Elephant of the Earth

Zofia Kostyrko

The Artist
Zofia Kostyrko is a classically trained artist, designer, and conceptual thinker. Born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, she followed her creative dreams across the world with a one-way journey into the celluloid Oz of sunny California.

Among many creative adventures since her touch-down in the City of Angels, Kostyrko was an illustrator, art director and senior conceptual designer at Disney’s WDI for a lucky 13 years, creating and building Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida. She has conceived ideas for Cirque du Soleil; made props for the kids TV show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse; created sets and theatrical costumes for stage; and designed, illustrated, and produced children books and zoo and museum exhibits all over the world. She always looks for any excuse to make art—bold, beautiful, meaningful, different.

Kostyrko is highly accomplished in using both the traditional techniques (oil, acrylics, pastels, mixed media, and paper sculpture) and a wide range of digital drawing, painting, and modeling tools.

A conservationist at heart and in practice, Kostyrko lives in an old California bungalow surrounded by a wild native garden in Altadena, sharing her time between illustration and painting, running her design studio, and developing new ideas with her photographer husband Charles, daughters Vero and Lara, stray cat Boo, and genius dog Nina.

The Elephant
This elephant is an artistic rendering of an imaginary DreamQuest through the Earth’s endangered web of life. The elephant’s skin becomes an illustrative tapestry symbolically depicting Earth’s key environments—aquatic and terrestrial—and weaving together their flora and fauna.

The base of the sculpture is Water, the source of all life on our planet. Selected aquatic creatures—fish, turtles, coral—are rendered within stylized waves.

The elephant figure represents the Land with its diverse terrestrial environments. Starting at its feet is lush, green rainforest that gradually transforms into arid, bleached yellow desert sands as it reaches the apex of its back. The elephant’s highest point, the top of its head, becomes a snowy peak.

Within each environment area—from the jungle through the desert and up to the snow—key animal species are depicted among the foliage and sands. They all look at the viewer, startled in a wondrous encounter and silent plea for us to take action and protect their—and our—dreams and hopes for a shared future of life on Earth.