Join Anneli Skaar for a presentation of her 2021 artist book Monarch, a story about California history, extraction, and extinction told entirely through the story of Monarch–the “last” California grizzly bear–who served as a model for the California state flag.
In the 1800s, the gold rush transformed the golden, poppy-covered land of California, with plentiful grizzly bears, into one of the first examples of anthropogenic impact in modern times. The rush for wealth decimated the bears. As a marketing gimmick, William Randolph Hearst, editor of the San Francisco Examiner, had a reporter hunt down the “last” grizzly. Named Monarch after the paper’s slogan, “The Monarch of the Dailies”, the bear would eventually serve as a model for the California state flag. The Ursus arctos californicus was officially declared extinct in the 1920s.
The story of Monarch is essentially a story about California’s history, extraction, and extinction and in MONARCH it is told entirely through national newspaper articles from the 1840s until 1953 when the California state flag was standardized and is illustrated by collages combining historic California photos and photos of the real Monarch himself. Printed by Jim Nickelson and bound by Amy Borezo, this book includes an extra unique wet plate collodion photograph created by Brenton Hamilton.
Join us for this free, virtual event!
Artist and designer Anneli Skaar is currently the Director of Marketing at Maine Media where she also created her first fine press publication Bears and Ruins as the Book Artist in Residence in 2016. Her fine press artist books Nansen’s Pastport (2020) and The Island Whale (2022) have been published by Two Ponds Press. Monarch (2021) was published under her own mark with a grant from the Maine Arts Commission. Her work is in numerous private and public collections worldwide including the Library of Congress, The United Nations Library in Geneva, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, and the British Library.
View all upcoming and past Alumni Lecture Events here.
All images copyright Anneli Skaar.
