Dee's Blog

Hi everyone,

Firstly, I wanted to quickly explain why I've decided to change my business name. As you can see, we have a new website with a new name and a fresh look.

I decided that "Hooves and Frogs" was no longer suitable for the art I am creating now. It's not based around horses or frogs, so it just didn't seem right, nor did I feel it was professional enough for the direction I want to go with my art.

So, I've kept it simple and named my page and business after myself and what will hopefully be my surname by 2025. I didn't see the point in naming the page after my maiden name only to change it again in a year's time, which would mean more costs and hassle. I thought "Dee Goodwill Sculptures" sounded much nicer anyway.

With that out of the way, the sculptures are coming along beautifully, and the one below is number 21/200.

If you don't follow my social media, this piece will be a young Okapi, a very unusual and endangered animal that lives in the rainforests of the Congo region in central Africa. They were undiscovered until around 1890. People also know the Okapi as the Forest Zebra due to the stripes on their legs and where they live. These are the only living relatives of the giraffe, which is much more widely known. However, they are only around the size of a cow and are very shy, timid animals, hiding away in the forests.

The Okapi has become a symbol for conservation in the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Okapis have a diet of leaves, fungi, and fruit, but they supplement their diets with something a little more unusual: clay, burned wood, and bat guano.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species considers the Okapi an endangered species, with a population of fewer than 4,500 individuals still living in the wild. The population has fallen by more than 40 percent from 1995 to 2007. Okapis are vulnerable to large-scale disturbances due to logging and human settlements taking over much of their habitat. They are also under threat from being hunted for their skins and meat and have declined rapidly in areas where local hunters use cable snares to capture their prey, causing massive damage and death to other animals as well as the Okapi, which are left suffering for hours while trapped before their death.

This is why this animal is number 21/200 on my list of sculptures of endangered and vulnerable animals.

The Sculptures progress