Yesterday I read a post about how one of the largest elephants in India was killed by Poachers, and this morning I was reminded of the exhibition by the Graffiti artist Banksy
Elephants entered my awareness as a child with the Disney Movie Dumbo and around the same time my dad made an elephant "hat" for me out of papier mache which I used when my brothers and I won 1st prize in a carnival we entered. as Noah , his ark and the animals.
At age 11. My old secondary school was named Queen Elizabeth's Hospital (QEH) which kids from other rival schools referred to as "Queer Elephants House" to tease us.
At about the age of twenty three I threw a joint birthday party at the infamous Clays Lane Housing cooperative on the site of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park & Olympic village. The main symbolism in the flyer that my friend and I designed was a "smurf", which was intended to represent "Earth/Smurf consciousness" however we also incorporated an sacred chao/yin yang and at the insistence of my friend an elephant .
The preservation of elephants, tigers, rhinos, etc like the rainforests and environmental protection more generally seems to me to be one of the most critical goal facing humankind.
I have blogged elsehere about elephants in the cartoon "Horton hears a who"
The final resonance of the elephant that seems worth mentioning is in the imagery often used to represent in the Hindu/ Buddhist deity Ganesh.
