#ely kish

The smell of a swamp is rich and thick. It hangs in the air like the morning mists, but lingers far longer than any fog. Edmontosaurus loves the smell. It smells like home. She wades deep through the soup, scooping up fallen vegetation, letting the water pour from her bill. The sound of the little splashes is so satisfying. Once a snail was in a mouthful of weeds, but its shell crunching in her mouth didn't even startle her—that's how pleased she is in the bogs. When the sun is high and bakes the swamp, she rests in the shade of the taller trees, shakes gnats from her hide, and dozes to the songs of birds and small pterosaurs. When evening comes she always manages to find her herd in the drier places and sleeps in their company. But when the sky lightens before dawn, she moseys off to enjoy the swamps alone again.

One must be a seeker at the end of the world. Far from any green, Dromaeosaurus hunts for scraps of goodness, a last morsel of meat, a damp swallow of marrow, a tender leaf of skin. The rest of the desert has abandoned life, forgotten about it, but Dromaeosaurus has not. It appreciates the Chasmosaurus more than the rest of the world, sees the value in a withered mummy. There are treasures in the dust.

Autumn has come to Michigan. The birch leaves look like little flames wagging on the ends of branches. It’s sunny, but cool, with strong winds pushing heavy clouds across the sky. They won’t drop any rain here; the air currents won’t let them linger. Two mammoths have wandered through the trees, a long way from their grasslands south of the glacier. They’re thirsty and the lake is sweet. A breeze brushes their short summer coat drawing ripples in the fur. Soon the mammoths will turn shaggy, woolly. This is the end of their summer cut. A large moose gives the giants quiet distance, lets them suck up water while it crops water grasses and the succulent parts of lilies. The beaver, for its part, doesn’t even notice the mammoths. They repay its attention in kind. The wind shifts a little, pushes the water grasses against each other, sways the tops of pines, and pulls a few ochre leaves from the birches. They look like flakes of amber when they land on the surface of the water. As the air stills, a chickadee sings, its dee-dee-dee filling the space between breezes. The mammoths’ bellies feel bloated and cold now, so full are they of the lake. With a rumbling sigh, they turn back to the grasslands to wander, feed, and let the autumn sun warm their backs before the coming chill.

art by Ely Kish

Blinding sun-reflections flare on the river’s surface. It almost looks like the water is on fire, with a molten spot flashing yellow and white. Dragonflies skim though it, dip near the water where freshwater sharks gape and snap, hoping to catch insects that fly too low, their weird smiles looking like black crescent moons breaking the flashes of river-carried sunlight.

In 1990, the Natural Museum of Natural History debuted the “Life in the Ancient Seas” exhibit, featuring a 150-foot mural by Canadian artist Ely Kish. The mural covers the entire Phanerozoic Eon (541 million years) and includes hundreds of marine animals.

There aren't reproductions on the web that do here work justice, but Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs has a nice writeup with scans of her work in An Odyssey in Time.

Renowned artist Ely Kish, known largely for her paleoart in the 1980s, passed away this month at the age of 90. Above is a sampling of her work.