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 catalogs  where 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.