Carol DeMoss loves being surrounded by nature and wild things, and it’s OK with her if sometimes it comes inside.
“Obviously I have holes in the screens,” said the artist and illustrator whose free “Nature Inspired” art exhibit runs through Oct. 1 at Puente Art Studio, 741 E. Elizabeth St. in Brownsville.
“I’ve got a Mexican tree frog that lives on the front porch on a window sill above the door,” said DeMoss, who lives in Bayview. “I call him my watch frog. He guards me.”
Her murals and other art can be seen throughout Gladys Porter Zoo, where she first dipped a brush in paint in the early 1980s. DeMoss has one mural to complete inside the herpetarium, and she was among a group of artists who painted the big mural over the alligator pit, she said.
“They called me in to do the plants,” DeMoss said. “That’s how I got hooked. I’ve been painting there since. I just do everything I can. I’ve got my pictures all over the zoo. I’m pretty much everywhere.”
Her work can also be found on interpretative/educational panels as well as the ceramic sponsor tiles in the zoo’s education department, she said. DeMoss’s work can be seen other places as well, including South Padre Island’s Sea Turtle Inc., where she just finished a job.
“They’re putting some (alligator snapping turtles) in there and it’s an outside facility,” she said. “They built a big outdoor tank. They needed a swamp mural, and I like swamps, so I did that. That one’s just finished. I don’t even know if they have the turtles yet. They’re going to have two. They’re going to branch out and have more turtles than just sea turtles.”
DeMoss has also done murals for eco-lodges in Belize and painted “back porch” mural at the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park.
“It was hilarious, because I would go over there at night to work, and there was a nilgai that was a pest,” she recalled. “He came up and he would shake the trailer at night, do all sorts of things. There was a rattlesnake that stayed in the corner. It was hilarious. It was a treat. I definitely enjoy my job.”
DeMoss, president of the Wildlife Conservation and Education Society of South Texas, has more than 20 of her works on display at Puente Art Studio, among them a rendering of a long-tailed weasel, a relative of otters and badgers that lives in Rio Grande Valley, though very few people have laid eyes on one.
“That’s a beautiful little creature we’ve got here,” DeMoss said. “No one ever sees it. It’s very secretive. It’s one of the most beautiful animals on Earth. And they’re here, the long-tailed weasel.”
DeMoss lived for years at Camp Lula Sams, a former Girl Scout camp on 86 undeveloped acres in Brownsville, now known as Camp RIO at Historic Lula Sams and operated by IDEA Public Schools. Wildlife encounters, including more than a few indoors, were a regular part of life at the camp, though DeMoss never saw a long-tailed weasel there.
“Believe it or not, I saw them in Bayview,” she said. “There was one on our back porch when we moved in. I knew this was the place for me. We’ve also had a bobcat.”
DeMoss’s exhibit, which opened Aug. 13, features many examples of Valley wildlife besides the shy weasel, plus “lots of rainforest pictures,” she said.
“I’ve got a Rio Grande turkey in watercolor, but probably 80 percent are acrylic,” DeMoss said. “I was painting up to an hour before the show.”
Her hope is that visitors to “Nature Inspired” will come away with a greater appreciation for the wild things right under our noses in the Rio Grande Valley, she said.
“Bringing attention to wildlife treasures in our own backyard is the goal,” DeMoss said.
MORE INFORMATION:
‘Nature Inspired’ exhibit by Carol DeMoss
WHERE: Puente Art Studio, 741 E. Elizabeth St., Brownsville
WHEN: Through Oct. 1. Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Sunday
Free admission
