Skip to main content
Artist/Maker
Blane De St. Croix
(American, born 1954)
Date1993
MediumLead binder containing official NRA 50-foot rifle targets with ink and gold-size wash
DimensionsOverall: 9 1/4 × 7 3/4 in. (23.5 × 19.7 cm)
Credit LineTransferred from the Hamilton College Collection
Object number2026.9.1-58
Not on view
DescriptionDescription from the artist:
"This body of work is an elegy, a quiet memorial for creatures poised on the precipice of silence. By rendering endangered mammals in ink on official NRA 50-foot rifle targets, I stage a poignant collision of values. The target, an object designed for precision and the assertion of power, becomes the unlikely ground for a delicate act of preservation. A gilding of gold-size wash illuminates each animal, not as a trophy to be hung, but as a sacred relic to be venerated. This precious gleam is a desperate act of highlighting their intrinsic worth in a world that has often valued them only as marks to be hit.
Encased within a lead binder that mimics a worn, forgotten book, these drawings become archived specimens. They are no longer living creatures in a thriving ecosystem, but entries in a ledger of loss, a historical record of what we are failing to protect. The alchemical combination of lead—a material of both utility and toxicity—with the fragile, gilded images speaks to our complicated legacy. We are both the archivists and the agents of this potential erasure. This book is a requiem, a final chapter where the only thing left to collect is the memory of what we have allowed to vanish."
Collections
Additional Details
Alternate Titles
Rare Book
Signature
Cover page, lower right corner (black ink): "B. De St. Croix"
Inscribed
Cover page, lower right corner (black ink): "Endangered Mammals" / signature / 93"
Each page has the depicted animal's name written in black ink in the lower right on the "score" line.
Each page has the depicted animal's name written in black ink in the lower right on the "score" line.
Yashua Klos
Date: 2018
Medium: Collage with woodcut prints and graphite on paper
Object number: 2019.1
Zana Briski
Date: 2020
Medium: Unique gold-toned photogram on gelatin silver paper
Object number: 2024.12.1
Henry Horenstein
Date: 1995-2001
Medium: Cibachrome
Object number: 2019.18.14
Celia Vasquez Yui
Date: 2021
Medium: Coil-built pre-fire slip-painted clay with vegetal resins
Object number: 2022.8.1
Celia Vasquez Yui
Date: 2021
Medium: Coil-built pre-fire slip-painted clay with vegetal resins
Object number: 2022.8.2
Dyani White Hawk
Date: 2019
Medium: Suite of four screenprints with metallic foil
Object number: 2020.4.1-4
Dyani White Hawk
Date: 2019
Medium: Screen print with metallic foil
Object number: 2020.4.1
Dyani White Hawk
Date: 2019
Medium: Screen print with metallic foil
Object number: 2020.4.2