WHERE THE DEER AND THE ANTELOPE PLAY
Expert working with RAM staff to restore vintage wildlife dioramas, build new ones
When Terry Chase was in the fifth grade in Jefferson, Indiana, he made a diorama for his school science fair. This was no boring shoebox. It was an intricate depiction of a prehistoric sea. The diorama won first prize. It was so impressive, the local bank asked if they could display it in the window.
Chase was thrilled. But when he arrived at the bank to see his art on display, he was horrified. The diorama had been carefully crafted from modelling clay. And it hadn’t enjoyed the hot Jefferson sun.
“It melted into a big pile of snot,” he recalls with a grin.
Today, Chase, 70, is one of the world’s most acclaimed and respected diorama artists. Based from his studios at the Ozark Museum of Natural History, near the Missouri-Arkansas border, he travels the world, from China to Saudi Arabia, meticulously building and restoring exhibits that bring the natural world to vivid life.
His goal? To combine art with science, to create scenes so dramatic, so detailed, so vibrant, that the viewer’s jaw drops open.
Now, he’s working with staff at the Royal Alberta Museum to bring eight of the museum’s most beloved vintage wildlife dioramas back to life — and to build nine new dioramas. He’s hand-carving the snow banks, hand-tinting faded juniper bushes, pressing hoof prints into plaster with an actual deer leg.
“Thirty years ago, there’s no way they would have put dioramas into a new building,” said Chase. “Now there’s a real renewal of interest in dioramas. But now that dioramas and models are back in vogue, there aren’t many people around who have experience at doing them.” Chase has 45 years of practice. He’s a scientist, with a PhD in paleontology. He’s an artist, who spent years training with master diorama-makers. And he grew up in a family where hunting was an important part of life. His mother’s family is native American — Chickasaw and Choctaw.
“For my grandfather, it was a rite of passage to teach all of his grandchildren how to hunt and take care of game.”
Chase pulls on all that diverse experience as he painstakingly recreates scenes of Alberta flora and fauna.
In some ways, you’d think dioramas would have gone out of style. In this era of digital imagery and virtual reality, why go back to the classic, static dioramas?
“Museums are about real things,” said Mark Steinhilber, the RAM’s director of natural history. “We want to stay true to that. We have very many of those high-tech things in the gallery, too. But as much as possible, we want to show real objects.”
“And the dioramas have been the icons of our museum for 50 years,” added Bill Weimann, the RAM’s assistant curator of mammalogy.
Indeed, there is something timeless, awe-inspiring, in these mounted animal models. They allow for a contemplation, an appreciation that a darting image on a video screen can’t match.
The new models will feature animals in dramatic, dynamic poses. A bison wallowing. Two white-tailed deer jousting during
We have very many of those high-tech things in the gallery, too. But as much as possible, we want to show real objects.
rutting reason. A couple of pronghorn antelope doing their best to sneak under a barbed wire fence. And they won’t be encased in glass. Visitors will be able to walk right up to them, almost — but not quite — close enough to touch.
The new dioramas, though, won’t have the sort of detailed hyper-realistic painted backdrops that made the museum’s original diorama so magical, where the paintings created the illusion of a three-dimensional landscape. They’ll rely primarily on photographs and digital illustrations for their backgrounds. But the scene featuring the rutting deer includes lots of real grass, carefully harvested in Sundre. The antelope tableau features weathered wooden fence posts strung with barbed wire on the top and more antelope-friendly smooth wire on the bottom.
You have to be a fastidious perfectionist to get this kind of hand-crafted fine detail right. And watching the team at work, it’s easier to understand why the new museum, which looks “finished” on the outside, is still months away from opening.
Chris Robinson, the RAM’s executive director, won’t say exactly when he expects they’ll open — except it will be sometime in 2018.
So far, he says, they’ve moved 500,000 artifacts and objects from the RAM’s permanent collection from the old Glenora site to the downtown location at 9810 103A Ave. That’s leaves 1.5 million pieces still to come.
It’s hard to be patient when you get a glimpse of how impressive the finished museum might be. But the RAM’s dioramas will be waiting for us.
And thanks to LED lights and climate control, they won’t be melting.
“They’re going to last another 100 years,” said Chase.
And he means it.