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Oddity Central

The Incredible Story of Tippi Degre, a Real Life Mowgli
Beautiful Word Paintings Are Made with Deconstructed Book Text
Coober Pedy – Australia’s Underground Town

The Incredible Story of Tippi Degre, a Real Life Mowgli

Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:43 AM PST

Mowgli has always been one of the most-loved characters from children's literature. I loved the Jungle Book cartoon movie when I was a kid and I must say it is a favorite even today. So when I heard about this real-life Mowgli character, I was fascinated.

Folklore and fairy-tales always mention that wild animals do not hurt the young ones of any species. But that theory hasn't exactly been tested out in the real world, and there have been cases where babies were reportedly killed by man-eating lions or tigers. But that's what makes Tippi Degre's story that more special. Now 23 years old, Tippi is the only child of French wildlife photographer parents, Alain Degre and Sylvie Robert. Her parents’profession and their work in Africa made the young girl’s childhood unique, giving her the opportunity to interact with wild animals in incredible ways. She was named after actress Tippi Hedren, who is said to have kept fully-grown lions as pets in her home, and little Tippi was no different from her namesake, demonstrating early on the ability to form unusual bonds with the creatures of the wild.

According to Tippi's mother Sylvia, "It was magical to be able to be free in this nature with this child. She was a very lucky little girl – she was born and raised until the age of 10 totally in the wild. It was just the three of us living in the wild with the animals and not too many humans. She was in the mindset of these animals. She believed the animals were her size and her friends. She was using her imagination to live in these different conditions." Indeed she was, and it is so endearing to look at pictures of little Tippi with the animals. She doesn't look very different from Mowgli with her unruly mop of hair, dressed in underwear, and sporting a slightly protruding belly. She looks completely at ease in the animal world. One of the cutest pictures is of her hugging a bullfrog like a normal 6-year-old might hug a teddy bear. It's a different matter that she seems to have the frog in a death grip and the poor creature looks quite uncomfortable. In other pictures, Tippi can be seen sitting on elephants, kissing reptiles, standing on one foot on top of a crocodile, having her hand licked by a cheetah, and proudly tossing her head as she rides an ostrich. Her childhood friends were a rather motley crow – a leopard named J&B, an elephant, crocodiles, lion cubs, giraffes, meerkats, an ostrich, a mongoose, a cheetah, a snake, a zebra, a few chameleons and some giant bullfrogs.

It's very surprising that animals otherwise considered extremely dangerous were able to accept little Tippi and include her as one of their own. Her parents say they used to be very gentle with her always making sure they didn’t hurt her. Especially Linda the ostrich, who was supposedly so afraid of hurting the girl that Tippi's parents rarely got a chance to capture them riding together. Linda wouldn't move at all with Tippi sitting on her, afraid she might cause the child to fall. About her daughter’s relationship with Abu the elephant, mother Sylvie says: "She had no fear. She did not realize she was not the same size as Abu. She would look into his eyes and speak to him." But it's not just the animals that Tippi got along with so well. Growing up among the native tribes people of Namibia, she was taken under their wing and taught all sorts of survival techniques of the wild. She could speak their language, hunt and knew how to feed herself with roots and berries.

Tippi lived in the wild for the first 10 years of her life, after which her parents took her back to their home country, France. She was sent to a French state school, and was a local celebrity. But things did not go very well for her in the city; she did not take too well to civilized life, as her parents had hoped. School was difficult since she had almost nothing in common with the other children in Paris. She went to school for only two years, after which her parents took to homeschooling her. But her upbringing ensured that she has remained a unique human being for life. The 23-year old went on to study cinema, supervised the well-being and treatment of tigers for a popular international game show in France, and wrote a book called Tippi of Africa, which became a bestseller. Very little is known about her life today. Last we heard she wanted to get a Namibian passport because she always believed she was African. Rumor has it she may have gone back to Africa to resume her friendship with the wild.

Tippi's story and her pictures are so profound that you'd want to keep looking at them forever . Who wouldn't want to have had such an amazing childhood?

Photos © Alain Degre and Sylvie Robert

The Incredible Story of Tippi Degre, a Real Life Mowgli was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Beautiful Word Paintings Are Made with Deconstructed Book Text

Posted: 21 Feb 2013 11:47 PM PST

Jamie Poole works mainly as a landscape painter and art teacher, but today we’re going to look at his unique style of painting with words by using shredded poetry and book text to create incredible works of art.

WE’ve featured some pretty unbelievable text artworks in the past, from John Sokol’s hand-written portraits of famous writers, to the detailed dog portraits of Florida-based artist Stephen Kline, but English artist Jamie Poole sets himself apart by using shredded pieces of text from poetry books and novels. His works are all large scale, meaning he has to use hundreds, sometimes thousands of deconstructed text pieces to achieve the effect he’s looking for. Despite the rigidity of the material he uses for his artistic pieces, compared to the commons paintbrush or pencil, Jamie Poole always manages to nail every detail he desires, from perfectly placed shadows, to little things like the glow in his subjects’ eyes, or rebel hair strands that make them look so much more realistic.

Jamie Poole self-portrait

So far, the collection of finalized text paintings by Jamie Poole numbers just three artworks, a self-portrait of the artist made using poetry and words from a book letters he and his wife write to each other, a piece based on Michael Morpugo’s book, Warhorse, and a portrait of Sophie, for which he used the sitter’s favorite poems. With the attention his unique style has been getting lately, we can expect more such incredible works of art to come out of this talented artist’s able hands.

Sophie portrait

Original Warhorse poster

Jamie Poole’s deconstructed text version

Photos © Jamie Poole

Source: Jamie Poole via This Is Colossal

Beautiful Word Paintings Are Made with Deconstructed Book Text was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Coober Pedy – Australia’s Underground Town

Posted: 21 Feb 2013 10:50 PM PST

Coober Pedy is a small town that's one of a kind – for being down under in the Land Down Under. Yes, it's the world’s only underground town, and it’s in Australia.

Located in South Australia, known for being the driest state on the driest continent on Earth, the town of Coober Pedy was established in 1915, when opal was first discovered in the region and miners started settling in. The temperature and weather conditions were so harsh that the miners began digging their homes into the hillsides. All they wanted was to find some respite from the scorching sun, but in the process they ended up creating a small town for themselves. To this day, the people of Coober Pedy prefer to build their houses under the ground. Summers are harsh around here, with temperatures easily rising over 40 degrees Celsius. Air conditioning is a necessity, not a luxury, if you choose to live above ground. But the scenario is completely different in the underground homes of Coober Pedy. The temperature remains at a cool, constant 24 degrees and the humidity doesn't go beyond 20%. Winters can be rather cold, but people are willing to make that kind of compromise.

Photo: Thomas Schoch

Although Coober Pedy has been around for long, it was only in the 1980s that the town became popular around the world. In 1981, a local named Umberto Coro realized the earning potential that this sleepy, underground settlement held, so he built the settlement’s first hotel. Since then, news of the town spread fast and people from all over Australia began to visit. Today, it's common to find international tourists flocking to Coober Pedy, choosing to stay at either the Desert Cave Hotel, or several other local inns and private underground houses. What attracts tourists more than anything else is the chance to sleep underground, in cool, dark and spacious rooms. Designed in such a way that the interiors reflect the reddish colors of the rock, the underground accommodations of Coober Pedy never dissappoint. The houses have walk-in-wardrobes, storage areas, bedrooms, fantastic kitchens, and the underground churches are an added attraction.

Photo: DuReMi

To the outside world, all that's visible of Coober Pedy is a vast expanse of land, interrupted by chimneys and shafts that seem to be sticking up out of nowhere. The town's entire population of about 3,000 people lives underground, in a series of intricate tunnels. The name Coober Pedy is said to have originated from the Aboriginal phrase 'kupa piti', meaning 'white man's hole in the ground'. The town is famous not only for its troglodyte charm, but also for being the 'opal capital of the world', producing 70% of the world's opal. Popular films have been shot here, such as Pitch Black, Red Planet, Queen of the Desert and Opal Dream. You can also see the world's longest 'dingo fence' passing through Coober Pedy. You can play golf at night with glowing balls at a course that has no grass, but enjoys reciprocal rights at The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. Located 850 km north of Adelaide, the town of Coober Pedy has all kinds of facilities guaranteed to keep tourists entertained, like opal shops, billiard rooms, bars, swimming pools, museums, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and even graveyards. Imagine that! Burying the dead under the ground, underground.