Last Gasp Publications
www.lastgasp.com
Scott Musgrove creates a pseudo-history for the “willfully ignored,” in his first full-length book, The Late Fauna of Early North America. Mixing equal parts Thomas Cole, Pop surrealism, Vaudeville and Dougal Dixon, Musgrove creates his own legendary history of North American wildlife that once roamed free on the wide-open plains. Several fold-out pages, intermixed with image details and double-spreads, keep the viewer actively engaged with the full-color images of this panoramic vision of yesteryear. Set within elaborate, and often gilded, frames, illustrations of fantastical animals with enormous eyes and long graceful necks peacefully graze alongside numerous bare-bottomed creatures in lush natural environments. Also brought into the collection are numerous cultural artifacts, including wood-carved statues, totems and hunting trophies. Musgrove ventures beyond the mountainous mid-west and coastal shoreline to include aquatic ancestors of today’s sea life, as in the mixed media collaboration with Mike Leavitt. The nimble Great Lesser Plant Sampler (extinct, ca. 1877), mid-stroke, in its “natural” environment above a Crayola-hued coral reef, is recreated in a seemingly antique diorama resting upon clawed feet. In a short introductory chapter, the
author/illustrator explains his “professional” archeological techniques, “Generally, after finding bones near the highway… I just start gluing them together.” However, against the mirth of Musgrove’s darkly humorous lore of the ill-fated Dwarf Basket Horse, one cannot help but recall the equally doomed, and unfortunately true, story of the Dodo.