Columbia artist’s work becomes poster for festival

They seem to be everywhere downtown right now, those posters with the orange backgrounds showing an entanglement of sorts between an “architeuthis dux” and a “campephilus principalis” — that is, a giant squid and an ivory-billed woodpecker.

“There’s symbolism in the suggested meeting of the two creatures,” Joel Sager, the Columbia artist who painted the watercolor, said of the work’s composition. “You have one that was thought to be mythological and the other that was supposed to be extinct — so there’s this juxtaposition between fact and fiction, true and false.”

The untitled work is being used as this year’s promotional poster for the True/False Film Festival. The four-day documentary festival begins today in Columbia.

Festival organizers David Wilson and Paul Sturtz approached Sager about creating the painting. Wilson and Sager teamed up on the idea.

“David is the brain behind the concept,” Sager said.

The concept is one of excitement and surprise at the discovery of two creatures thought to not exist.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was thought to be extinct until discovered by ornithologists in an Arkansas forest in 2005, while the giant squid, thought to be a mythological creature, was documented by Japanese researchers the year before.

Sager diverted from his usual tar, wax and oil to use watercolor. “I wanted to get more detail and a more washy feel,” he said.