Abstract: A Menagerie of Illustrations

A gaggle of geese. A murder of crows. A drove of pigs. The origins of these collective nouns date back to 1486 with “The Book of St Albans,” a guide to hawking, hunting and heraldry in medieval Europe. The words now seem like archaic non-sequiturs, but perhaps that is because of our more distant relationship with the natural world. 500 years ago, a “drove of pigs” would have made sense to the farmers that herded, or drove, their swine to the market each week.

Since the publication of “The Book of St Albans,” a linguistic floodgate has been unleashed and naturalists took creative license with the animal collective nouns. Some are logical in that they describe a physical characteristic (a prickle of porcupine), a habitat (a rookery of penguins), or an onomatopoeic feature (a peep of chickens). Others seem assigned randomly, with reasons only the imagination can decipher: a troubling of goldfish or a wisdom of wombats, for example.

Throughout my Integrative Project, I plan to explore these phrases through a series of ink and watercolor illustrations. These works will not be just portraits of animals en masse; rather, they will be layered with explorations of their word origins, natural history, current connotations, and related contemporary issues.


Additional (and somewhat random) thoughts...
A pride of lions originally referred to the regal nature of the “king of beasts” but I’d much rather see them marching in a gay pride parade. A flamboyance of flamingos of course leads me to the same conclusion.

And because goldfish were artificially selected against their naturally occurring brown and gray colors--reserved only for the Chinese royalty-- I see a perfect opportunity to create illustrations that parallel current issues of race and social class. While I have not discovered where “a troubling of goldfish” comes from, I do know where I can take it as an illustration.

My work has been described as “cute” and light-hearted, but also exaggerated and slightly irreverent. The style is clean, finished, and approachable by the audience, but the content can reach much deeper, more serious topics. By using personified animals in my work, I believe that the viewer can recognize parallels in their own behavior, without feeling threatened. Understandably, audiences feel less comfortable looking at drawings of humans having sex than drawings of toads having sex.

Maybe a quick tangent would clarify this idea. During my training as an interpretive ranger at North Cascades National Park, we were instructed on how to create effective programs—campfire talks, trail walks, hands-on exhibits, etc. One point that has continually resonated is that the program should be accessible to all ages and backgrounds; an eight year old should find just as much value as an eighty year old. It is a mighty challenge indeed, but one that always interested me.

So perhaps because of this training, I’ve always assumed that my audience would be everyone and anyone. This is why I believe that animals can be an effective vehicle for more complicated ideas. They are universally accepted and thus, no matter one’s background, the piece becomes inclusive instead of devisive.