I just returned from a week long artist business boot-camp in Port Townsend.  The program is called ‘EDGE Professional Development’ sponsored by Washington Artist’s 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 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.  

Many Eagle Feathers

eagle flight 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

Growing Goose Feathers are warm

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.  

Feathers for the Swallows

Violet-green swallow on a big feather that he may have carried up to feather his nest if he hadn't crashed into a window.

A huge bag of goose feathers stands by my front door for the swallows.  They use them to line their nests.  When the swallows arrive in spring migration, they begin to build the nests and are on the lookout for materials.  In May and June, if it isn’t raining, I grab a handful of goose feathers from the bag every time I go outside.  Feathers scattered on the ground attracts barn, violet green, and tree swallows.  But they prefer to catch floating airborne feathers rather than swooping down face-first to grab them off the earth.  So I blow feathers from a ten-foot plastic pipe into the air for the birds to snap up.  The birds soon learn what I am up to when I pick up the pipe: they fly around and around, waiting for a feather to come out.  I notice that from the beginning to the end of the season, their feather catching skills improve.  They learn to grab them by the fluff at the front of the shaft and fly with them curved underneath their bodies.  So I give them bigger and bigger feathers, even larger than the ridiculously large size of the feather pictured under this poor bird that crashed into a friend’s window.    

Why Feathers Are Curved Part 2

Flight.  

Great Argus Pheasant wing tip feathers

A mix of side-to-side and front to back curve feather curve lets each kind of bird fly in their own special way. 

How a feather shaft is shaped depends on what type of flight is important:

 

·         quick but short bursts of flight like seen in pheasants and a lot of songbirds. The first primary flight feathers of these birds are super-curved from side to side but not so much front to back.  This makes for a quick lift-off.  Think of a forest grouse that explodes off the ground, usually scaring the bejeezus out of anyone close by. 

·         soaring flight like vultures and eagles. The main flight feathers have some front to back curve or camber.  My sister showed me a huge Wood Stork primary feather from Tanzania that had so much front to back arc camber that five of them would make a full circle. 

·         Fast flyers like swallows, ducks, and falcons or gliders like seagulls.  Their feathers usually have less curve both side to side and front to back. 

Other aspects of wing flight feathers like their shapes let them do what they do in flight.  Which is a good subject for an upcoming series of blog articles: shapes of feathers.

  

There is way more to flight feather curves than what I have outlined here.  A good source to start with is the 2010 book, Bird Feathers: AGuide to North American Species by David Scott.