The Dr. Dolittle of High Art

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

January 16 -- Inside, it is dark, and the cavernous cathedral with 50-foot-high ceilings is filled with ambient music. Translucent curtains made from thousands of used tea bags divide the space; much of the floor is covered with smooth black river rocks.

As the viewer walks along a path of wooden planks, large-scale photographs tinted in sepia and umber tones hang frameless, suspended at eye level by wires from the triangular paper trusses above.

The photographs by artist Gregory Colbert show humans interacting with animals, as do the films displayed on three screens at the ends of long halls.

“To me, there are no objects in the museum,” Colbert told reporters who had gathered Friday under a banner of a child reading a book to an elephant. “It’s really a nomadic bestiary.”

The reporters were inside the Nomadic Museum -- a 56,000 square-foot temporary structure of steel cargo containers and cardboard tubes that mushroomed over the holidays just north of the Santa Monica Pier -- to preview the third incarnation of Ashes and Snow, a traveling exhibition of Colbert’s films and photographs.

The goal of the exhibit, which opened Saturday and runs through May 14, is to promote cooperation between species, Colbert said.

“This whole program is about letting a whole group of species back in the arts that were once treated as collaborators, not objects,” Colbert explained. “There are many other masters in nature. Not just humans.”

Canadian-born Colbert is a big man in his mid-forties with a gentle but commanding presence, a real-life Dr. Dolittle of high art, with strong features and shiny dark hair pulled back from his face in a pony tail that betrays the beginnings of gray around his temples.

In his work we see humans dancing with birds of prey and resting with large spotted cats. A young girl writhes on the ground as a pack of African wild dogs crouch, snarl and circle around her, and the artist himself engages in an underwater ballet with a whale.

“It’s really important that I did it after feeding time because they are carnivores,” Colbert explained about the whales.

A career that began in documentary filmmaking led to fine-arts photography. But Colbert turned his back on galleries and museums after his first exhibition in Switzerland in 1992. During the next ten years, none of his work was shown.

Instead, he began an Odyssey that led to 34 expeditions in Asia, Africa and Antarctica, photographing several dozen species -- cheetahs, ocelots, jaguars, hawks, eagles, ibis, margays, orangutans, gibbons, caracals and crocodiles, to name only a few.

“I love to travel,” Colbert said. “I love the disorientation of coming into contact with other human beings where I don’t understand what is going on.”

The people in his pictures include Burmese monks and trance dancers. Many of them have their eyes closed, apparently so the viewer will focus on seeing the soul of the animal.

Water figures largely in Colbert’s work, and in one film we see him at rest atop what appears to be a giant manatee lying on a river bottom.

But of all the animals Colbert has interacted with, it seems he has a special fondness for elephants, and he frequently refers to them.

When asked a question he would rather not answer he will say “the elephants will be laughing at us” or “I would rather keep that between myself and the elephants.”

He says he selects the people in his photographs for their ability to relate with animals because “an elephant will yawn in your face if it is bored.”

After debuting Ashes and Snow in 2002 at the Arsenale in Venice, Colbert teamed up with Shigeru Ban, an architect known for getting unexpected results from unconventional materials.

“I think we share the same sensibilities,” the quiet and unassuming Ban explained about the partnership. “We are both interested in the same basic things. Animals. Raw Materials.”

Ban’s first Nomadic Museum appeared in the spring of last year at New York’s Pier 54, where 500,000 came to view Colbert’s work, according to Ashes and Snow’s promotional material.

Now in Santa Monica, the Nomadic Museum is composed of 152 steel cargo containers stacked 34 feet high in a checkerboard pattern. Its columns and trusses are made of “paper tubes” -- actually heavy cardboard-like cylinders commonly used to mold concrete columns -- and the roof is covered with a heavy fabric-like material.

The museum will stay up until May 14. After it is disassembled, many of the components will be packed into eight containers and shipped off. The remaining containers and materials will be left behind to be reused. Possible future destinations for the exhibit include the Vatican, Paris and Beijing.

Admission to Ashes and Snow is $15 adults, $12 seniors, $10 students with ID, free for children 6 and under. Special group and educational rates are available.

Exhibition hours are Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 7 p.m. Open Monday to groups by arrangement.

For more information visit www.ashesandsnow.org

Ashes and Snow supports the Flying Elephants Foundation, a US-based non-profit organization.