Endangered Species Relief Tile

Cougar 7 1/2 6 1/4in

Project Goals:

• To become familiar with using endangered species as an art subject

• To learn about a working Maine ceramic artist, Tim Christensen, as well as the highly patterned art (alebrijes) from Oaxaca, Mexico

• To become acquainted with basic ceramic vocabulary

• To form and paint a ceramic animal relief tile that contains both imagery of an endangered or threatened species of your choice and an indication of the systems around it which promote that animal’s survival.

Artist Studied: Artist and Art Culture Studied: Tim Christensen and Oaxacan alebrijes from Mexico

Reflection:

I am helping spread awareness by educating people on the condition of cougars. I hope people will learn that we used to kill them for our own benefit without caring for their species. I think that the forest pattern can show their situation the most because it is not their most natural habitat but they have been forced to move there. Before they were hunted I bet they were in more of their natural habitats like mountains deserts and jungles but since they were hunted they were forced to move out of that habitat and mainly into the forests.

My color scheme is analogous between green and yellow. I like how the colors look and I feel like they fit well with each other. If I could change anything it would probably be the patterns that I used. I feel like some didn’t have that much of a story behind them and really express the state of the cougars.

I chose the cougar because it’s like a big cat. My animal is found on the west side of the United States down through Mexico. Around California, Wyoming, and Utah. Cougars are threatened because immigrants from Europe killed them to protect their own livestock but thankfully this is not happening anymore and the population is rising. I used its fur because they need it to stay warm during the winter, its teeth because that’s what they hunt with, trees because one of their habitats are forests, Porcupines because that is one of the animals cougars eat, and stars for the night sky because they hunt during the night.