I’m attracted to feathery shapes and feather analogies. While a bird’s feathers allow the bird to live in two mediums: on land and in the air; the Axolotl’s feathery gills allow them to live their lives in the water even though they also have lungs and can breathe air like us. These creatures lived in a couple of lakes near Mexico City but now they are mostly gone. However, they are easily bred and genetically manipulated so are abundant in the pet trade. Unlike feathers, these frilly fills are never shed so I wouldn’t use them in my art!
PBS Documentary, Dancing, and Creativity /
About 21 minutes into this almost hour-long documentary, PBS placed an eight-minute section about my art. The best part about it for me and also the most vulnerable, is toward the end when they filmed me dancing in my studio. I do love to dance as it comes closest to capturing a feeling of flight. This feeling of movement is important in my art and it can translate to a feeling of motion in the final pieces that I make.
Pelicanesis /
Pelicanesis
What if we can attract things like food by some unseen power like telekinesis?
Life offers two features in abundance: beauty and horror. For me, I find an underlying theme of humor provides some balance. People often say that my pieces have a bit of comedy. I don’t usually try for humor, but I like it when a piece makes me smile. Especially when the title fits.
Bright Feather Colors /
Greetings in its frame. For my smallest pieces I loved these bumpy frames but they were discontinued. Now I use a silver-lined black frame.
Bright colors are rare in feathers, especially large ones. It is at least partly ok for the birds to show their colors because they feel safe – which is because they can fly and get away, unlike mice who are always dull grey or brown. Imagine a mouse with these bright colors! It might be popular in the pet trade but the mice would not last long in the wild.
Want to fly? /
Disperse is carved from an Amazon Parrot flight feather.
I want to fly because:
I want to fly to fly to have a better view
I want to fly to understand where I want to go
I want to fly to be closer to heaven
I want to fly to be respected
I want to fly to get away from what is bothering me, what I don’t like
I want to fly to get unstuck
I want to fly to go somewhere else because where I am is boring, dangerous, unfulfilling
I want to fly so I can look down on everyone else
I want to fly so I can feel important
I want to fly so I can get what I want--career, physical wholeness, relationship, mental wholeness, physical health, and stuff
I want to fly so I can be acknowledged, respected, and famous
I want to fly because it is more exciting than being here.
I want to fly so do not have to slog there through brush and hills.
I want to fly to be free
I want to fly because it feels good
Pickup Sticks /
Chickadee Pickup Sticks . 23 x 23 inches . Crowned Crane wing feathers
I think of the pleasure I felt playing Pickup Sticks as a child, how the sticks were interconnected and we tried to find ways of disconnecting them one at a time without affecting the rest. When I observe birds, I think about how science works by trying to isolate specific aspects of birds to study. When we separate one thing from everything else, remarkable knowledge can be obtained. But science usually forgets that the sticks are intertwined for complex reasons. I might think I know a chickadee because I know a few things about them, but really? There is so much complexity to how they exist in a huge pile of sticky relations: to each other, to their food, to the sun and moon, to plants and bugs, time and sound, to weather, and on and on. So many interrelations that I end up in awe, not needing to know it all but instead feeling a contentedness at the wonder of existence.
My Favorite Binoculars /
My favorite binoculars are 9 x 32 millimeters. That means the bigger 32 mm lens in front makes the binoculars small enough to carry around but still catch enough light for most situations. Otherwise, if the binoculars were bigger, like a standard 42 mm lens, I would think twice about packing them up. The 9 mm magnification gets a little more detail than the standard 8mm magnification. They are under $300. which was not too big a hit for me having left my last pair in a taxi. The optics are sharp but not quite as sharp as a $2000 high-end binocular. They are made by Pentax.
When I have my binoculars in hand looking at birds is when I get a lot of inspirations for my art, including this piece, Feather Binoculars.
Sometimes Its Best To Just Do Nothing /
Chris at rest on the cutting board.
I sometimes get so busy that I forget to enjoy the sights, smells, and sounds of the moment. So I remember to breath and slow down. Naps are good too.
How To See Through Your Own Reflection? /
Osprey Sees Its Through Own Reflection
When I try to see into the water, mostly I get my own reflection. But if I spend some time trying to look past that, I begin to notice what is below, however indistinctly. So it is all the more remarkable to see an osprey dive to get a fish when for me, it would be hard to quickly see past the surface reflection, especially as I got closer to the surface of the water. That is, unless I was wearing glare-cutting polarized glasses.
Have you ever seen an osprey dive into the water? It emerges dripping wet and flies off, giving occasional shakes like a wet dog.
Ornithology /
This large piece represents about one-tenth of all the bird families in the world. Carved into each feather is a bird or birds from a different family. The left row shows more or less the earliest existing birds to evolve; the right row shows the latest. The top row of cut out birds are loosely the highest flyers, the bottom row are the lowest.
This was commissioned by a natural history museum in late 2017 so the piece has a lined-up row feeling of a museum specimen collection.
Migration Revisted /
Flying Somewhere. Peacock wing feathers mostly.
I was so happy with the piece titled Migrate (see Blog for May 27th) that I wanted to explore making others based on this theme using lots of different interesting feathers. So one day Joy and I began searching for feathers to do this. At the end of the day we were surprised that we had only gotten as far as selecting feathers from one kind of bird--the peacock. These are the various different feathers from the peacock that we readied to carve. Notice that the bright display feathers are mostly absent. These are the less celebrated feathers from the wing plus the longest, a single stiff grey one on the bottom. This is the bird's true tail feather which they use to push up the display feathers on the bird's back.
An Update on an Industrial Chicken Problem /
I posted an article about the chicken industry in 2015. Then, 50 billion chickens were raised and killed for food every year. While industrial meat production for other animals has mostly remained about the same, nine years later in 2024, 75 billion chickens are now raised and killed each year. So below, I have updated the article:
From 75 billion chickens killed each year, industrial farmers around the world throw away almost all of their feathers: 8 billion pounds into landfills. The chicken farming business is so competitive that farmers make only a few cents on each bird. farmers would rather sell the feathers than throw them away. There is always hope: universities and private research labs continue to research ways to transform feather proteins into usable products; some are finding their way into the market, but most are in development to make them economically vialble. Here is a list:
fertilizer ● animal feed ● extracts for liquid and solid fuel ● hydrogen fuel storage ● insulation ● absorbent materials for diapers and environmental contaminants such as radioactive strontium and cesium ● ingredients in paints ● filters ● mats for erosion control ● paper ● stuffing for furniture and mattresses ● moldable thermoplastics for soles of shoes, cups and plates, furniture, roofing, and for auto parts such as dashboards ● ingredients in cosmetics ● clothing ● boat construction (mixed with fiberglass ● and circuit boards.
For the past 10 years, I have observed this research come up with intriguing possibilities but when they come to market them, there has been little success. So feathers continue to find their way into landfills.
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023)
Wet Feathers? /
Feathers can have microscopic bumps on their surface that created surface tension that repels water, But when the bird dives deep, under pressure this surface tension fails and feathers do get wet. But the preening oil on the feathers allow the water to roll right off when the bird surfaces.
Cormorants still hold their wings out to drip-dry. They look to me like they are drying off with a beach towel after a swim.
ref: : Srinivasan S, Chhatre SS, Guardado JO, Park K-C, Parker AR, Rubner MF, McKinley GH, Cohen RE. 2014 Quantification of feather structure, wettability and resistance to liquid penetration. J. R. Soc. Interface 11: 20140287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0287
Thank You Chickens! /
Thank You Chickens #2, Peacock tail feather
A totem is a Northwest indigenous way of symbolizing creatures that are important in their lives. Chickens are so important in our lives for their eggs and meat that I feel I owe them a bit of gratitude.
Why Owls Look So Big /
This small Ruru owl from New Zealand is like other owls when it gets wet. That’s one thing feathers do: make birds look bigger than they are. Especially owls.
First Record of a Fossil Feather /
The famous fossil feather — not from an Archaeopteryx
In 1861 in Germany, this feather was found. It was the first one ever recorded and created quite a stir. Then, after Archaeopteryx skeletons were unearthed in the same limestone rock, this feather was long thought to be from that same kind of bird. But recent analysis shows it was from a different, unknown species. Which indicates to me that one, we don’t know a lot about what happened 150 million years ago and two, that a wondrous diversity of life forms was, of course, happening then.
https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/press/press-releases/mystery-missing-quill-solved
Genesis /
Migrate 20 x 30 inches, feathers from many species of birds
A variety of peacock feathers
I was so happy with the piece (titled Migrate) that I wanted to explore making others based on this theme. So one day Joy and I began searching for lots of interesting feathers to do this. At the end of the day, we were surprised that we had only gotten as far as selecting and preparing feathers from one kind of bird--the peacock. These are various different feathers from a peacock that we readied to carve. Notice that the bright display feathers are absent. These are the less celebrated ones all from the wing except the largest one that is from the tail. The true tail feathers of a peacock are long, stiff, and grey as pictured here in the lower right. The birds muscle them up which pushes up the display feathers that are on the bird's back.
They Named a Cocktail After This /
In February, The Dewberry, a five star hotel in Charleston, South Carolina served a cocktail that they named after a piece I made that is hanging in their lobby! That is the highest of compliments. We tried it and both the alcohol and the compliment went to my head!
Around and Around /
Kingfisher Pick Up Fish
When I feel bored or rushed, a not too serious part of me says, “Wouldn’t life be simpler if I didn’t have to do repeating everyday chores like brushing teeth or even eating?” I mean, it can sometimes feel like a lot of work. That thought was a genesis for this piece that is one of a small series of birds going around and around with titles like “Pick Up Sticks”.
What if instead of thinking of time as a horizontal line marching along to somewhere, we thought of is as something that repeats, perhaps in a spiral like a breath that goes in and out?
Vashon Show All of April and My Sister /
My sister Robin Maynard’s part of her series, Women Dancing with Vegetables
From April 5th to the 28th, I will have over 20 pieces exhibited at the Vashon Center for the Arts. Vashon is an island a short ferry ride from Seattle. The curator agreed to display a piece of my sisters and one of my mothers, both artists. My sister Robin is a master of color. My mother was also but slowly lost her eyesight when she was older. One of the first to go was color so she painted in black and white, Sumi-e style with charcoal and a brush.
I am limited to using the natural colors in feathers which are mostly browns, blacks, and whites, though I would like to have more color options. Painters have access to unlimited variations of colors. So I can empathize how my mother felt when she lost her eyesight.