Please visit us now! at www.AYellowstoneLife.com Greetings!  We are very pleased to announce the creation of our new blog—www.AYellowstoneLife.com. The new format allows us to share not only in-depth coverage of the art, upcoming and notable events, but the stories behind the art, our adventures at home and abroad and elements of the lifestyle we enjoy living and working in and around the world’s first national park—Yellowstone! Please note: all future blog entries for www.GeorgeBumann.com will be posted at www.AYellowstoneLife.com ..read more

Backpack, check. Coat, check, lunch, check. Bear spray….. check. With the arrival of autumn comes the return of morning walks to the bus with young George, apples ripening on the tree and the prospect of coming face to face with one of North America’s largest carnivores. The “nightly news” of Gardiner, Montana – reports via footage from backyard trail cameras and Facebook, that one or more grizzlies has been making the rounds through the backyards and streets of town in search of laden apples trees and improperly secured garbage. Footage compliments of K. Sh ..read more

“…all of them (bison) are the same, they’re everywhere, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” – Roadside Tourist in Yellowstone. In contrast to the quote above, nothing could be further from the truth when in the presence of the diversity and beauty of nature. It is seldom that we truly appreciate the power of the individual to move and shape us. You only have to start drawing or modeling a bison to realize that one cow bison cannot substitute for another – they are not carbon copy animals milling about in a neat, uniformly responsive herds. They have diffe ..read more

Despite having spent hundreds of hours watching bison, I never tire of observing them. Where others may see a docile, lumbering animal in a slow-moving herd, I see a deep landscape of gesture nuance of form and individual character. As I begin work on a new bison piece, I find myself yet again, with sketchbook and pen in hand. There is always more to learn. The bison are different today than they will be tomorrow, or in a month. Today, their heads are down, working to grasp the barely emerging nubs of grass coming up amid fickle spring weather. A month from now, the hunger-sharp h ..read more

This time of year in Yellowstone, the margin between life and death is thin. Rarely are the relationships between animals and the landscape more evident than in late winter, when the contrast between hunter and hunted, between survival and… not, is stark.  We have much to witness, and a great deal to learn. Field sketches & measurements of a bull elk carcass (2 days post-mortem). Field sketch of bison carcass 10 days after death (from February 11, 2007) Observe a carcass scene and you begin to realize the complex interactions at play. The hierarchy at a carcass is well unders ..read more

The bear was large, its coat a shimmering deep brown tinged with silver. Laying on its belly, leg haunch in the air, it was chewing on the last remains of an elk at a bend in the river. On our way “up the hill” to Mammoth for a regular weeknight engagement, we spotted a grizzly just 100 yards off the road along the Gardner River, and stopped to take advantage of the rare chance to see a bear up close. http://www.georgebumann.com/gb/wp-content/uploads/Grizzly-Bear1.mp4 We planned to look for the bear the next morning, but the weather was dark and damp, and we had heard the bear was nowhere to b ..read more

Quick before the gates close! The seasonal closure of Yellowstone’s road system is upon us.  Jenny, young George and I took the opportunity to pick up and drop off some sculptures at Mountain Trails Gallery in Jackson, WY as our excuse to take a drive through the interior of our nation’s first national park before the land becomes shrouded in white. Each year the roads of the Park close, save the road out to Cooke City at the north-east entrance, in order to let the snow build up to the point of allowing travel by snowcoach or snowmobile. (Image above: the majestic Tetons reduced to ..read more

Recently, my morning walk with the dogs interrupted something quite profound, dare i say, sacred; a magpie funeral. Walking towards a small meadow I heard three-note calls in unison from 10-12 magpies. Not an unusual note pairing, but something in their voices was different, so I walked to the spot where the dogs had flushed the birds from the ground. There in the grass, wings out, a single stem of grass clenched in its beak, was a magpie elder – the extensive white in the wings feathers and long, resplendent tail indicative of its age and perhaps its profound meaning to the birds cl ..read more

A few more hours are in on the big grizzly bust ..read more

About a year ago, I did this small study of a bear at the Montana Grizzly Encounter captive bear facility between Bozeman and Livingston, MT. I liked it so much that I cast it and eventually convinced myself that it would be a great piece to enlarge. Here are some pics and notes on the progression from small wax study to a larger-than-lifesize model. CAST BRONZE STUDY – “His Lordship”  Planning out the layout and design of the larger bear bust…. With some help from the lessons learned from my great 10th grade trigonometry teacher, I designed out this custom pair of 50″-long measur ..read more