Pelicanesis . turkey feathers . 20" x 19"
Life offers two features in abundance: beauty and horror. So how does a sane person cope? Focus on one side of this, the beauty? Watch horror movies? Emphasize sacredness and specialness of existence? 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 to do that but I like it when a piece makes me smile. Especially when the title fits.
The darkest days of year are for gathering around the fire. Shining out of fireplaces and windows of wood stoves, and on the floors of teepees, wigwams, and longhouse. Since darkness reins, our tendency toward telling stories and seeing the world as myth comes forth.
Normally unnoticed shadows become prominent. The sun is gone so the fire becomes its substitute but shining from below. Which encourages the shadows to dance around and above us on the walls.
This is my first borrowed north-west coast native design style, modified for use in a carved feather.
from my sweet and gentle rooster that died
Worldwide, five million tons of waste chicken feathers accumulate a day according to the Journal of Microbiology Research (6:2211-2222). Feathers are over 90% protein so it seems we would have found ways to use them that would make them a profitable byproduct. But not yet. Though there is a lot of research and exciting potential, nothing has really come through in a big way. So mostly the feathers are put in landfill though some is used as low-quality animal feed, costing the farmers money to dispose of feathers rather than being able to make money from them.
From my latest troll through the internet, here are some potential future large-scale future uses: shoes, semiconductors, boat hulls, concrete strengthener, high quality feed for animals and for humans, diapers, fabric and textiles, paper, moldable plastic and biodegradable plastic, insulation, beauty products, car parts, and fiber optic cables.
Each piece is a result of a long and careful series of eleven steps before it finds itself completed.
Blackbird Rain in process
“How long does it take to make?” is an often-asked question of an artist during a show. It is difficult to answer because making art is not usually a linear process. Sometimes and artist will answer glibly, “All of my life.” Which is true in the sense that an artist learns and gathers skills throughout their life. But it is not very helpful to the questioner.
When I am asked, I try to gage the level of the questioner’s interest. If it is casual question, I answer with, “It’s a long process.” If the questioner is more seriously interested, I go through the steps in the process from inspiration to photographing the final piece. But I find that for me, the question is often aimed at finding out how long it takes to cut the birds out with my scalpel.
For my next post on November 27th, I will go through the creative steps from concept and inspiration to completion
Stretch, translucent mute swan feathers
The November 2017 print issue of National Geographic Magazine has an article on Pterosaurs, flying dinosaurs like pterodactyls. They say that there existed many species of all different sizes including one with a wingspan of 35 feet, as tall as a giraffe.
That impressed me. Partly because I have understood that the heaviest flying bird could be only around 40 pounds. Otherwise, it couldn't get off the ground. Although several people have explained the physics of bird flight to me, I don’t understand how something much heavier like a giraffe-sized pterosaur could fly. Can anyone provide answers?
Swans are closer to the limit of how heavy a bird can be and still fly at 30 pounds. A swan expert theorized that their feathers are so thin as to be translucent because this saves weight to allow the bird to be able to fly well.
Memory
We make sense of our place in the universe in many ways: science, religion, philosophy, stories, our own experience, myth, and art. Feathers have always symbolized flight, transformation, aspiration, and hope as well as beauty and wonder. If the meaning we ascribe to feathers are useful in some way to make sense of our existence, we will always use feathers as major symbols as long as we and birds inhabit the Earth.
Bound for Philips Arena
Feathers universally represent the ability to fly. So I was pleased to create a commissioned piece to be placed at the Philips Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks because getting close to flying is a goal of a basketball team, especially one called the Hawks. Flight is also an aspiration of the fans, we want our team to metaphorically fly, to do their best -- and surpass their best.
Each feather can symbolize flight. A team of them on two wings working together can accomplish flight.
Feathers are the central trunk or shaft of my artistic focus. Though I am not branching out to other media, I compare how feathers branch out to trees, arteries, nerves, and river systems.
Isn't a defining factor of these branching systems a process of getting from one place to another and maintaining continuity? For a feather, it begins as a little nubbin in a bird's skin, then grows into a branching system that creates a structural continuity. Nerves send signals back and forth. Trees, blood, and rivers are continuous flowing liquids.
As a creative person, I occasionally visualize off-beat scenarios. Like a a bird or a person stripped of everything but their circulatory systems and looking a bit like a branching feather.
This August, I finished a large cut feather installation in the entry of a lovely Puget Sound home. Since the windows face the water, gull shapes cut from blue macaw feathers were positioned to fly in to rest on the right wall. I called it Coming Home. As I was finishing up the installation, on a scaffold by the upper window, I glanced out occasionally to see gulls flying by.
MCE . marabou stork feather . 17" x 14"
Many people say my art is completely original but it is not. I developed a technique using technologies already created, I use common accepted design practices, and I am influenced by other artist. Case in point: Maurits Cornelis Escher. He used tessellation to create many of his designs, repeating shapes that totally fill a plane with no space left over. The visible feathers on a bird’s body does it too, appearing like overlapping diamond-shaped shingles.
Out of the Box, installations continued
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art
Much of July I spent designing, cutting, gluing and arranging prepared feathers in the silhouettes of gulls for an installation commission. These installations are different than most of my previous work in that they not restrained by the protection of shadowboxes. They are larger and can be more free-form, adapted to their environment, the walls where they are installed.
I was thrilled to create the first three large installations of my feather carvings at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art this March. They are out of the box, literally. No shadowboxes, so the feathers and cutouts are pinned directly to the wall without any protection.
The stabilized feathers are tough but the pinned feathers and cutouts could be damaged by leaning against them so they needed to be placed away from traffic and high enough to be out of the way of exuberant dogs and cats and kids. They are cleaned of dust with a strong stream of air. The feathers deter pests from eating them as their backing and stabilization treatment does this.
These installations can be large and made to fit any space. It takes a lot of time to prepare and cut the feathers but the installation on-site goes fairly quickly. I will go anywhere in the world to create these.
Chickadee Heart . 12" x 12" . turkey feather
When a bird flaps its wing downward, feathers push on the air to keep a bird aloft, right? Then what happens when the bird moves its wing back up? Wouldn’t feathers push the air going the other way forcing the bird down? It would except for several things happening at the same time with the wings and feathers. Here are some:
1. The wing twists upward on the up-beat
2. The big flight feathers on the wing tips angle up so they aren’t flat against one another but are open like a louvered window shade that when opened you can see out
3. Each feather lets a little bit of air pass through; a little more on the leading edge letting more air than the trailing edge. This is part of what allows feathers to separate from each other on the upbeat and helps them stick together on the downbeat. (Air Transmissivity of Feathers, Muller and Patone, 1998)
Emerald Star Star . 15" x 12" . ocellated turkey feather and tiny feathers from a peacock
Wealth is not the same as having money. Certainly we can trade money for stuff and experience but what for? What we really want to mean by wealth is that elusive creature called happiness. Besides having enough for basic needs and in addition to having satisfying relations, happiness is in part, the ability to let in awe and wonder. And wonder is an ability to step outside oneself, if just for a moment. Wonder is fostered through a reluctance to summarize; a hesitancy to put observations into boxes. It is feeling safe enough not to judge.
Tag . rose-breasted cockatoo feathers . 17" x 14"
June 23rd is the reception for my show at the Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe. The title of the show is Ascension, a fitting theme for the qualities inspired by feathers and flight. Part of why I want to fly, to ascend is to go somewhere else. Another goal is to be content, not to go somewhere else, not to even have a goal. I find that some of my most contented moments are watching birds fly, especially the swallows around my house and barn. I watch for hours, feeling part of them, banking, swooping, and soaring. Like I am wrapped in these birds. Soaring like the essence of hope, yearning to get to the impossible to reach goal of hope, to continual perfect balance, to peace.
Hummer Summer . 6 by 4 inches . ocellated turkey feathers and small impeyan pheasant feathers
During my April artist residency in Costa Rice, I got to know more about hummingbirds by watching them every day. These were the first pieces I made when I returned to the USA. Here is one of them, very small which I made for the September Woodson Art Museum’s Birds in Art post card sale with proceeds supporting museum activities. This title rhymes but I want to name future pieces partially from the names of the hummingbirds which are delightful:
Sun Angel . Marvelous . Comet . Sparkling . Emerald . Sapphire . Wood Nymph . Coquette . Golden . Hillstar . Fairy . Coronet . Royal . Gem . Ruby . Woodstar . Jewel . Sungem . Amethyst . Brilliant
Departure . argus pheasant feather . 2017
This is something I can do. Launch myself off a tall tree or a cliff or a tall buiding. That wonderful feeling of lightness and flying would last a small moment and not be worth it. Because when I spread my arms, I’d be disappointed, then either terrified or resigned. Not sure which and I don’t want to find out. I just want that feeling of catching air, lifting, and soaring off.
Raindrop Birds . argus pheasant feather . 15" x 12" . 2017
The patterns on this argus pheasant feather looked like little birds wanting to fly away. So I assisted.
Murmur . 25 or so kinds of feathers . 9' x 12' . Bainbridge Island Museum of Art . 2017
For my current museum show on Bainbridge Island (a 30 minute ferry ride from Seattle, through May, 2017), I made this as a large wall installation. It reminded me of the fantastical flight of huge flocks of starlings in this video titled Murmuration.
mute swan small and stiff wingtip feather
These artists professionally paint with feathers. Each uses a feather as their brush. Each is different. Their styles have long histories in Europe and Asia.
