ACF News ACF News Canadian artist Daniel Taylor is travelling to Africa
| Canadian artist Daniel Taylor is travelling to Africa |
|
As Daniel and Ginette Taylor pack their bags for a month-long trek through western Cameroon, they're doing their best to prepare for the unpredictable.
The Coquitlam couple will leave B.C.'s cold, wet fall behind for the stifling heat and humidity of the tropical jungle as they search for the Cross River gorilla. With fewer than 300 living in the wild, it's the most endangered of all the gorillas, hemmed in by farmland and hunted by poachers. Daniel plans to get as close as he can, hopefully just a few feet away. He has to if he's going to get the kind of detailed sketches and photographs he needs to create the kind of high-realist art he's known for.
"Apparently it's safe enough," he said, brushing off concerns about possible
encounters with less than friendly poachers. "The only thing that would really
threaten us would be the animals and the bugs." The trip is partly sponsored and organized through a partnership of Artists for Conservation and the African Conservation Foundation. Daniel and Ginette will be joined by field workers, conservationists and biologists who are studying the Cross River gorilla and its habitat.
Part of the trip will be a tour of nearby primary schools, where the group will teach kids about their environment, the Cross River gorilla and its preservation. Daniel is packing art supplies for the children to use in his workshops and some of their gorilla drawings will be made into posters and distributed to 30 schools dotted along the forest borders. The aim of the trip - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as Daniel describes it - is to use art to help save a critically endangered animal in a place where residents are understandably more concerned with immediate survival than the environment's long-term sustainability.
And when he returns, Daniel's artwork will be turned into a display scheduled
to tour throughout North America, Europe and Africa to raise further awareness
and much-needed funds for conservation efforts.
http://www.natureartists.com or
by Craig Hodge/the tri-city newS |
The Cross River gorilla lives in the remote and densely forested mountains
along the Nigeria-Cameroon border. Recent studies show most of them live in 11
separate locations, each at least 10 km apart.
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