Okay, yes, it does take a lot to get people’s attention these days. Sometimes it can be the implied promises found in a blog headline. Other times it may be the surprises via an assumed backdoor.

But how about thoughtful and reflective images, as well? It is more difficult to go there, right?

Nevertheless, take a quiet moment, turn off the iPod, the iPhone, and the HD television, and look at this brief slide show of some artistic photographs by clicking here.

Sit back and enjoy the images.

Alice Thorson of The Kansas City Star takes a look at “Animal imagery showing up in contemporary art.”

She writes that “Animal imagery is one of the hottest things going in contemporary art.”

Her focus, of course, is Kansas City, and she discusses the broader as well as local scene.

Thorson writes:

Several months earlier the Kansas City Art Institute’s H&R Block Artspace opened “Cryptozoology,” an international exhibit filled with animal hybrids, mutants and fantasy creatures. The show argued for a serious rethinking of the relationship between humans and nature.

Professor Hex and his nieces visited the Kansas City exhibition in 2006 and snapped some photos.

Fantomina reports for work.

Goblina studies a unknown hominid.

During the winter of 2006, my loaned Bigfoot longs for the snows of Maine, no doubt, and perhaps feels out-of-place in Kansas City.

It is good to know that even if cryptozoology has to come in via the backdoor, the relationship between animals, art, and cryptozoology is slowly being acknowledged. And appreciated.

For Alice Thorson’s entire new article, see here.

One of the most spectacular examples of animal imagery in contemporary art is this sculpture, “Head On,” by leading Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The wolves are life-size replicas created from papier-mache, plaster, fiberglass, resin and painted hide.

Wolves are great, especially a hundred of them flying through the air. But give me the wonder of an eight-foot five-hundred-pound Sasquatch any day. How about you?