe, aesthetic world where all life can fl ourish. Their many science-based projects around the world carry forward with this ul-timate goal in mind, including educational programs designed to raise awareness of the vital partnership for survival all life forms have with each other. He termed this subject “Cooperative Ecology™”.https://www.laeonj.org/