Birds of Spring

Bird on a Wire

As the morning light comes earlier and the temperatures are a bit less chill, we start hearing bird song along with the AM wake-up alarm. We have crows, seagulls, pelicans, herons and mourning doves all year 'round, but with March we start hearing tiny songbirds and a glorious full-throated mocker who sings his heart out all day long.

The above is a piece called Bird on a Wire - a combination of deliciously rusted wire, a salt shaker, metal number and letter disks, copper mesh (hit with the heat gun for beautiful colors), a rusted leaf, feather from the seaside, eggs, and paper bird ephemera. The substrata is a fantastically weathered board I found in a huge scrap heap behind an even huge-er (can I say that?) Antique/Junk Store near Rosamond, CA. I dug it out from the bottom of a pile and when I asked how much they wanted for it, the woman said, "That old board? Honey, if you think you can use that, you just go ahead and take it for free." HA! Didn't she realize it was primo art material?! I really like this piece and the story of obtaining the board is one of the reasons why.

Great Blue Heron and friend by the harbour in Morro Bay