A limit as a Creative Prompt /  by Chris Maynard

Split Moon, Crowned Crane secondary wing feather

Ideas and inspirations come through many channels. It isn’t the artist doing it but being open up to possibilities and being part of a conduit. Feathers though, present a challenge because they only come in the natural colors and sizes that the bird grows

So the feathers as my medium set severe limits. When I am inspired, I have to figure out how to accomplish an inspiration using only feathers as my line, form, color and size. So I need to approach this type of design problem from many angles. I sketch many possible ideas knowing most of them will not work. It is kind of like a brain storm in my sketchbook

Phoenix Flamingo /  by Chris Maynard

Female Red-tailed Cockatoo tail feather carved into the likeness of a Phoenix

The family name for Flamingoes is Phoenicopterae, from the word phoenix.

It makes sense in a way because these birds live in fire, sort of. They inhabit environments that are too extreme for any other bird or mammal. They gather and breed in super salty and alkaline environments that would quickly kill other creatures. They can drink very hot water, close to boiling. As Katrina von Gruow writes in The Unfeathered Bird, “Flamingoes are really very special birds indeed and, with their carmine wings, emerging from the intense chemical heat of the tropical salt lakes, certainly worthy of the name “phoenix".”

A Tongue in the Shape of a Feather /  by Chris Maynard

Look at this Toucan’s tongue! A feathered bird with a feathery tongue. A toucan’s beak can be as long as its body and comes with a tongue to match. The bird seems to use it as a tool to get sticky food down its throat as well as to taste the food before deciding to swallow it or not.

Creative Inspiration in a Feather /  by Chris Maynard

Sunrise study #1

An artist gets inspiration from many sources: other artists, the natural world, animals, people, and many others. I got this inspiration from the top feather. To me, it was so obviously like a sunrise that it practically dictated this piece. That’s the thing about perfect natural feathers, am not going to paint a sunset on a feather because I want to honor the natural color. Both feathers are from an Amazon Parrot, about five inches long so the final piece is only 5 x 7 inches.

Raven Spins the World /  by Chris Maynard

Raven Spins the World, 13 x 21 inches using Great Argus feathers

We make stories as an important way of making sense of the world and take them seriously even though they are never perfect reflections of reality. Like when someone tailgates me, I think “they are doing this on purpose to bother me” when most likely the tailgater either has a bad habit or is just absorbed with getting somewhere. It probably has nothing to do with intentionally trying to bother me.

This seriousness about our stories partly why I like to make up stories that are not so serious. Like this title which could be part of a larger story.

The Axolotl, Feathered Lungs /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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? /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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.

How To See Through Your Own Reflection? /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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 /  by Chris Maynard

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? /  by Chris Maynard

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! /  by Chris Maynard

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.