Ice Age Oregon: Ceramic Sculpture
Gallery
For millions of years large mammals in North America were peerlessly diverse. 13,000 years ago people triggered the extinction of most of them. Since 2003 I've been hand-building ceramic sculptures of those formerly in Oregon.
My siblings will tell you that as a boy, I wanted to grow up to be a dinosaur. Before I could read my father had shown me the rudiments of making a brontosaurus or triceratops; modeling clay had been a toy of his as a child. So as a grade schooler I took it to school with me and made small sculptures on my desk between assignments. But by junior high, my interest had turned elsewhere. Still, once in a great while I would pick up a bit of something and mold it.
Occasionally my wife would see me doing it. Being a painter, she encouraged me with an occasional gift of modeling clay for Christmas or my birthday. I'd work it for a couple of days, then set it aside for another month or year. But for Christmas 2002, she tried a new tack: ten weeks of classes at the local pottery studio. Three years later, I've been at it slowly but steadily, building up a portfolio of long-gone Oregonians.
Sean Cooper of Paleocraft and Max Salas are especially inspiring.
Gone for good:
- American Mastodon: a browsing proboscidean, cousin to elephants
- Colombian Mammoth: a grazing proboscidean, sibling to elephants
- Giant Short-Faced Bear: a grizzly-sized running bear, acting like a giant hyena
- Shasta Ground Sloth: a black-bear sized browser
- Jefferson's Ground Sloth: a grizzly-sized browser
- Harlan's Ground Sloth: a browser the size of a small rhino (1.5 tons)
- Saber-toothed cat: tiger-sized big game predator
- Scimitar-toothed cat: lion-sized big game predator
- Western Horse, Mexican Horse, and Onager: they originated here
- Western Camel: like a long-legged dromedary
- Large-headed llama: llamas originated here, too
- Long-nosed and Flat-headed peccaries: about the size of a European wild boar
- California Tapir, like the ones currently in Brazil
- Giant tortise, like in the Galapagos
- Shrub ox: a temperate climate musk ox
- Stellar's sea cow
- Pronghorns: Conkling's, Shuler's, and Diminutive
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Still living elsewhere:
- Lion
- Cheetah
- Jaguar
- Bison
- Wolf
- Grizzly
- Moose
- Sea otter
- California condor
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