A Grateful Artist Who Wants to Repay His Elephant Helpers —

For a decade Mya, Layang Layang and Dilberta have been the unheralded contributors to Chris Ofili’s rise to fame. The three Asian elephants, visited nearly every month by Mr. Ofili, the British-born painter, replenish the supply of dung that he uses in nearly all his paintings, including the one of a black Virgin Mary that enraged former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani when it appeared in the “Sensation” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999.

Now Mr. Ofili says the time is right to repay his friends. When the Armory Show 2002 opens in Manhattan on two Hudson River piers tomorrow, he will auction one of his latest paintings to benefit the Zoological Society of London, caretakers of the three elephants. NY Times