Studio ACE Gallery
July 27 - September 5, 2025
Studio ACE presents Creature Comforts: The Art of Pets and Animals, a juried exhibition celebrating the profound presence of animals in our lives—wild and domestic, real and imagined. This show explores the deep connections we share with our animal companions and the creative inspiration they provide. We are honored to welcome internationally-collected Oceanside artist Michael Summers—creator of ACE’s beloved Be Kind mural—as our guest juror.
Snoozing Morani
I got to know Morani, an endangered black rhino, in 2000 as part of the Earthwatch study “Saving Kenya’s Black Rhinos” on Sweetwaters Research Centre near Mt Kenya. He had been orphaned by poachers and was repeatedly introduced into the wild but each time was injured by other young rhinos. So it was decided to give him his own enclosure where he lived for 19 years. He was tame from living with the rangers who stayed with him 24 hours a day to fend off poachers, and so we were able to get very close to this normally aggressive animal. He died in 2007 of natural causes.