Javelina at dusk
— — the desert's quiet shift change, between heat and dark.
Not only on a wall.
“Javelinas move at dusk. They are not pigs but collared peccaries, smaller and grey-haired with a pale band across the shoulder. A herd, called a squadron, comes through a wash in the last hour of light, nosing prickly pear pads and mesquite pods, the young ones close behind the adults. Tucson and the Sonoran foothills are where most of Arizona meets them — in alleys, in backyards, along the trail at Sabino Canyon. The smell is musky and unmistakable, and the herd is gone before the dark settles. — from the studio
Javelina at dusk, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The collared peccary, called javelina across the American Southwest, is the only peccary species native to the United States. Its Arizona range covers the Sonoran and southern Mogollon Rim country, including the Tucson basin, the foothills of the Santa Catalinas and Tucson Mountains, the Galiuro and Chiricahua ranges, and the brushlands south to the Mexican border. Adults weigh roughly 35 to 55 pounds and travel in herds, called squadrons, of six to twenty animals. The species was originally a tropical animal that expanded north into Arizona over the last several thousand years, following mesquite and prickly pear.
Javelinas are crepuscular: most active in the hour around sunrise and the hour around sunset, then again deep at night. In summer, when daytime temperatures in Tucson regularly top 100 °F, the herds sleep through the heat under mesquite or palo verde and emerge only after the light is well off the ridges. In winter they shift toward midday warmth and are sometimes visible in the open in mid-afternoon. The dusk window — about thirty minutes either side of sunset — is when they cross washes, raid backyard prickly pear, and move between bedding and feeding ground.
The most reliable places to encounter a squadron at dusk are Saguaro National Park (both districts), Sabino Canyon Recreation Area in the Santa Catalinas, and the foothills neighborhoods of Tucson, where javelinas regularly walk through yards and alleys at last light. Arizona Game and Fish asks that observers keep at least 75 feet of distance, never feed them, and bring dogs in before sunset — dogs are the most common trigger for a defensive charge. The animals see poorly but smell well, and they will move off if approached upwind quietly.