How an Owl Was Born from Rabbit, Snake, Squirrel and Porcupine – Athene Noctua of Our New Days

 

Sometimes when I preserve game pelt I leave the original shape and contours without stretching them. More often than not when the pelt is ready for my artwork, I find that the creative ideas come from the original shape I had left intact.

So was the case with a cottontail pelt I decided to use. Immediately I saw an owl:

The back of the “owl” had a lot of character as the white fur of the rabbit mimicked nicely the feather colours of the owl.

So, an owl it was going to be.

I wanted to use porcupine quills that I had collected in the desert. These are small quills that are shed seasonally:

The steps:

First, my owl had to have an identity. Given the relatively surreal arrangement I had in mind, a pair of human eyes did not seem too farfetched. Indeed, lately I had painted alluring female portraits and I borrowed the eyes for my owl!

Next, and to keep with the times, I decided to have a face mask for my owl. A piece of shed snake skin,delineated by small turquoise stones, was a good choice as it would not cover the face too forcefully:

Now it was time for the quills. Since I had different sizes of these extremely sharp keratin spears of the “thorn swine” as they are called in German, I could make a diadème for my now clearly female owl.  To do so, I chose squirrel fur as the base:

And here is the diademe when a piece of the squirrel fur was carved to fit. The close-up shot also shows the snake skin mask and turquoise stones:

It was time for the owl to perch on something, and in this instance it was going to be a perch-stand I decided to build from collected dry cholla cactus and juniper tree:

Here is how the pieces came together-- actually, the branch of the cholla cactus on her left almost looks like ans arm and her saying "Voilà !!"

 

After some touch ups (feathers and jackrabbit toes en guise of the owl feet) the final shape of the project is shown in the photo atop this page.  It is an owl that reflects our times, but I believe shows the perspicacity the original “Owl of Athena” and then the “Owl of Minerva” represented in Greek and Roman mythology.

 

October 4, 2020

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020