Pack of Wolves
“Animal Herds” is a mobile installation of hundreds of small cut out animal paintings that are assembled directly onto the wall in the forms of wolves. (Images from install at 301 Gallery.) The wolves are composed of the animals that they eat, including deer, caribou, moose, musk oxen, bison, mice and many others. Each prey animal is painted on vellum with radiant color bleeds in fluid ink, which is countered by the specificity of the hand cut animal shape.
Due to massive extermination campaigns and overdevelopment of natural areas, gray wolves are now endangered across most of the U.S. Their struggle for survival hinges on the presence of a healthy and diverse ecosystem, indicated by the wide variety of species that they subsist on. The energy from the prey becomes the energy of the predator upon consumption. The animals mass together to become the predator and change formation each time the piece is installed, creating a new form of existence.