For years, Malibu artist Olivia De Berardinis has painted beautiful women—usually with not much on—taking cheesecake to a higher art form. But her latest project doesn’t seem to fit into her normal repertoire. She’s painting an elephant.
De Berardinis, who spent years as an illustrator for Playboy Magazine and holds a reputation as the top pin-up artist of her generation, is one of 40 artists and celebrities around the country contributing to the Elephant Parade. While well-known in Europe, this open-air art exhibit of elephant statues and figurines is coming to America for the first time later this month when it opens in Dana Point. The exhibit helps fund sanctuaries for, and raise awareness of, the plight of Asian elephants, an endangered species of which only 35,000 remain.
“You can’t help but be conscious of how our wildlife is endangered around the world,” De Berardinis said. “I would support efforts to save whales and rhinoceroses, but this is the first time someone asked me to paint an elephant.”
Father and son Mike and Marc Spitz, who marketed Hello Kitty and Smurfs, founded Elephant Parade several years ago after seeing a baby elephant named “Mosha” at the world’s only elephant hospital in Thailand whose leg had been blown off by a landmine. Funds from the first Elephant Parade, which enlists artists and celebrities to paint life-size statues of baby elephants, helped pay for Mosha to receive a prosthetic leg.
Subsequent exhibits have taken place in London, Milan and Amsterdam, and featured celebrity support from designers Tommy Hilfiger, Diane von Furstenberg and Isaac Mizrahi, as well as singer Katy Perry and actress Goldie Hawn, among others. The aim is to raise both money and media attention surrounding the plight of the elephants.
On Aug. 23-25, the exhibit will come to the U.S. for the first time with a parade at Doheny State Beach, and will conclude Nov. 10-17 with an auction. De Barardinis said she was asked to contribute to the exhibit because she is known for her wildlife paintings.
“Of course I said yes,” she recalled. “They train baby elephants so cruelly. I’m against circuses and didn’t even really want to look into the issue too deeply because it upsets me.”
De Berardinis decided to channel her sorrow for the animal’s plight into an image of beauty and strength, so she highlighted the life-size fiberglass baby elephant she was given to paint with a portrait of one of De Berardinis’ favorite models—burlesque artist Dita Von Teese.
Von Teese’s image, in pink corset and lush feather boa, was painstakingly applied to the multilevel surface of the elephant, along with champagne bubbles, pink bows and a surreal image of dancing elephant skeletons in top hats (“There’s a little death in everything,” De Berardinis said.). The result is an enticing, whimsical sculpture titled “Wild Life.”
“The champagne is not supposed to be about drinking so much as the intoxication of a beautiful woman,” De Berardinis said. “When I was asked to participate in this charity, I thought about the original 1890s Moulin Rouge in Paris, with its very large exterior elephant structure, and of Josephine Baker, performing in 1920s Paris. [She was] a world famous burlesque star, who collected statues of these beloved elephants.”
De Berardinis said the project was not that simple. She was given a small (about eight-inches-high) model, or maquette, to design her image before the bulky, five-foot-by-four-foot elephant was delivered to her studio.
“It sat right on the spot where I usually have a couch for my pugs,” De Berardinis said. “They were very upset. My one pug, George, was very hostile and sad the whole three month period that the elephant was there.”
The project was a far cry from her usual work. Her next project, a book of new pinups titled “Malibu Cheesecake,” is shipping this month. De Berardinis said the three-month journey was a work from the soul. Yet both she and her pug were glad to move on to new adventures.
“I am happy to do my bit for the elephants,” she said. “It was hard work, but I was happy to see her go out the door. And George is a lot happier.”
More information on Elephant Parade may be found at elephantparade.com. More information on De Berardinis’ latest project may be found at www.eolivia. com.
