Jennifer Rae Atkins, a Big Sister With a Cross-Species Connection

Black lemurs

I KNEW RIGHT AWAY I’D FEEL A KINSHIP with Jennifer Rae Atkins when I found her blog, The Daily Mammal, and saw in the faces of the animals she draws that she feels a kinship with all of nature, a siblinghood that crosses species boundaries. In that “takes one to know one” way (to use an expression that biological sisters or “best” friends might have spit at each other growing up), Jennifer seemed familiar, because each of her animals was depicted with its soul shining through (not just its nose and eyes and fur). I knew she took time to learn about them—not just copying old drawings but channeling the animals, through her own hand, and heart. And so (in this wonderful era) I just said a digital hello. Come get to know this very special sister better.

There were to prove to be more similarities: Jennifer is older sister by a couple of years (to Jessica, as I am to Marion), and there have been really rough patches (here, too), but that doesn’t stop the sisterhood:

“She’s still my sister, and that’s everything,” says Jennifer. “Same nature, same nurture, same nose.” (Presumably not one like her Proboscis monkey drawing, below; say it isn’t so!)

Proboscis monkey

Jennifer, a seventh-generation Texan who grew up in New Mexico (where she now lives again) with stints in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, along the way, designs museum exhibits for a living. She and her husband, the noted comic-strip cartoonist Ted Slampyak, run The Storyteller’s Workshop, a design and illustration firm. But the animal images are not her museum work; The Daily Mammal site isn’t her business url. Rather, it’s a calling.

“I decided several years ago that it would be neat to draw every mammal,” she says, as naturally as if she were merely saying, “learn to bake” or “exercise more.”

Jennifer continues: “At that time, I was thinking, you know, ‘horse,’ ‘bear,’ ‘whale,’ etc., rather than Equus equus, Ursus arctos, or Balaenoptera musculus. Two years ago, it turned into a real goal: to draw every single named mammal species before I die. There are approximately 5,000 species, and I figured that if I drew one a day, it would take about 14 years.

Jennifer with one of two canine household members.

“And I really do try to draw one a day—it just doesn’t usually happen. I’ve drawn 277 different species as of this moment. What I love about it, besides that I love drawing and how my drawing improves the more I draw, is becoming an amateur biologist through the research that I do on the various species before I post my drawings and write about the animals.”

Some of her illustrations are for sale in Jennifer’s Etsy shop. This enormous project is in addition to her actual exhibit-design gigs, which are freelance, and not for any one museum, which adds to the (shall we say) diversity in her life:

“It’s a dream job,” she says. “I love it because it combines all of my major interests and strengths: design, of course, but also writing, research, and most of all, learning about a million different things, which is my favorite thing to do in the whole world.

“I’ve worked on children’s museums, science museums, history museums, botanical gardens, and more. Right now, I’m designing a history exhibit that will travel around New Mexico in a giant, brand-new RV.”

But our travels here will be through Jennifer’s own genetic sisterhood with Jessica because Jennifer (shades of mammal-speak!) calls herself “a lone wolf without many sister-friends.” Apparently unlike the common tent-making bats, below, whose females roost together in a “sorority,” while males roost alone or in smaller groups.

Female tent-making bats roost together in a sorority-house tent.

THE TSP INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER RAE ATKINS

Q: Fill in the blank: You know you’re a sister when…
A. “…the two of you giggle like crazy over nothing in particular for 20 minutes in the dressing room at Mervyn’s. I grew up watching my mom and her sister do that, and to me, that hysterical, you-had-to-be-there giggle fit is the epitome of everything beautiful about sisterhood.”

Q: What does the word sister mean to you?
A: “I’m a big sister to my little sister Jessica, who is two and a half years younger. At times, being her sister has meant translating for her when she first learned to talk and I was the only person who knew what she meant, paying her three pennies to clean my room, letting her practice on me when she took tae kwon do, watching in awe as she kicked a bully’s shins (he had blocked our path, forbidding us passage unless we correctly spelled Antarctica, which I was prepared to do, but thanks to tiny Jessica, we got out through brute force instead), watching helplessly as she dated jerks, crying when she hurt me or I hurt her, fighting in a dressing room over what she’d wear as my maid of honor, and enduring years of distance when she didn’t trust me.

“Now Jessica is a mother, to my 22-month-old niece Raecheleia, and I get to see a new side of her. My baby sister with her own baby now! It’s pretty amazing and I still watch her in awe. We’re very different, and we haven’t always gotten along—well, we’ve very seldom gotten along, really—but she’s still my sister, and that’s everything. Same nature, same nurture, same nose.”

Q: Any best of/worst of sisterhood experiences you wish to share?
A: “Once I tattled on my sister when we were teenagers. She was doing something dangerous and I didn’t know how to stop her, so I told my mom, and I told her when Jessica and I were mad at each other over something else, so it was partly out of spite.

“My sister has never forgiven me. It was 15 years ago, and I’ve never completely regained her trust. I’m not sure if I was right or wrong, but if I had a time machine, the first thing I’d do is go back and change that. I feel as though that one decision of mine has defined our relationship ever since, and as far as I can tell, will define it forever more. And that still breaks my heart.”

Pregnant Hawaiian monk seals must often steal away to find a place to give birth.

Q: Are there cultural/pop culture references (music, movies, books, places…) that make you think of your “sister” (or friend or etc.)?
A: “One of my sister’s and my favorite movies is the original 1961 Parent Trap, which is of course about sisters. We just about have it memorized, and we have many favorite quotes from it, including this sister-themed one:

Vicky (vile stepmother-to-be): Do you and your sister share everything?
Sharon or Susan (at this point, they won’t say which twin is which): Everything!
Susan or Sharon: Yeah, everything!
Vicky: Well, then, you give your sister her share of this! (SLAP! Vicky backhands one of the twins, both of whom stare at her with their big shocked Hayley Mills eyes.)

“Another pop culture experience my sister and I share is growing up with VH1 instead of MTV in the 1980s. Back then, VH1 was decidedly the square, adult-contemporary video channel, so our 1980s music references are a little off compared to those of our peers. We must have been completely enthralled with the channel because we still talk about how romantic the Moody Blues’ video for “In Your Wildest Dreams” was, for instance, and we long to see this one Beach Boys video we only ever saw once, but loved, and it’s for some song that no one has even heard, pretty much.

“And long ago, we inadvertently memorized the sequence of snippets from a 1980s TV commercial for a record compilation of 1970s love songs. Now all one of us has to do is sing, “Nights in white satinnnn…” and we both continue: “I’ve been WAITing for a girl like you…precious and few are the moments we two can share…darling if you want me to beee closer to you, get closer to meee…cherish the love we have for as long as we both shall live…” etc. (Totally one of those you-had-to-be-there giggle-fit moments!)”

A GALLERY OF ‘DAILY MAMMAL’ ILLUSTRATIONS

WHEN YOU VISIT The Daily Mammal—and you must, preferably with your children and sisters—you will find not just the illustrations like the ones below that reveal the innate nature of the beasts, but also humor (like a photo of lookalike Tina Turner beside a tamarin, left) and science (a wonderful blogroll of the best zoology sites out there, and animal videos embedded in many posts). Best of all, you’ll discover heavy doses of Jennifer, one very amazing mammal. Enjoy (and don’t forget: she has an Etsy shop, too, if you want to live with an extra mammal).

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