fter graduation from the Alberta College of Art in 1979, Brian Cooley’s first job was building a fake volcano for a prehistoric park at the Calgary zoo. While on the job he was visited by an exhibit designer from Vancouver seeking someone to make a dinosaur.
“It seemed like a great idea,” says Cooley. Moreover, the job involved close collaboration with the paleontologists at the Provincial Museum in Edmonton. “When I met Dr. Philip Currie [then at Edmonton], and other members of the staff and heard about their discoveries and the new theories about warm-bloodedness, herding, and hunting in packs, I was tremendously excited,” Cooley remembers.
“My wife, Mary Ann Wilson, and I developed a model of Albertosaurus to their specifications, and it was such a mutually rewarding experience that we began working with them to create the life-size, fleshed-out dinosaur sculptures that would become part of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta.”
Cooley and his wife have created many more dinosaurs for the Tyrrell as well as for traveling exhibits. They are now creating a series of small scale bronze dinosaur sculptures.
Asked about which he prefers to make, large or small models, Cooley reports that making small models is hard on the eyes (he has to squint). He says his big clumsy fingers get in the way. But he finds them much less grueling than the large models he makes.
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After graduation from the Alberta College of Art in 1979, Brian Cooley’s first job was building a fake volcano for a prehistoric park at the Calgary zoo. While on the job he was visited by an exhibit designer from Vancouver seeking someone to make a dinosaur.