Walrus Ivory Tusk with Animals
When Luna sheds her pearly luster
Over the land of the midnight moon
Pale while wolves and gyrfalcon
Polar bear and snowy owl
Pursue the fleeting ptarmigan
And pale receding caribou
Then stalks ivory gleaming death
Consuming glacial mountain, moon and stars
It was common for me at the time to write a brief poem upon the completion of a work in stone or ivory.
One night I finished this piece and was about to pack it for shipping. I turned all the lights out except for a candle which I placed in front of the sculpted tusk. The tusk cast a shadow against the wall of all the animals. I noticed that as the candle flame flickered the animals seemed to move. So I picked up the candle and slowly moved it back and forth in front of the tusk. It was electrifying. Due to the 'in the round' nature of the sculpture the animals appeared to be moving relative to each other. They seemed to be in a bit of a stampede. The hair on my neck and arms stood up. I had just self-initiated myself into the paleolithic cave painting mysteries.
Walrus ivory (fresh). Fresh walrus ivory is legally taken by native Inuit peoples of Alaska and northern Canada. They sell the tusks to the government which auctions them off. 28.5 inches in length.
For those interested in CSS3 the 'paleolithic' border around the poem and description above uses the CSS3 'border-image' attribute. Each of the corners and sides has a different image. The side images repeat, if necessary, while the corner images do not. This was the challenge I set myself to make each of the eight image elements unique. All are on the same image:
It displays perfectly in Firefox (3.6.15 and higher) and Opera (11.01). It displays imperfectly in Safari (5.0.3) and Chrome (10.0.648.127).
Unfortunately, even newly released Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 does not support 'border-image'. Of course, IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 DON'T support 'border-image'. No version of IE will support the CSS3 property 'text-shadow' which I use on the poem above, either. It seems like Microsoft is bound and determined to lose the 'front-end' design part of the browser war once and for all.
CSS Code:
.paleolithic {
border-width: 48px 48px 96px 96px;
-moz-border-image: url("../images/cave256.png") 48 48 96 96 round;
-webkit-border-image: url("../images/cave256.png") 48 48 96 96 round;
-o-border-image: url("../images/cave256.png") 48 48 96 96 round;
border-image: url("../images/cave256.png") 48 48 96 96 round;
padding: 10px;
margin: 0px 0 0px 0px;
}
