b'G at Sweden,isasclassic c o a s ta la rrundsund, Scandinavian fishing village as one could envision, located on the southwestcoastofthecountry, directlyacrossfromSkagen,the northernmostcityinDenmark. Theweatheriscold,exceptfor two months or so in the middle of summer, and the wildly diverse populations of fish, seabirds, and other marine life make it one of the most interest-ing coastal ecosystems in Europe. Kent Ullberg was born in Grundsund in 1945, his father a fisherman and classic artist, and his mother a waitress and aspiringsculptor.ShortlyafterKentsbirth,the UllbergsrelocatedtoGothenburg,amajorport city located about 50 miles south, and where Kent would be exposed to a classic art education.Roger Tory Peterson was an American ornithologist, artist and one of the founders of Americas environ-mental conservation movement of the 20th Centu-ryhe was also the son of Swedish immigrants who settled in Jamestown, New York. His series of field guides to birds and wildflowers were brilliantly and meticulously produced works of art and science that served to educate its readers and to inspire young scientists and artists like Kent Ullberg.Petersons A Field Guide to Birds of Britain and Eu-rope,alongwiththesupportofhisparents,in-spired Ullberg to pursue a formal art education in Stockholm. His decision to take a deckhand job on a fishing boat after he graduated high school, which took him from the North Sea to South America, ex-posed Kent to the wide, open ocean far from the cozy confines of the Swedish coast along the Straits of Denmark. Over his months-long fishing journey in the Atlantic, Ullberg saw and experienced sea life in varieties about which he had only read, and he became enamored with individual, anatomical detailsofmarinefish,mammals,andseabirds, which he would first record through sketches, and later in clay in the studios of the Swedish Konst-fack School of Art. While Ullberg found his eventual passion and pro-fession in art school, he was also confronted with cynicism and discouragement from his professor, who told him that his real-life approach to art was not the Avant-garde of the day, the 1960s when EuropeanandAmericaninfluenceswerealmost entirelypoliticalperhapsappropriatelysoand abstract was the only marketable genre in the art world, regardless of subject matter.While his professors sycophancy to the artistic fad of the era did succeed in deterring Ullberg from aAbove: Deinonychus, smaller dinosaur raptors featured in career as a fine artist, it did not detract him fromthe Jurassic Park films, were sculpted in bronze by Ullberg his passion for nature and his desire to apply hisin 1987. Right: One of a number of American Bald Eagle talents to wildlife subjectshe just had to find amonuments created by Corpus Christis Kent Ullberg.42THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'