Old Hotel gallery to feature area photos

OTHELLO - The Old Hotel Art Gallery is featuring the work of Gordon Warrick, Biologist/Photographer from the Othello Wildlife Refuge, during the month of March.

According to gallery director Sally Laufer, Warrick's work is an impressive array of the wildlife in the Columbia Basin, with the eye of a true artist.

"Growing up on a farm in eastern Nebraska, I was destined to develop a keen interest in animals," Warrick said. "While my older brothers were often engaged in productive farm activities, I was in the woods or along the creek, hiking and bird-watching."

Warrick's father worked at De Soto NWR and brought injured wildlife home for care. He also took the family there to see deer in the evenings.

Warrick worked for The Nature Conservancy on the Niobrara Valley Preserve, at Crescent Lake NWR, for the USDA in Mississippi, then back to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in Illinois.

"I was always more interested in big skies and western landscapes, so I went on to Charles M. Russell NWR in Montana, and Bitter Lake NWR in New Mexico," Warrick said.

After a brief stint in Nebraska with that state's wildlife agency and the National Audubon Society, Warrick returned to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Othello, working as the biologist at Columbia NWR."

Armed with his uncle's old Leica camera, Warrick quickly learned the representational superiority of the camera over a pencil art. As his budget and equipment advanced, so did his ability to capture images of the wildlife, wildflowers and landscapes he encountered on his ramblings.

Though essentially an amateur, Warrick's photos have been used extensively by the USFWS and have appeared in several wildlife identification guides and a few magazines.