Qualla: The Elephant House https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: The Elephant House https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house The Elephant House: Introduction https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house/ Turn onto Yarmouth Road in Toronto's Christie Pits neighbourhood and the lawn at number 77 confronts you with something you did not expect to encounter on a residential street: a life-size mammoth. Not a sculpture of a small elephant, not a garden ornament that hints at one — a full-scale, plaster-bodied prehistoric mammoth standing on a suburban front lawn. The piece is titled An Elephant in the Room, and the owner of the house calls himself, with appropriate modesty, the elephant keeper.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/z/8/the-elephant-house-wp/dpz8-the-elephant-house-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The Elephant House: A Thesis Project With Tusks https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house/ The mammoth was made in 1999 by Matt Donovan, then a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, as part of his thesis project. Underneath the plaster skin lies a plywood skeleton wrapped in chicken wire and fibreglass, then coated with spray foam to give the surface its ro...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/z/8/the-elephant-house-wp/dpz8-the-elephant-house-a-thesis-project-with-tusks.mp3 0:06 2 full The Elephant House: The Elephant Keeper https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house/ The homeowner, identified in profiles only as Lawson, took the sculpture in because it made him laugh. He had just become a first-time home owner, and he saw the mammoth as a fittingly ridiculous way to commemorate the milestone — a household totem you couldn't take seriously. "F...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/z/8/the-elephant-house-wp/dpz8-the-elephant-house-the-elephant-keeper.mp3 0:06 3 full The Elephant House: Neighbourhood of One https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house/ Toronto noticed. In 2006, the Harbourfront Centre mounted an exhibition called Neighborhood of One, curated by Duncan Farnan, which gathered together the city's strangest residential lawn ornaments and architectural eccentricities. The Elephant House was one of the headliners. Fa...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/z/8/the-elephant-house-wp/dpz8-the-elephant-house-neighbourhood-of-one.mp3 0:06 4 full The Elephant House: The Quiet Argument https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house/ Cities, especially big ones, drift toward sameness. Zoning rules, condo standards, real-estate aspirations — all of them push residential streets toward a uniform palette of clipped hedges and tasteful trim. A plaster mammoth makes a different argument. The argument is small but ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/z/8/the-elephant-house-wp/dpz8-the-elephant-house-the-quiet-argument.mp3 0:06 5 full The Elephant House: What the Driver Sees https://qualla.com/the-elephant-house/ Drivers turning into Yarmouth Road encounter the sculpture the way Lawson first did — by surprise, and then with laughter. The mammoth is positioned close to the front of the lot, so it dominates the view before the rest of the house registers. There is no plaque, no fence, no ex...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/z/8/the-elephant-house-wp/dpz8-the-elephant-house-what-the-driver-sees.mp3 0:06 6 full