"Gorilla and Baby Goat"

8" x 10" (image) 9" x 12.5" (paper)

3 layer reduction

Oil based ink on Kozo paper

Available for purchase here.

I have the image of a hand burned into my memory. A large, black, hand pressed up against a glass enclosure. Walking down the narrow, dirt path toward the next primate exhibit, the hoots of gibbons in my ears, I looked up and saw a hand so human that it gave me a startle when I next saw the hairy, beastly, body attached.

The gentle hands of Koko the gorilla many times caressed her pet kittens, caring for them as if they were own gorilla offspring. Koko's trainer reported that when the first of her kittens, "All Ball", was killed and Koko learned the news, she made sounds as close to human weeping as perhaps a gorilla can come.

I have the sound of voices burned into my memory. A duet of childlike cries. Rubbing out prints as a guest artist-in-residence in rural Kentucky, the silhouettes of dying sunflowers in my peripheral vision, I jumped when the baby goats who lived beneath my barn-studio cried out for their mother: "Maaaa".