Sculpting Mountain Goats in Glacier National Park

The art of art, and the art of living, are an eternal treasure hunt: you never really know what you’re going to find. You might start out on a particular day in search of grizzly bears and never find a one, only to have the most extraordinary experience with a family of otters. Things just work that way in life and part of the art of getting the most out of experiences is embracing off-ramps and side routes to our intended agendas. In this case, it was making the most of an encounter with a group of mountain goats Glacier National Park.

We had the great pleasure of welcoming Jenny’s folks all the way from Maryland to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Neither of them have ever been to Glacier National Park so we set that in our sights as a destination to celebrate. Jenny, young George, and I took a short walk to Hidden Lake from Logan Pass, to stretch our legs. We were hiking the path of intermittent earth and snow – along with hundreds of other tourists – thinking we couldn’t POSSIBLY see much for wildlife, when the most remarkable encounter with a mother mountain goat and kid suddenly materialized. Though Jenny and George opted to continue hiking after spending several minutes watching and photographing, I remained there making many pencil sketches and trying to absorb as much about what I was seeing as possible.

Hanging out with the mountain goats…

Often I do not feel that I’ve truly experienced something until I make an effort to sketch or sculpt it. Making a sketch or modeling a bit of wax versus taking a photograph has a way of holding us more accountable to what is before us. For me, the sketches and the time spent studying deepens the experience and ultimately helps distill down the real meaning and value of the encounter.In the case of this mountain goat, I was initially attracted to the fact that this cute little kid was at her side, like the cutest wild stuffed animal you had ever seen.

 

 

 

But the more time I spent there the more I was captivated not by the mother/child relationship, but by the tattered coat of the nanny. Even though it is full-blown summer throughout most of North America, this Mama has yet to fully shed her winter coat. It’s like when you’ve only packed a sweatshirt and it’s either blazing hot out or bone-chillingly cold…and you’re caught unprepared, poorly dressed and stuck making the best of it.

 

 

 

 

Since the sketchbook fits much more neatly in a backpack or into the top of one’s pants waist band, than wax (and gums up your backside far less when things gets warm), I often sketch in a notebook first and then sculpt as soon as there’s an opportunity.

That opportunity didn’t present itself until two days after we returned home—but with the details of form and behavior and attitude still saturating my mind, I pulled out some wax and did my best version of that nanny goat from memory. Part of what was so appealing, which I realized only after working in three dimensions, were the textural shifts and arrangement of forms on her clean summer coat, which showed off her svelte anatomy, versus the clumpy, almost bountiful feeling of her wooly winter coat that hung on in piles. Unlike bison, who begin to shed on the points of the rump first, it appears that the goats begin at the other end and then work backwards. Part of the enjoyment was looking at how the shedding patterns moved along the flanks and exposed the animal beneath all of that fluff.

A future mountain goat sculpture?

Now that the sketch is done, it will go onto the shelf with dozens of other small studies like this for a protracted period of evaluation— Every idea like this seems like the best one I’ve ever had the time it formulates. Only after looking at it for weeks, months, or even years, does it become clear whether it is worthy enough to pursue for a finished piece. What do you think? Drop on over to our Facebook page or contact us and let me know!

 

Goat images: Jenny Golding. Sketch images: George Bumann.