lifestyles
'An artist of animals'
Educating people about the beauties of the wilderness is a goal of Tom Swearingen and others at the Museum of Natural History
from Swearingen, director of exhibits at the Museum of Natural History, sits by a replica of a gargoyle in the lobby of the museum. Below: Swearingen installs a stuffed coy-dog, a cross between a coyote and a dog, in an exhibit.
--through squinting blue eyes, leaning forward in his chair. He works face-to-face with the fabulous beast. He models in clay with his hands, giving again identity to the previously mutilated face of the stone figure.
Story by Luisa Flores Photos by Tom Leininger
--through squinting blue eyes, leaning forward in his chair. He works face-to-face with the fabulous beast. He models in clay with his hands, giving again identity to the previously mutilated face of the stone figure.
Sitting in front of a sandy-colored sculpture, Tom Swearingen patiently models a new nose and jaws for the gargoyle taken from the facade of Dyche Hall in the '60s. Swearingen, director of exhibits at the Museum of Natural History, gratifies his work.
When he finishes his work, the beast once again has the jaws of a lion and the legs of a buffalo. Swearingen says that men have expressed the union of the two majestic animals through art.
"The lion is the king of the jungle, and the buffalo is the king of the plains," he said.
Just as two majesties join in the gargoyle, two skills join in the mastery of Swearingen, an artist of animals.
Swearingen, 58, began his studies at Kansas State University, planning to become a veterinarian. Eventually he transferred to the University of Kansas and graduated with a degree in art and design.
Swearingen's work emerges from his knowledge of living animals and his skill with fine arts. Colleagues, such as Philip Humphrey, said that that knowledge was essential to his work.
"The quality of his work is so excellent that he has been retained as consultant by the Kingdom of Bhutan to train taxider-
husts and other exhibit specialists," said Humphrey, director of the museum. The nation of Bahrain also has enlisted Swearingen to train museum personnel, Humphrey said.
Swearingen was born in Horton, a small northeast Kansas town. He learned animal anatomy during childhood from his experiences trapping and skinning animals with his father. Now he uses his knowledge for stuffing and mounting animal skins in a lifelike fashion. He also recreates their natural environments.
Swaringen and the museum team of experts in architecture, biology and other fields use their knowledge and artistic talent for making exhibits both attractive and educational.
"It takes curators, exhibits staff, administration people and facilities operations to
make this thing work," he said. "I've created a fellowship with human beings and animals."
Swearingen said the goals of his art were to make wilderness understandable to the public and to make the public respect nature. The motive of his work at the museum is to help change the attitudes of the people who visit the museum and to create
a more conservation minded mentality.
Among Swearingen's current projects are an exhibit about the black-footed ferret. The ferret is a good example of how the destruction of one element of the natural environment begins a chain of destruction, he said. The ferret was almost extinct in the United States because its main source of food, prairie dogs, were being poisoned. Swearingen
said this exhibit should be ready in the spring or summer.
Swearing is working on more than 32 new projects for exhibits, such as the red fox; the history of commercial fishing in the Kansas River; and the coy-dog, a cross between a coyote and a dog, which has been found in western Kansas.
In addition, Swearingen plans to install a sound system with up-to-date narrative for the panorama exhibit. He also is interested in reinstaling a jackalope exhibit in a short
"I've created a fellowship with human beings and animals."
Tom Swearingen
Director of exhibits at Museum of Natural
Historu
er version than one that previously was at KU.
One of his newer exhibits — showing how aspects of western Kansas wildlife change from day to night — is displayed on the sixth floor of Dyche Hall. Sound, movement and light will be combined in the exhibit, which cost approximately $6,000, he said.
"The animals' sounds in that exhibition really intrigue children," he said. "Things that turn and move have the ability to catch people's attention. I want to make them stop and look at it. When people stop and look at things, they learn something."
Swearingen said that animation had been used in previous exhibits.
"We had animated dinosauries earlier, and kids loved them," he said. "The museum must compete with other attractions to gain the attention of the people. That's why innovation is so important, and animation is a way to bring innovation to the museum."
Show to focus on children and violence
By Scott Williams The Associated Press
NEW YORK — We are not savages, suggests reporter Bill Moyers. Aggression, not violence, is hard-wired into the human condition.
That exception, of course, is violence among juveniles, which is the focus of his two-part, four-hour special, "What Can We Do About Violence?" which began on PBS yesterday and concludes tonight. His related report, "Does TV Kill?" aired last night on PBS "Frontline."
"With one exception, there is no evidence that we are more violent today than at other periods in our history," Moyers savs.
"We don't fully know yet the causes of violence or how to prevent or control it, but we do know some interventions work." Movers saves.
His report begins in California, the state that locks up more of its young people than any other, and talks to young criminals at the Ventura School, showcase of the state's 17 juvenile prisons.
It houses about 500 young men and 300 young women arrested for capital crimes. "Half of them will be back." Movers says.
Moyers also visits the Florida prison without walls, a Salt Lake City anti-gang program, and "Teens on Target," a teaching program involving teen-aggers who have been victims of violence.
Bill Movers
Ventura School tries to teach the young offenders right from wrong, to feel remorse for their crimes and empathy for their victims, and to give them values they often do not have.
"But the other side of that story is that half of them won't."
"To me, the interesting question is not why so many people become violent, but
"But I do believe that the larger, anonymous culture is teaching children about violence in ways that are contrary to what most parents, schools, churches and synagogues are teaching.
Moyers says he's still not convinced that seeing violence causes us to act violently, even though scientific studies suggest it.
— given what is intrinsic in human nature," he said. "How have we come to tame that aggression and channel it into work, sex, love, compassion, altruism?"
why so many people don't become violent
"You can turn off your own television set, but you cannot turn off the environment of television. It goes on without you. It's not just the networks. It's the music video, the movie, the trailer. It's the culture that mediates between us and the world."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
"Who first mediated between you and the world?" Moyers says. "Your parents, your priest, your uncles and aunts, or your neighbors, your teachers — they mediated for other human beings."
He's not suggesting TV is the dominant influence in violence. That burden falls on culture in its entirety, on poverty — and on the family.
"Now images are mediating for us; images created by people whose only interest is in making a profit out of creating that image." he says.
"Children learn violence first at home," he says. "Then they learn violence in their community, and if that community is broken down and you live in a neighborhood dominated by crack and guns, then violence is the world."
"It has taken us 30 years to get to the point where we are unlearning habits that were culturally invested in us — 30 years!"
Moyers notes that it will take time to change that world, just as it has taken 30 years to change attitudes in the United States about tobacco.
"It'll take us 30 years to come to grips with this violence issue because it, too, is a public health issue."
People and places at the University of Kansas.
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