Kite

Kite by kyle parker cunningham

An elephant with her kite.

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.

Pretending us humans with our myriad distractions would be the first to ever notice extra terrestrials is the kind of anthropocentric folly we are all to easily fooled by.

If aliens did magically appear is almost certain the world of animals and plants will be the first to notice. They live in and of the natural world not on top of it. Ever observant, life for them depends upon knowing exactly what is happening around them at all times. If something was amiss in our atmosphere and outer space creeps were lurking in the shadows I'll put my faith into spiders and elk knowing before anyone else.

Elephants have generational knowledge carefully curated and shared since time immortal. I'm pretty sure if they find a little flying saucer poking around the Savannah they will probably already know with it is and what to do with it.

I imagine they will fly it as a kite, because what could be more fun for a trunk than a kite.

8 by 10 inches. Drypoint intaglio print. Watercolor added by hand. 2018.

Drypoint intaglio print of an elephant holding a string in its trunk that flies a small flying-saucer kite with a yellow watercolor dome, rendered in black ink with crosshatched texture on cream paper.

Variant print of the elephant and flying-saucer kite, identical composition with the yellow-painted dome on the kite, showing subtle differences in ink tone and plate wear in this edition.

Hand-colored edition of the elephant and kite print with soft green and teal watercolor washes along the ground beneath the elephant's feet, and an uncolored flying-saucer kite floating above on its string.

Edition of the elephant and kite print with a rich purple watercolor wash along the ground, the elephant rendered in black drypoint linework holding a string to the flying-saucer kite above.