Swiftsure . great argus pheasant secondary wing feathers, naturally shed, one from each wing
A bird interprets what it sees through its visual process—light to eyes to brain. This interpretation is sort of an abstraction, an inference. The thing thought to be seen is not the thing, it is just light waves reflected off a surface that has to be interpreted in order to make sense of it.
Humans carry this interpretation process to the nth degree through language. We base our conscious thoughts on our abstraction process of language. We don’t often experience life directly but through our thoughts which are shaped by our language like the words on this page. For instance, the word for feather is not the feather but is a concept that we codify into language so we can communicate the idea of “feather” to each other. The word is static while an actual feather is not. So when we see a feather, we are likely not fully seeing it but rather thinking of it as the word that we learned for what a feather should be. The actual feather is much more grand.
Art can get past our limited language-based concepts. For this reason, I am pleased that I have chosen feathers as my medium. By using an actual feather, I remove a layer of abstraction which would exist if I represented the feather with a drawing or sculpture. Then by carving the feather, the result does not quite fit into the word or concept we have of what a feather should be and in that moment, there is an opening to see them differently, with new eyes and maybe with wonder.