birdspot

Things change, and I ruminate over them, watch them change, sometimes pretend I have some control over them. I have been through a lot in the past couple of years, but who hasn’t, really, and in any case I have reached an age where I am thoroughly not fascinated with myself. All that said, I am about to embark on an enormous change, albeit potentially a temporary one, since I am really a chicken all in all and, to be honest, if someone offered me an interesting job tomorrow I would seriously take it and give up all these silly notions of freedom and adventure and new things to see and learn.

In short, I am going on a road trip. On this trip I am going to look for birds, talk to people who work with or look at birds, and as I go along I am going to make drawings of everything. Birds, people, and places. I guess that doesn’t quite account for “everything” in my vision, but it does provide me with a focus and a starting off point. I will be blogging with alarming regularity (a big wink to anyone who still reads this blog despite the, er, dearth of posts), and will be updating via our love/hate of this century, Facebook. My Birdspot page on FB can be found here.

In sum, here are the salient points of this post:

1. It is likely that I have lost my mind. Please do anything (cross fingers, pray, whatever) to help me to avoid hitting a large mammal in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage.

2. This lovely but overpriced Manhattan studio apartment will be available as of Nov. 1. This probably should be #1, but whatever, I’m more worried about hitting a deer.

3. If you have an interesting job lurking somewhere that you think I might be perfect for, now would be a good time to pipe up. Especially if that job involves birds in Central or South America. Benefits would be a nice change, too, but perhaps I shouldn’t push it.

The image above is watercolor on paper, on a 15 x 11″ sheet, and is a study of baby shorebirds. Do you want to know what they are? Clockwise, from bottom left: Avocet, Short-billed Dowitcher, Willet (Eastern, for those of you who are finding loads of Westerns here on the East Coast, but more on that in a future post…), and Long-billed Dowitcher. Precocial, all of them. The Short-billed had been on this planet a mere 12 hours before expiring. So much life, so little time. Detail below.

As I write this, they, the nefarious “they”, are breaking ground in the lot behind my building. I mostly spend the days of summer working in studio, insulated from heat waves and humidity, and avoiding the putrescent swirl of vapors oozing out of every nook in the city. I still love New York, I promise, and I am grateful that my studio has been blissfully (relatively) quiet and blessed with open, South views and astonishingly good light. These are things you only luck into or pay for exorbitantly in Manhattan. That open lot has been a beacon of hope, a fount of stifled dread, and a dream of wishful denial since the day I moved in. I only would have loved it more if it had been unpaved and I could have peered in for birds, bugs, and weeds. Oh well, so it goes (singsong voice, skipping off into an unknown future). Here is a toast – with tea, this time around, since I have just been awakened by the rending of concrete and earth – to change, and to riparian and boreal forests that exist someplace firmly where I am not.

Ovenbird Studies, ink and watercolor on paper, 2010

I have been having people into studio to rummage through my sketches, instead of organizing a bona fide open studio this year. In case anyone is interested, for the time being I have my boxes of preparatory, half-finished or fully finished drawings out and available.

Chicken studies, plus details, pen on grey paper, 16 x 9″

Halloween! Scratchboard, details of 8 x 11″ sheet