D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
September 2009
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Painting Lost Worlds
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Some fortunate people love what they do for a living, and are smart enough to realize it. Karen Carr is one such lucky devil.
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Karen Carr with "George." (Photo courtesy Karen Carr) |
"I went into advertising for 10 years," says Carr, making a sour face and sticking out her tongue. "Yuck. Soulless, awful work — trying to get people to buy things they can't afford, don't need, and probably wouldn't want if they hadn't seen the advertising."
Carr, an ebullient blonde whose body language exudes joi de vivre, is what she first dreamed of being at age six: an artist. "I guess maybe I had an early midlife crisis," she muses, recalling a steadfast decision at age 28 to "give what I always wanted to do a shot."
It wasn't easy. For hers is not just any art career.
"I am essentially a landscape artist and an anatomist," explains Carr, pausing for an interview amid the cheery, purposeful clutter of her multi-room downtown Silver City studio, a former barbecue restaurant off Bullard. "I recreate either lost or difficult-to-create environments, and the details of those environments that support specific flora, fauna and ecology."
Say what? Carr is describing the kind of oversized interpretive imagery each of us has seen — and no doubt taken for granted — in museums, zoos, parks, schools, public buildings and picture books since we were children. Carr's portfolio includes representations of extinct, elephant-like gompotheres (like those on this issue's cover), sharp-toothed dinosaurs, modern dolphins, poisonous frogs, jungle cats and colorful butterflies — as well as human beings in all manner of dress, surroundings and behavior.
"I've always enjoyed both wildlife and art," says Carr, seated under a framed poster displaying a detailed, scroll-like inventory of insects. "I love working with landscapes and animals. It's like being in control of your own world — like setting up a stage or a movie set."
The Texas native presides over a dog-friendly domain in which eight busy workers — including her husband, webmaster Ralph C. Gauer, Jr., and father, artist Bill Carr — meet the specialized visual needs of clients ranging from the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology to the Audubon Society, from the Dinosaur Society to Southern Methodist University, and many more. At humming high-tech stations, staffers sketch, draw and paint — usually with computer assistance — or conduct research, collate data and interact with prominent experts around the world.
Each person at the Karen Carr Studio has a specialty, from fine-art painting to map creation, figure drawing to online graphics. But everybody does more than one thing, and one has a sense that this enterprise is highly collaborative. This is a clutch of learners as well as educators. In one corner there's a life-size skeleton named "George" who helps teach human anatomy. In another is a stage set where models can be photographed as a guide for any illustrations that feature Homo sapiens in costume or action.
"We use a lot of cyclists as models," Carr volunteers. "They have great muscle definition. We take pictures of employees and their kids, too, as needed."
At present, the studio is engaged in a large, complex project on behalf of a Smithsonian Institution museum in Washington, DC. Carr's group is creating all the graphics, maps, murals and illustrations for a new "human origins hall," due for installation next spring. On the day of my visit Carr is using a pencil-like stylus on her artboard, through the sophisticated software programs Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop, in order to create a mournful scene on her 30-inch monitor that shows the burial of a Neanderthal elder in a pit full of boughs and flowers.
"I follow requests given to us by our clients," says Carr, pointing to a thick document that looks something like a movie script. "They tell us basically what they want; then we go back and forth with them until [the artwork] is finished."
For this endeavor, as with others, the studio distinguishes itself by taking on all aspects of the project, from consultation with and between world-renowned experts to archiving of material and creation of custom maps, paintings and so on. "We do everything," says Carr, emphasizing that there's more to this than simply making a pretty picture and sending it off. "It's job management as well as producing the work."
In the studio's marriage of the digital and three-dimensional fine art worlds, a complex mix of honed artistic skills, intuitive instincts, raw talent and up-to-date software know-how is required, including the ability to verify the accuracy of imaginative renderings. We are not in Hollywood, and what is shown has to conform with science-based reality — or at least the prevailing theories of what is or was real. The goal is first to take a technical concept or scientific premise, then make it appealing and accessible to the public. As a side benefit, perhaps that public will care a bit more about the natural world and human history. It's a daunting task.
"We have to train our employees," notes Carr, "because very few people do what we do. You don't learn this in school." No academic degrees are given in this field and training tends to be on-the-job. "We kind of invented our niche," she continues. "Our main competitor is a husband-and-wife team. Most folks doing this are individuals."
Because their market is so limited, the Silver City studio must accept assignments on a wide variety of subjects, as museums expand or revamp their exhibits, publishers release new books, and universities expand their missions. "We can't stay busy unless we generalize," Carr explains. It's an ongoing education for everyone, augmented by dialogue with experts as well as plenty of book, Internet and academic journal research. One month the crew is getting up to speed on the life-cycle of the Outer Banks crab, the next it is figuring out how to depict extinct ancient mammals no one has ever seen in the flesh.
A noteworthy recent task involved preparation of several exhibits for the New Mexico History Museum, which opened this summer in Santa Fe to critical and popular acclaim. (See "Blast from the Past," July 2009.)
"We had a lot of fun making 'My New Mexico,'" laughs Carr, referring to the oversize state map she and her team created for the museum. It is peppered with cartoon-like icons associated with people, places and happenings throughout the Land of Enchantment, ranging from the Navajo's sacred Shiprock butte to utilitarian Hobbs pump-jacks, from rolling northeastern grasslands to yucca-studded southwestern cattle ranches. Stylized images from our own region include the Gila Cliff Dwellings, W Mountain, WNMU, pronghorn herds, bicyclists and the Silver City Museum. Carr also managed to sneak in a representation of her 16-acre hillside homestead, which her extended family shares with horses, sheep, goats, turkeys, chickens, rabbits and dogs.
"The work I do here," says Carr, with a sweeping hand gesture, "is high-tech — and it pays for my low-tech life at home." The latter encompasses goats and chickens that yield milk and eggs, angora bunnies and churro sheep for wool used in spinning and weaving, turkeys and lambs for eating, and horses and dogs for riding and companionship.
The animals keep the Carr compound in constant motion because, as she observes, "they get very noisy about it when they're ignored." It is the fulfillment of a childhood dream, she crows, to be able to milk her own herd of goats. The menagerie began accumulating soon after Karen and Ralph, along with her parents, grandmother and daughter, relocated from the Dallas area seven years ago.
"I wanted to have my critters," says Carr, "and I really wanted to live — and do live — in one of the last wild places in the world. People think there are all these wild places out there and there aren't. There are large places that are really parks with animals in them." Truly wild places, she says, include New Mexico's Gila region and parts of Alaska, Africa, Russia and the Amazon — but not much else.
There are now more African antelopes living in Texas, Carr points out, than in Africa. Those in Texas aren't truly wild, but rather inhabitants of private reserves or game farms set up to serve sport-hunters. "People don't realize," she stresses, "how much of our planet's wild nature has been lost and how little is left. The window of opportunity to save it is closing quickly."
It comes as no surprise that the Carr clan's favorite pastimes include horseback riding, camping, birding and other outdoor activities. Their enduring connection to nature transcends generations. Karen Carr's father, Bill, was an in-house artist and sculptor for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, where her biologist mother, Linda, after graduating from the University of Texas-Arlington, also worked. "I grew up playing in that museum after hours," says Karen Carr, who recalls an early fondness for snakes, lizards and beetles. "I love that museum — and they are still one of our clients."