Library of Babel: READ 1


	Siri's success, although marginal, set the stage for a number of emerging elephant artists throughout North America artists such as Starlet O'Hara of the Atlanta Zoo, Carol of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Kamala of the Calgary Zoo, Renee of the Toledo Zoo, Anabelle of the Alaska Zoo. Yet while many of these painters are both talented and prolific, the brightest star of North American elephant art world is undoubtedly Ruby of the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona. Ruby, a twenty-five-year-old Asian elephant with a fine sense of colour, has become an artistic as well as a financal success, raking in thousands of dollars a year through the sale of her abstract paintings. Recently the elephant painting movement has been spreading internationally to Europe, Israel, and now Southeast Asia. There are currently ten painting elephants in Thailand alone, and numbers are growing rapidly. Nearly all of these elephant artists come from working class backgrounds most were formerly employed in Thailand's logging industry, hauling teak logs out of the rain forests. Since the collapse of Thailand's timber industry in the mid-eighties, however, thousands of elephants have been left jobless, forced to begin new careers in the art and entertainment industries. Thanks to a fertile combination of economic necessity and stifled creative potential, the seeds of elephant art have taken firm root in Asia.
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