BirdHead/Pittsburgh No. 20

BirdHead/Pittsburgh No. 20

Figure with bird head. No. 20 of series.
Collage and watercolor. 2007
Pairs beautifully with No. 19.

Artist’s statement about the BirdHead/Pittsburgh series:

i use, sometimes, dead birds in my constructions & installations, so when my gallery ask me to participate in group show, theme of “birds”, i tell them okay fine. yes. “i don’t make birds” i keep saying. finally something come to me: i make three long japanese-style accordion books; birds on the lines outside my back gate.

sometime after, i travel to pittsburgh to visit my family; first time in ten years. [i do not travel well.] i pack with me a case of art materials & encyclopedia of american birds.

for two weeks, i sit at the marble-top coffee table in the room my parents fix for me, cutting out bird heads from the book, making scribbled bodies & ink bodies, bird heads. women bird heads.

it felt like my childhood, adolescence again, sitting alone all day, making my drawings, my artwork, at a small table. my father comes into the room often; “don’t u want to drive somewhere? the museum?” and i answer well, okay just let me finish this one piece. i never go.

my last days there, i make for my brother a gift, a birdhead with collage body, watercolor background. coming home, i continue & continue, this cutting & pasting, more birdheads, more birdheads.

so became the “BirdHead/Pittsburgh” series.