"Scratchboard Drawing Of An Elephant" - art-by-darla-h

TITLE: Scratchboard Drawing of an Elephant

ARTIST: Darlene

EBAY ID: art-by-darla-h

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest...

I am a self taught artist who has been an animal lover all my life. Most of my art is animal art. I belong to A4C a group of artists who sell there art to benifit animals in need so the idea for this quilt just fit what I believe in.

"Endangered Legend" - Artschtick

TITLE: Endangered Legend
ARTIST: Deb Keirce
EBAY ID: Artshtick

Why I’m using my creativity to save the rainforest …

In a former life, I was a biochemical engineer, helping to bring manufacturing processes to life, to create newly discovered or synthesized pharmaceuticals. A very scary fact is that we are fresh out of ways to develop new antibiotics. This is scary because bacteria are NOT out of ways to mutate, and become immune to the antibiotics we can produce. Vancomycin is our last resort antibiotic - when bacteria are immune to all the others. Vancomycin resistant strains of common bacteria are on the rise. Patients who harbor vanco-resistant infections cannot be imprisoned in hospitals, so when they are feeling better, they are out and about in the general population, and those bacterial strains are going global.

What does all this have to do with the rainforest? There are a few undiscovered places we have access to, that may hold the key to finding new pharmaceuticals, and the rain forest is key to those discoveries. The oceans and space would be the other two. Anything we do to destroy the rainforest is potentially destroying products that could be discovered and developed to reduce human suffering in the future. It takes a lot of money and manpower to launch research programs in a rainforest. Some pharmaceutical companies have started the effort, but it will be generations before they will recover their research expenses, so we need those rainforests around for a VERY long time!

"Slumbering Dormouse" - Gougepaintings

TITLE: Slumbering Dormouse

ARTIST: Julie Gouge

EBAY ID: Gougepaintings

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest ...

As earthly guardians of this world we must tread lightly, or else all that we will be known for in the future are the deep, destructive, ugly footprints we have left behind. Down through history, species have come and gone. This is normal. It is the natural cycle of life on earth. However we, mankind, should not hasten this natural progression through our thoughtlessness and greediness.

If we are not careful we just might end up hastening our own destruction. Unlike other animals of this great, green planet, we alone have the ability to destroy our world. We are intelligent. We have the capacity to reason. We alone have the ability to recognize our careless destruction and strive to reverse it. We should not be the cause for the extinction of other species. Nature will see to that. When we are gone, our footprints on this earth should be no deeper than any other species that have passed into history.

This is why I am proud to be an artist whose work is represented on the Endangered Species Quilt. Hopefully, the beauty and symbolism of the quilt will encourage others to tread lightly and to strive to bring healing to the earth.

"Queen Alexandra's Birdwing Butterfly" - jazmin112-2008

TITLE: Queen Alexandra's Birdwing Butterfly

ARTIST: Susan Jane Smith

EBAY ID: jazmin112-2008

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest ...

I've worked for more than 35 years in Nature Conservation in Africa , as an amateur helper, and belong to the International Wildlife Association plus our local Alabama Wildlife Association.

My Grandfather went on an Amazon Expedition from 1911-1915. He told me many wonderful stories about his adventure and this has made me an adventurer too. When he was there the Rainforest was virtually untouched. Today it is endangered and faces terrible destruction every day because of greedy rich businesses robbing it of the wonderful trees.

We have to help all we can to save this habitat. Not only for all the flora and fauna that depend upon it for survival but also because the Rainforest supplies an incredible amount of oxygen that all the people in the World depends upon for life itself. You can imagine my reaction when Starr suggested raising money to buy a piece of the endangered Rainforests . I jumped at the chance to help.

I was so excited that I could help in a small way towards this incredible project. Hence I made my ACEO of the World's largest butterfly, which faces extinction due to collectors.

"Red Panda" - maryhelen22

TITLE: Red Panda

ARTIST: Mary Helen Epps

EBAY ID: maryhelen22

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest ...

Once, when I was young, I watched a documentary of a film crew that had happened upon an indigenous tribe, living deep in a rainforest near the Amazon River. The film makers called the tribe the “flower people” and continually compared them to early man, stressing that this was the tribe’s first encounter with “civilization”.

They were a beautiful people, decorating themselves and everything in their village with a multitude of tropical flowers in all shapes and colors. Their main diet was the pulp of a certain tree, which after the pulp was removed, the hulled out trunk became a canoe, the branches a hut or fire wood. They would celebrate the harvested tree, placing flowers and a new sapling in the spot where the tree had been taken.

They smiled and laughed a lot. They were friendly and more than hospitable to the strangers who had come to film them. It was like a Utopia. I longed to live with the “flower people”. Some time after, I saw “The Medicine Man” and realized that the “flower people” probably no longer existed.

Oh sure, there may still be a tribe, although they were probably relocated and are wearing tee-shirts with words and logos they don't understand instead of flowers. Trying to make whatever money they can, to feed and shelter their children and pay for medicines for their new illnesses. Everyday watching as more of the beautiful trees and flowers they once called home disappear. And knowing their children will never have the chance to experience the beautiful existence that those before them had.

I hope that my participation in this quilt and the money made for the Rainforest fund, will aide in making sure that the Utopia that is the rainforest, never disappears. In a world where so much is taken, we each must strive to give back.

"Chimpanzee" - starrgirlblue

TITLE: Chimpanzee
ARTIST: Star Daubenmire
EBAY ID: starrgirlblue

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest:

When our ACEO ebay group presented the subject "Endangered Species" as a theme for August 2008, I did some research to learn more about it. What I discovered was that not only particular plants and animals, but an entire ecosystem - the Rainforests of the Earth - are endangered. I learned that there is not just one rainforest, but rather there is a string of them running along the earth's equator where they maintain an average temperature of 80 degrees and receive approximately 200-400 inches of rain per year. This allows for a flourishing of life like no other place on earth.

The Rainforests have been around for milleniums, but our modern society has barely begun to explore their riches. In the meantime, humans have encroached into them to the point that more than half of their acreage has already been lost. It is understandable, on a local level, that the logging, farming and mining industries provide sustenance for the people who live in those areas. But the rainforest ecosystem represents a much larger picture that impacts all of earth's inhabitants. These forests are the source of life in so many ways! They provide 20% of the earth's oxygen and are a storehouse of medicinal plants. They are the natural habitat of a great percentage of the world's plants and animals. When we lose rainforest, we lose a source of life that sustains us all.

As an artist, I am an observer of details. I delve into the picture behind the picture so as to portray the essence of a thing. If I can understand anatomy and the structure of bone and muscle, then I can paint a life-like portrait. The viewer sees only the fleshly surface, but it is alive if it contains the structure beneath. In that same way, rainforests are part of our basic structure on earth. They sustain us whether we live in the tropics or in southwest Ohio. They contain unparallelled beauty and mysteries and species of life that are in some way connected to each of us.

Thus, I am extremely honored to be part of this art/quilt project that will raise funds to help preserve the rainforest. Our own small lives only become important when we can make a contribution that is bigger than ourselves. Through art, I have this opportunity to make a difference and I hope the quilt will not only grace someone's wall or bed, but it will help preserve a bit of our environment here on earth.

"The Frog Alchemist" - joy_found

TITLE: The Frog Alchemist
ARTIST: Joy Found
EBAY ID: joy_found

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest ...

The ACEO Endagered Species theme week challenge appealed to me because I have been seeking the best place to put my energies to help the environment. As a family, we recycle, and compost, and garden, and nurture a wide host of wildlife on our acreage but I knew I had to do more. I do my best to be a living teacher, and teach by example with my kids and everyone I encounter, and I just didn't feel like I was doing enough with all the crisis our earth is facing.

When I was invited on board to help facilitate promotion of the Quilt due to my experiences with the National Kidney Foundation of Michigan fundraisers, I was thrilled. When you put out a request to the Universe, I find that you may not get what you expect, but do get exactly what you need, and this project to Save the Rainforest an acre at a time is in perfect synchronicity with my ACEO work and desire to "do more".

A few weeks before the challenge my sons and I had been picking black raspberries and to our joy were greeting by hundreds of bounding baby frogs. We captured about a hundred of them and released them speedily into our various herb and vegetable gardens we've planted around the home. It was a brilliant frog parade, and we had much fun introducing these fabulous creatures to our personal sanctuaries. Each of us has created our own meditation garden we visit daily, and many of the frogs have stayed to become inhabitants nestled in the rocks among the sedum and sunflowers, and other natural structures.

So, you may wonder why the Alchemist Frog? Well, with the preponderance of frogs on our property I began thinking that it was entirely within the realm of possibility that one day human beings would simply be material in jars to be studied by evolved frogs. As a species, humankind seems hell bent on destroying nature, and I firmly contend that the planet was here long before we were and will continue long after we are gone. That said, I would like it to be here, healthy, beautiful, and strong for long into the future. So, like the many frogs we saw that day, I am striving to leave a light footprint, with a strong message that the world is connected, and as we destroying one ecosystem in the name of "progress" we are likely destroying many opportunities for discovering ways to better our existence without harming the existing flora and fauna.

Mankind is not patient. I am trying to be patient, and realize that while I cannot change the entire world, I may be able to save a small portion of it. So, I contribute my art, and my time to help purchase Rainforest acreage. I just hope my efforts are timely enough, and that through the sale of this quilt our ACEO group will effect a positive change on the environment, and raise awareness of the need for everyone to "do more" and "do better".

We've decided to dedicate our fundraising donations to the Cosanga Valley Project. This is an area of exceptional biodiversity in Ecuador, where many of the plant species are endemic, or restricted to this area, including an astonishing variety of orchids, bromelaids, ferns and trees. Mammal species include the mountain tapir, ocelot and puma, and the area is home to 310 bird species, including 30 species of hummingbirds. The Cosanga Valley also hosts a variety of rare species such as the Peruvian Antpitta, Bicolored Antvireo and "San Isidro Owl" that is regularly found only in the Cosanga Valley.

Even though this Rainforest region is across the world from me, I think of it each morning as I sit and drink my tea looking at the beauty of my Baldans Kaleidoscope orchid, and watching the hummingbirds drink from the feeder (we have seven who visit us regularly this year). We are connected, all of us, all living things. This is such a simple truth, and with this ACEO quilt our group places that truth in the hearts of the artist's who have contributed. I hope if you've read to the end of this entry that you recognize this truth as well, and you are now willing to "do more" to help save the Rainforest and work in your own way to sustain life on earth.

"Too Late" - amarillo-choctaw

TITLE: Too Late
EBAY ID: amarillo-choctaw

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest:

I am a registered member of the Choctaw Tribe. My father was Choctaw and my mother was White. There is an old Native American saying, “He who has one foot in the canoe and one foot in the boat, will fall in the water.” So, I chose to put my feet in the canoe.

I was born many winters ago near Bokchito, Oklahoma, on an Indian allotment. Bokchito is a Choctaw word which means “creek runs deep”. Oklahoma is also a Choctaw word meaning “land of red man”. Being Native American, I have strong feelings about taking care of the earth, the plants and animals given to us by the Great Spirit. Native Americans look at the plants and animals as “Our Friends”.

When I read about the Endangered Species Theme, I was drawn to contributing in my way, which was reproducing the artists’s cards onto fabric and making them into a quilt for auction. My interpretation for the quilt construction was approved by the Group. I chose a forest green color to frame the individual blocks of endangered species. The touch of yellow in the first border represents the sun and the outside border of light and dark blues are the waters and skies of night and day.

I feel very honored to be a part of this worthwhile project.

"Black Rhinoceros" - robertsloan2art

TITLE: "Black Rhinoceros"
ARTIST: Robert A. Sloan
EBAY ID: robertsloan2art

Why I’m using my creativity to save the rainforest...

I have several reasons. Let’s start with the coldest. I’m a living breathing mammal, a creature that would like to go on living and breathing. The lungs of the planet are the rainforests and oceans. Keeping them safe and producing oxygen means I will go on breathing, that my grandchildren will, that my own species isn’t rushing down the path to extinction.

I’m a science fiction writer. Let’s say we do as human beings figure out some technological solution to ensure our own survival, and my descendants wind up eating processed yeast in monolithic steel and concrete hives on a hyper-overpopulated Earth -- just us and our symbiotes, our domesticated species and the parasites we can’t get rid of. I wouldn’t want to see that future come because I am also a painter and a writer.

I want to know there are wild places in the world that no one goes, that belong to ocelots and pumas and tapirs. I want to know there’s something in the world that isn’t mapped, tabulated, counted and owned. That not all living creatures are property of some human being or other.

Some of the humans that live in rich wild places, hunter-gatherer cultures, call other species peoples. Baboons, pumas, birds, rhinos, are all peoples of different habits -- beings seen as owning themselves, not as property of humans. Buying land to protect some of these peoples from the encroachment of other humans is something they don’t need to understand. They will live well in their land.

I am deeply religious. My Earth-centered spirituality leads me to revere Mother Gaia... and to integrate that spiritual view with what some interesting scientists have said about a Gaia Hypothesis. This world’s entire ecosystem can be viewed as one organism, a being that is all genders and species at once, the sum of all that lives. If Gaia is healthy and thrives then we, all of us that are part of her, thrive too. I want to walk in beauty. I want to walk lightly with a small footprint in her bounty, avoiding the waste of so many first world lifestyles.

I often use recycled drawing paper or supplies from renewable sources like shortlived cotton and linen plants. I order things online instead of driving to stores. Our household consolidates errands and we rarely use the car. We did this before gas got that expensive because it made for less waste. When I get packages I reuse the packaging to pack up things I’m sending. We leave a lot less trash than most and enjoy life just fine, often saving money too. Every habit change makes a difference and they’re usually self rewarding.

In nature everything is recycled. No matter what falls or breaks or dies it becomes food for something, for mushrooms and scavengers, for plants and completes the cycle. I find this beautiful. There are molecules in my body that used to be part of a puma, an ocelot, a tapir, a hummingbird.

As an artist I love these creatures. I have personal favorites. My totem is a cougar. Pumas are cougars by another name. My totem lives on this land and knowing my brother is free down there is a joy to me. I love all cats. Ocelots are beautiful cats, they belong in their trees in their territories. I used to think it was a little selfish to love the top predators so much... until recent science proved that top predators are key to an ecosystem’s health. When pumas and ocelots have healthy territories, everything else in their range flourishes. Everything stays in balance.

I chose the animal I did to represent all endangered species by remembering where my species came from. Every American child grows up on African animals. My two year old grandson has blocks with lions, rhinos, elephants and giraffes on them. The Black Rhinoceros is severely endangered, all these animals are. Yet they are so deeply embedded in Western culture that they eclipse all of the big impressive animals of our own continent! You don’t see alphabet-book Moose and Wolf and Eagle nearly as often as Rhino, Elephant, Giraffe, Lion.

I think this is because our species originated in Africa. I think these are the animals we evolved to live near, to hunt and to avoid being hunted by. The world of our roots will be gone forever if we let the big animals of Africa go extinct. Generations of children may look at schoolbooks of centuries past and know their contents are as vanished as the dinosaurs -- and wonder why we didn’t stop before it was too late. I chose the Black Rhinoceros so that my grandson’s grandchildren would have rhinos on photo safaris, to know the world of our past is alive in the present.

Rhinoceros, puma, ocelot, lion, giraffe, cheetah, shark... all of these are part of who we are. In an ecosystem, diversity is stability. Diversity is flexibility if there’s a climate change or a natural disaster of any kind.

If we halt the destruction, we halt our own destruction as well, of soul as well as physical terrain. Humane answers and green technologies exist. The way to save the Earth is to begin with what’s in reach, what I can do as an individual. So I live green and give what is best of mine to give -- representational art. I painted this rhino the way a beaver sets a dam. Art is what only humans do. I am happy to create something that helps save the animal peoples. Rare ants, plants and beetles will survive because as an artist I love the rhino, orchid and puma.

"Loggerhead Turtle" - isablue123

TITLE: Loggerhead Turtle
EBAY ID: isablue123

Why I'm using my creativity to save the rainforest:

I have a BS degree in Zoology, and my favorite courses as a student were those dealing with biodiversity and ecology. I have been deeply affected by news of shrinking ecosystems and the devastating effects on some animal populations in the world, and even more appalled by reports on poaching that is putting at risk some of our closest relatives like chimpanzees and gorillas. It is estimated that 40% of all organisms are at risk (source: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources). Many species could be going extinct unnoticed due to our careless exploitation of the world's resources.

When the ACEO ~ Art Cards editions and Originals group suggested "Endangered Species" as a monthly topic, I was thrilled! There was a chance to paint one of my favorite subjects. I never imagined that we would get together as a group to try and save a little piece of our planet. Starr, however, mentioned the efforts of the World Land Trust, an organization that purchases acres of rainforest to protect it for posterity. So far, the WLT has purchased and protected over 350,000 acres (142,000 hectares) of rainforest and other precious wildlife habitats worldwide (http://www.worldlandtrust.org/).

Starr proposed that interested members of our group contribute a portion of their "Endangered species" sales to purchase an acre or more of threatened wildlife habitat. She has been educating us on the extent of the problem, and her voice has been heard in the group. Char took the project one step further by volunteering to make a quilt based on the artwork submitted for the "Endangered species" theme week. All the contributing artists have graciously agreed to have their image reproduced for the quilt. Char generously donated her time, materials and talent to create this beautiful quilt that Starr will auction on eBay, with 100% of the proceeds going to the WLT. Joy stepped in to flesh out ideas to promote the sale of the quilt, and we have been working together to make this event happen. I am very excited to be part of this meaningful group effort that, for once, will change the world for the better!

ACEO - Art Card Editions and Originals

ACEO. You might be wondering what it is if you've never heard the acronym before. ACEO stands for Art Card Editions and Originals.

In the simplest terms, an ACEO is an artist trading card with horizontal or vertical size dimensions equal to 2.5" x 3.5".

This blog focuses on the group of more than 30 ACEO artists who have taken their creative pursuits one step further, to create a unique, one of a kind Endangered Species Quilt from reproductions of their art on cloth that have been carefully woven together to create a tapestry unlike any you will find elsewhere on the planet!

The Endangered Species quilt is being crafted to benefit the World Land Trust non-profit charity. 100% of the auction final sales price will be donated to the World Land Trust to purchase endangered Rainforest acreage and conserve it for our future generations. We anticipate the quilt will be completed and ready for auction in October or November of 2008. Please watch the blog for updates.

In the meantime, we've started this blog so you can view each piece of art that has been donated to this project to save the Rainforest, and learn more about why each artist has chosen to utilize their art in an effort to effect change by purchasing Rainforest Land for conservation.

To find ACEO on eBay, just enter the acronym ACEO into your searchbar. This will bring up a wealth of currently available originals and editions for your viewing pleasure. To join our group, just click on this blog entry title or visit http://groups.ebay.com/forum/Aceo-Art-Cards/Home/100016580 .