30257: Lally (announce) :Audubon exhibition (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Reynald Lally <concordehaiti@yahoo.com>

Audubon's wildlife on display
Meticulous works have attracted viewers since 1800s
By Steve Palisin
The Sun News
A native Haitian's eye for nature gained him his own wing in not only the 
annals of natural history but Americana.
John James Audubon's enterprise to explore and expound the wilds beyond pretty 
songbirds and waterfowl radiates from "Magnificent Audubon - The Original 
Antique Prints." The exhibit continues through April 14 at the Cheryl Newby 
Gallery in Pawleys Island.
This collaborative effort with Ed Kenney, owner of Audubon Prints & Books in 
Vienna, Va., near Washington, D.C., resulted in a showcase including 33 framed 
antique prints of art drawn by Audubon (1785-1851).
Standing in her studio lobby, Newby led our eyes toward two double-elephant 
folios of "Wild Turkey." Both show the birds life-size each on a print about 26 
by 39 inches, originally published in volumes. The first piece, from 1827, was 
engraved and hand-colored, and the page's edges are visible. The second, with 
matting and a sky-blue background, shows the result of chromolithography in 
1860.
Newby took a standard sheet of paper just to show other print sizes in 
comparison with a folio, covering half the page. With a pen, she boxed off a 
quarter of the paper, hence the "quarto," and half of that, equaling an eighth, 
or "octavo."
The exhibit includes many birds indigenous to the Southeast, such as ducks, 
bobwhites, ibises and the extinct colorful Carolina parrot.
Besides art editions based on Audubon's "The Birds of America" (1827-28), the 
exhibit takes the viewer into the woods for works from "The Viviparous 
Quadrupeds of North America" (1845-48). Audubon embarked on that joint venture 
with the Rev. John Bachman of Charleston to document all the mammals on the 
continent.
"White American Wolf" shows the yellow-eyed subject facing sideways, flaring 
its teeth with tongue out over a bone that yielded a meal. In another folio, 
"Little Harvest Mouse," two rodents look at each other while nibbling on corn.
By phone, Kenney said people in Audubon's era hadn't really seen such creatures 
because they were nocturnal, but Audubon added insight.
"Up to that time, it was silhouettes," Kenney said. "He went 3-D and made them 
dramatic."
Newby said Audubon's sons, John and Victor, helped in producing the animal 
images and landscapes, and Bachman composed the text based on Audubon's 
scientific research and field notes.
That access to information for even rats, moles and "critters as we call them," 
as well as Audubon's takes on birds and bigger mammals, Kenney said, "kind of 
opened up the animal kingdom for the layman."
"This is a very scarce piece of Americana that people can still collect," Newby 
said.
Since opening her gallery in 1983, she has used Audubon's Plate 251, "The Brown 
Pelican," as her logo.



____________________________________________________________________________________
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news