Riding on Galápagos: In Which Charles Darwin Sneaks Up on and Surfs Tortoises for Science

Darwin on Galapagos, linocut 17.8 cm x 26.7 cm, 2nd ed., 2012 by Ele Willoughby

"The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking closely behind them. I was always amused, when overtaking one of these great monsters as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead. I frequently got on their backs, and then, upon giving a few raps on the hinder part of the shell, they would rise up and walk away; but I found it very difficult to keep my balance."

-Charles Darwin, 1835, Galápagos Islands

I initially carved this block to honour the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. Today he would be celebrating his 206th. I depicted Darwin as a young man, during his famous voyage on the HMS Beagle and its stay in the Galápagos Islands. The giant tortoises which thrived on the islands, and the variations in species from island to island were instrumental to his thinking, when he later wrote "On the origin of species" which divulged his understanding of biological evolution. The cultural impact of "On the origin of species" is immense. Darwin built on the growing understanding that not only did life evolve, but that this could occur without some sort of supernatural control; he made the intellectual leap to argue that natural selection was all that was needed to explain the evolution of life on Earth. Yet somehow, Darwin failed to mention tortoise surfing in this great work.

Exploring Alternate Evolutionary Paths in Clay

Source: chrisgarofalo.com via minouette on Pinterest

This isn't the first time I've written about ceramic artists playing with variations on flora and fauna as we know it; it is something which definitely appeals to me, and fits squarely in that wondrous creative region where art and science intersect. Chicago-based artist Chris Garofalo took inspiration from her garden when she began to make hybrid creatures or plants in clay. I particularly like how her site describes this as imagining a different evolutionary path for life:

By blurring the distinction between lang, sea and air, the plant and animal kingdoms- by examing the state between the waving arms of a sea anemome and unfurling tendril of a fern- a kind of hybridization or exogamy of all biological lifeforms takes place. The results are an exploration into what might have occurred with slight changes in early evolutionary events.

Source: chrisgarofalo.com via minouette on Pinterest

The 'Basidiomycete Florid Hoveren' above alludes to the Basidiomycota a phylum which contains 37% of the true fungi, including mushrooms and yeasts. "Florid", of course, means flowery, and "Hoveren" is apparently Old English (frequentative of hoven) from which we get words like hover. So perahps it describes itself as a flowery, hovering, mushroom. the 'Siphonophore Royale' below is more transparent; a siphonophore is any of various transparent marine hydrozoans, of the order Siphonophora, that float or swim as colonies of polyps, the sort of colony of creatures we sloppily think of as 'jellyfish'. The 'Corallia Bractea' below literally can mean a 'gold leaf' coral, but it is also reminescent of the bracteate flower, where a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches (or bracts). The sculpture below, 'Blastomycetes' actually refers to a real organism; Any of various yeastlike, budding fungi of the genus Blastomyces that cause diseases in humans and animals. 'Redocumaize Porifera' is a bit mysterious. We know that porifera are the sponges, and maize the corn family. We can see how she is imagining alternate pathways for polyps, mushrooms, corals, flowers, grasses and sponges, or growing a garden of ceramic evolutionary might-have-beens.

Source: chrisgarofalo.com via minouette on Pinterest

Source: chrisgarofalo.com via minouette on Pinterest

 

Source: chrisgarofalo.com via minouette on Pinterest

Be sure to peruse the rest of her portfolio!

Ceramic Might-Have-Beens

British ceramicist Sophie Woodrow knows that the Victorian fascination with nature (though it was firmly defined as 'other' than human), collecting and romanticizing nature in a way which was ultimately kitsch is a great place to seek ideas and inspiration. Though most Victorian science was of the 'descriptive' sort, I know I find their romantic and sometimes heroic collecting an inspiration myself; it is definitely a class of activity at the fertile intersection of art and science, like the building of wunderkammers (Cabinets of Curiosity), gathering everything from rocks, to ferns, to fossils, to exotic animal species from around the world. I love how she describes the Victorian "enormous misinterpretations of geological evidence" (particularly of biological evolution) as "a game of Chinese whispers¹ played over millennia". She's been inspired by natural history, and our changing ideas about evolution, to create a growing collection of ceramic "might-have-beens". This makes me think of the Rhinogrades, the wonderous "might-have-evolved" creatures of Harald Stümpke [Gerolf Steiner]. Her imaginary-animal pots are likewise truly wonderful.

 
Bear (41 cm height)


Totem (39 cm height)

 
 Little Owl


 
 Crowd Scene

Here she speaks about her process:
 

 Be sure to check out both her recent work and archive!

↬Lou Lou & Oscar

 1 "Chinese whispers" is the British name for what North Americans call the game of "broken telephone" where a message passed by whispers from person to person, mutating as it travels along.