Wild Americana

This collection was conceived as an informal sequel to The Naturalist’s Handbook, an earlier work inspired by the travels and notebooks of a fictional 19th century explorer. Many similar resources were referenced for this new work, while fresh research led me down several routes of uncharted territory. I also considered the specific period in which the story is set, encompassing the end of the American Civil War and the interconnected cultural shifts, creative movements and aesthetic art forms therein.

In line with the narrative of my tale, I revisited and expanded my research on the notebooks and sketchbooks of explorers from the 19th century. These logs provide the first-known documentation of many species; never only receptacles for finished thought, they can be an act of storytelling, an anecdotal art of travel. However, it is important to note that while intending to ‘discover the strange and exotic’, these ‘intrepid’ explorers were, in most cases, the only real foreigners and strangers in each landscape. The durability of paper and ink has allowed these documents to survive centuries, preserving not just data but imagination, and this is where my tale takes hold.

I delved into the rich and broad-ranging history of American folk art, a category often patronisingly described as primitive or naive, yet one which is bursting with craft, skill, innovation, and originality. The period between 1750–1900 was a prolific era in the American folk art world, from carved avian decoys to textural hooked rugs, vivid and detailed parchesi boards to decorated furniture, homestead paintings delicately rendered on scraps of wood to the elaborate Fraktur illustrations around the borders of family documents. Animals and natural motifs appear universally throughout the American folk art world, with the artists drawing on familiar forms for reference; it is art by the people, for the people, using local materials and depicting local subjects.

The folk art technique of scrimshaw was cited for parts of this collection. Scrimshaw is the art of etching or pricking designs into ivory, bone, tusk, or tooth, whale baleen being particularly common, where after the design would be‘inked in’with lampblack, tar or tobacco juice, and polished with whale oil and ash. Many 20th century sailors would practise this technique during long months at sea with whatever resources were to hand; jack knives and sail needles were common tools. Similarly to other forms of folk art, natural motifs were common, along with ships, whales, and shipwrecks. The acclaimed scrimshaw grouping named ‘Susan’s Teeth’ was of particular interest.

The trailing peak of American folk art creation coincided with a boom in the formation of secret societies in the USA; a period now known as ‘The Fraternal Age’. The timing of this surge is thought to relate to the end of the Civil War; at a time when America felt largely adrift, these masonic societies provided a common glue, most founded on kinship, faith, resilience, hope and charity. Often described as‘a science of symbols’,this burst of fraternal activity inspired the creation of an abundant and expressive body of folk art objects. Frequent motifs again centre largely around nature, and include the all-seeing eye, the beehive, the sun and moon, accompanied by the hourglass, pairs of pillars, the anchor, the chain, and the heart in an open palm, every symbol carrying its own significance in the order of each society. Memento mori imagery was common, with skulls and skeletons representing not the macabre, but a reminder of life and mortality. These motifs were often arranged and appliqued onto silk and satin banners to be hung aloft, the compositions and fringed edging akin to large silk scarves.

And, naturally, the animals themselves inspired this collection, including the magnificent dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Each of these works is a‘banner’representing the formation of my own imaginary secret society; The American bison, a spiritually significant creature for many, whose number fell from 60 million to just 541 in under a century due to mass culling as part of the methodical subjugation of native Americans. The bald eagle, who, despite being named the national bird of the United States in 1782, was on the brink of extirpation in the late 20th century. The grey wolf, who, at the hands of the human race, endured the most relentless and ruthless persecution one species has ever waged against another, and now occupies just a tenth of its original range in the United States. My collection recruits these creatures as powerful symbols, standing for faith in nature, hopeful resilience, and issuing a plea for kinship and charity in preserving our natural world.

‘To discover and to reveal–that is the way every artist sets about his business. All art is, I suppose, a way of exploring.’–Robert J. Flaherty, 1884–1951.

‘All a man has to do is see; all about us nature puts on the most thrilling adventure stories ever created, but we have to use our eyes’–William Beebe, American naturalist and ornithologist, 1877–1962.