Coyote sighting!!

First of the year!! Beautiful, summer-colored, inquisitive thing. Rather like this random one from cyberspace but much prettier, with a very pale, fine coat. More soon!

Art, Craft, and the Coywolf

While poking around WordPress for posts having to do with coyotes, I came across this piece on Janice Wright Cheney at::soulexposed::. Cheney has done some awesome work regarding coywolves, those creatures which are the offspring of the ever-wandering coyote and Canada’s eastern wolf. (A very great many of the coyotes of the east coast fit that bill.)  As she explains in this Archive 7 profile, she took wolf taxidermy forms (the mannequins upon which tanned hides are mounted), and covered “the creatures in cloth and dressed them in the furs of other animals, including coyote pelts. It’s as if they’re trying to pass themselves off as something that they’re not. They’re like little old ladies, but they’re dangerous.” I very much enjoy seeing coywolves approached in such a beautiful, thoughtful, and unique way.

Cheney has other pieces focusing on animals, and her profile describes how this work concentrates on and explores “the idea of vermin — creatures that are not wanted. Bear, coyote, rat, insects, they are all intruders on human territory, and Cheney is fascinated by the casual violence we condone in the name of wildlife encroaching on human-claimed territory.” All of these animals – even the bear – are living things that can be happened upon in the urban landscape. May our interactions and dealings with them be as nuanced and imaginative as Cheney’s.