Kim's Wild Turkeys

Wild turkey feather

Comparing a farm turkey to a wild one is sort of like comparing a deer to a cow. The wild turkey is wary and, well, wild. What captured my attention was what they do at dawn. Where I live and my sister Kim lives, the turkeys fly up into the trees where they roost at night. They blend in, you don't know they're there. Then, just as dawn makes them barely visible as large shapes high in the trees, they start flying down to the ground where they pretty much stay all day.  I’ve spent some time with the only other species of Turkey: the Ocellated Turkey in Yucatan where they have the same behavior.

More on Making Meaning

When I use a feather by itself, divorced from the bird, the feather can be a reminder of the bird that wore it. Art does the same thing—it can describe something, say a bird. But the art is not the bird—it’s an abstraction. Civilization seems to be a process of increasing abstraction, breaking things down into their component parts and reassembling them to suit our needs. Like writing for instance, breaking down sounds into pictures, then syllables, then just individual sounds or letters. And then reassembling them to make meaning and communicate. So then we see the world in the way we describe it—by forming these letters into words and into full thoughts. Feathers though are real in themselves and only one step away from the real bird. So I hope that my work with feathers can be more of a direct connection with the world, a little different and refreshing angle from which to observe the realm.

Making Meaning

Sharp-tailed grousefeathers

Feathers are perfect by themselves so why make art with them? I do it to add meaning: to direct the viewer to ideas they can relate to. Giving meaning abstracts from the thing viewed.  The meaning is not the actual object seen. It involves assumptions which can be wrong. Here’s an example: These sharp-tailed grouse feathers are not grown by the bird to be images of big-breasted love demons, nor deer prints, nor heart-lipped faces. They just add to the bird’s camouflage helping it hide.  I like to remember that the viewer’s mind gives meaning, not the thing viewed. The things themselves are just innocent participants of the mind’s workings. Whether it is the color of someone’s skin, the way people dress, or how we see a feather, seeking meaning helps make sense of the world. It is a very human quality.

Bird Song

Most of the time winter wrens scurry around under ferns and logs deep in the woods. And they give  a tiny, short and abrupt, slightly harsh peep every once in a while if they are upset.  Which they usually are when I am trudging around where they live. But in their springtime, which seems to be about now in late winter, they get up in the tops of the forest trees and sing their hearts out. Long, happy, wonderfully melodious chirps that go on and on.  If their goal in doing this is to establish territory, they have a very different perspective of their songs that I do. So I finished this piece today with the feather-songs drifting down to the ground where I would be.

How Does this Feather Hold Together?

African grey parrot

First, a little background: Each feather is made of a shaft and a bunch of barbs that come off the shaft. Like tree branches. Each branch, or barb has more branches coming off of it. On a feather these smaller branches are called barbules. Each barbule has a grabby claw hook which grasps others. That’s what keeps a feather together and flat. Without them, birds couldn't fly. It’s like Velcro. And they can come apart and zip back together again. So that’s how I cut this African Grey Parrot tail feather without it falling apart: by relying on the barbules to hold the barbs together. This cut shape isn't very strong though. That’s because the connection of some of the barbs to the shaft were severed.  So if the Velcro-like barbule claws come apart, the shape just falls apart. On my shadowbox work, I spend a long time on each feather placing backing material in certain places to make them sturdy. This feather is not backed.

Feathers patterns and color

Color Feather Alphabet ABC

This feather alphabet is a failure. After making a very successful feather alphabet poster from the brown, black and white patterns found in a single bird’s feathers, I said to myself, "a color feather alphabet would be even better." Looking at all sorts of feathers from around the world I did not find nearly enough to make all the letters of the English alphabet. Now that I figured out why I failed, it seems pretty obvious:

Birds use patterns to break up their body outline, to camouflage themselves, to hide. Colors advertise. Colored feathers don’t need patterns.

More on Crows

More than ever, every time I see a crow these past few weeks, I stop and watch. That is because I am still reading Tony Angel's Gift of the Crows. The book has many stories but what sticks in my mind is their brain size. Our bodies are 2% brain. An animal we think of as intelligent is a sperm whale with its huge head, it has a brain size of only 0.0 something percent of body weight.  Brain size for a crow, depending on the species is up  to 3% of total body weight! They can count up to six, they make tools, they are extremely social.  Crows can recognize your face. Something about all this is tremendously compelling and at the same time slightly mysterious, edging toward creepy for some. Two new completed pieces and designs, both with crow themes, uploaded today onto my gallery webpage: Pro Crow Creation and Passing By.

What is it About Crows?

Crow feather cutout

Tony Angel describes them:

“Crows are mischievous, playful, social, and passionate. They have brains that are huge for their body size and exhibit an avian kind of eloquence.”

— Gifts of the Crow by Tony Angel and John Marzluff

Crows live among us so we can see a bit of what they do and they can see us. My first three pieces for 2013 will be of crows: small 11 x 14 inch shadowboxes using their feathers.

Here is the beginning of one.

Winter Bird Count

Hummingbird feather

I participated in the Audubon Society’s annual Winter Bird Count. Each participating city has a five- mile radius circle where people divide up and count as many kinds of birds as they can. Being almost the darkest day of the year, at least in the northern  hemisphere, it was cold, windy, and rainy. I thought the birds would, like me, want to get to a warm cozy place. But then I looked closely and saw that their feathers were sheltering them. The curved body feathers were fluffed up. They were shedding the rain, and keeping the wind out. So elegant and cozy. When I went home, I took off my cumbersome and relatively ineffective clothes—my outdoor feathers. I sat under the roof inside my house by a warm fire—my indoor feathers.

the shining, elusive element which is life itself...

“What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?”

— Willa Cather, from Song of the Lark (1915).

This was read to us this September by Robert Bateman after the Birds in Art museum show in Wisconsin.

“...the shining, elusive element which is life itself...”

Cather says it best.  It is often what I want to capture in my work.

Parakeet Wings

I prefer to use molted feathers that a bird sheds. It’s kind of like recycling. Nevertheless, sometimes people give me their pet bird that died.  Often, an owner who treasured their bird wants to see the feathers put to use when the bird dies—as sort of an  honor the bird. So I have learned to pluck and do a bit of taxidermy-type work.  It was distasteful at first, but now I see it as just part of life.  So here are the wings of four parakeets.  They curve in a beautiful angelic way, smaller than the palm of my hand.   

Painting on feathers

I strive in my art to honor feathers and the birds they came from. Some talented people paint on them but it is not something I am drawn to do. That said, I came across a man’s work that impressed me: Super Regalia. He paints mostly to imitate feathers that are otherwise illegal to have—like hawks and eagles; or painted to look like rare and hard to find feathers like the tails of Red-tail Black Cockatoos. These feathers caught my eye because it is hard to tell them apart from the real thing. He sells them and uses them in Native regalia—fans, bustles, and such.

Feath, Feather, Feathest

I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker with three different pictures of Jupiter with a caption under each, “Jupit,” “Jupiter,” “Jupitest.” Which got me to thinking about a piece entitled “Feath, Feather, Feathest.” Once in a while an aviary bird dies in mid-molt, when its feathers are still growing and the owner gives me the dead bird. This just happened with a Scarlet Macaw. Its full grown feather would have been 20 inches or so long. But this partly grown feath is just 7 inches. When I take a full grown tail and cut some flying macaws out, it will become feathest.

Olympia Fall Arts Walk

The Olympia Fall Arts Walk is October 5, 5-10pm and October 6, 12-5pm.

Yoga Loft is a large, beautifully sparse space. I am excited to show feather shadowboxes there, more than I have ever hung at once. They go up Sunday night, October 1st. Prints of my work will also be available for purchase. See you there!

Birds in Art Show

The Birds in Art show in Wausau, Wisconsin, was spectacular, go if you can. That town treats artists well and attracts talented and devoted artists who paint, sculpt, and in other ways visually honor birds. As you might imagine, people were interested in my work because they had never seen feathers used in the way I do.  I in turn, met many excellent artists and have new ideas for pieces that I can’t wait to begin.

Robert Bateman is a Canadian artist who paints the natural world. He is starting an environmental education center in Victoria B.C. with a gallery that I hope to exhibit in one day—if I can successfully negotiate the legalities of importing and exporting the feathers contained in my works. 

Getting the EDGE

I just returned from a week long artist business boot-camp in Port Townsend. The program is called the EDGE Professional Development Program sponsored by Artist Trust. Fifteen of us were selected from around the state but only three of us were men. I felt right at home having been far outnumbered by a lot of sisters. One benefit of this boot camp is to have the opportunity to collaborate on joint shows with some of these artists as well as work together creating artworks with feathers and other mediums. For instance, Kara McGhee paints realistic birds sometimes using interesting lighting effects so a joint show makes sense. Laurie Fronek 'draws' in 3-d wire sculpture and there may be an opportunity to collaborate on a 'wire-feather' piece.

Artist Trust offers support to artists in many ways: grants, professional development, opportunities like shows, connection with other artists, and fellowships and grants. And not just visual artists like me but writers and performing artists.

Swallows in Flight #1

I love watching the barn swallows fly and will be sad when they leave in September.  I made this piece in their honor.  They make their home in my barn and I get to watch their young grow up although a local Merlin falcon has been having its way with a few.  The feathers in this piece are from the wing of a Lilac Breasted Roller.

The strikingly colored Lilac Breasted Rollers live in Sub-Sahara Africa.  Their form is close to barn swallows in silhouette—with the forked tail.   I started out drawing silhouettes of the Lilac Breasted Rollers in flight but ended up with swallow shapes since I am closer to these birds.  In the piece, I wanted to highlight the blues of the sky from where the swallows swoop, eat, socialize, catch airborne feathers for their nests, mate, drink from my sprinkler, and frolic.   The small size of the feathers and hence the cutouts was a challenge.

Birds in Art

A piece of mine was accepted in the 2012 Birds in Art show, put on by the Leigh Yawley Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin.  Each year they put out a nice full color catalog with accepted artists’ works from all over the world.  An Olympia artist, Judy Smith gave me several of the previous year’s catalogswhere I gleaned several ideas for new pieces, one of which I pursued.  One piece that gave me the idea for a new piece was a sculpture by John Richen titled Symphonic Flight. It is bronze and stainless steel and sort of looks like two feathers but one looks more like a bird in flight with some wind added.  It set me to thinking.  Just the shape of a flight feather suggests movement.  Since I strive to honor the qualities of the feathers I work with, I used a pair of matching flight feathers set as dual images and kept one uncut, whole.  The other I subtracted bits and pieces and ended up with the feathers shape but with a lot of connected bird shapes in flight. This may be the beginning of a series.

Many Eagle Feathers

In just one mile on a remote Washington beach laid all these and more eagle feathers.  They were sitting on the sand and mixed in the drift at the high tide mark.  After being arranged in a circle, the tide redistributed them up and down the beach where they now lie.

Curiously, almost all of these feathers were from the tips of the wings, the primaries.  These birds more or less shed only two matching feathers at a time, one from each side.  Most small birds start their molt in the middle of the wing and proceed outward over a few months until growth is complete.  Larger birds like the eagle may take several years since it is harder for them to fly with even one feather shed from each wing.  I wonder where all these feathers came from since I only saw about half a dozen eagles all day.

Warm Feathers

My geese are molting their feathers.  Unlike most birds, geese and other kinds of waterfowl shed their feathers all at once.  So now, the goose feathers are strewn all around my field. Sometimes my geese get out which is where they were when I got home this afternoon. As I herded them back into the field, I caught one to see how its feathers were growing back in.  When I grabbed the bird, it felt warm as they always do since their temperature is 6 or 7 degrees warmer than ours.  What surprised me was that the growing feathers were just as warm.

I had never felt warm feathers.  But it isn’t really so surprising when you know that the growing feathers are heavily supplied by blood.  So much that if I cut the bigger goose feathers off at the shaft, the bird could bleed to death.  So this is a time of their lives that try to treat themselves more gently until the feathers are fully grown.