One day the rhinocerous [sic] became my spirit animal
ADB-151101#17
I’m not sure when or how it happened. One day the rhinoceros became my spirit animal. It was likely during my “woodcut” phase, as I looked for and collected old obscure medical illustrations and apocalyptic religious drawings. Somewhere in there the works of Albrecht Dürer came to my attention. Born in 1471, over 500 years before me, he became a master printmaker, knew Leonardo daVinci, and was sponsored by the Roman Emporer Maximillian the First. He drew one of the first images of a rhino in 1515, based on a description only.
I first saw his rhino woodcut as a poster in the Chicago Art Institute gift shop. I named my first publishing company Rhinocerotic Press back in the early 1990s, and printed an original short story by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields.
This rhino is from a Selva flag, one of the seventeen contrade (city wards) in the Palio di Siena, a famous horse race in Siena, Italy. I continue to collect all manner of rhino miscellany. I have plastic Kinder egg toys, puzzles, wooden carvings, a metal head, as well as drawings and postcards. While I have seen a real live rhinoceros in the Toronto Zoo, I fear they will all become literal spirit animals (extinct) before I ever see one wild.
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