Birdwatch June 20 – August 16, 2008
Sun Valley Center for the Arts
It’s the First Place to Be! Sat, Jul 5 and Fri, Aug 1, 5:30–6:30pm Join us for wine and hors d’oeuvres Open for Gallery Walk until 8pm
Birdwatch:
Exhibition Tours Every Tue at 2pm
Rebirth: After the Castle Rock Fire with Brian Sturges & Debbie Edgers Sturges Tue, Jul 8, 10am–4pm $70 members/$120 non-members Registration deadline: Tue, Jun 24 Spend the day observing the animals and plants that have started to return to the burn zone after last summer’s fire. We will stop along the trail to draw the images that we see. Participants will come away with a bird and plant list as well as several sketches. There will be some moderate hiking with frequent stops along the way for observation and drawing.
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Special Evening Exhibition Tour Thu, Jul 10, 5:30pm in H ail e
B
irds hold a special place within our imagining of the animal kingdom. Millions of amateur ornithologists spend their free time wandering woods and marshes, adding to life lists as they document the birds they see. We endow birds with importance and meaning we give to few other animals. Birds’ capacity for flight, for escape from the everyday, appeals to many artists’ desires to create worlds of fantasy and possibility that free us from the confines of everyday life. Perhaps it is not surprising then that the contemporary art world has seen a recent explosion of bird imagery. Birdwatch locates this renewed focus within a broader historical context, tracing the way our view of birds has changed over time—from biological entities whose diversity and beauty inspired elaborate systems of cataloguing to metaphorical symbols with political or religious meaning. More recently, birds have become a means for speaking out on environmental issues and climate change as many species face the destruction of their natural habitats. The exhibition includes a selection of prints by America’s most famous painter of birds, 19th-century artist John James Audubon. His determination to document every bird in North America speaks both to the Enlightenment’s obsession with classification and categorization and to the drive to record the flora and fauna of a world that European settlers were keen on conquering. Painting in the mid-20th century, Northwest School artist Morris Graves imbued his drawings and paintings of birds with metaphorical significance, using them to comment on World War II and the anxieties of the Cold War as well as the human relationship to the natural world. Graves’ calligraphic brushwork and choice of materials reflect his deep interest in the arts and philosophies of Asia. Jacqueline Bishop’s miniature portraits of birds often represent species extinct or endangered in the Americas. Based in New Orleans, Bishop frequently depicts birds of the Gulf Coast region, as well as the Amazon, which she has visited many times. Terra, an installation of these paintings in
The Center’s project room, consists of a grid of dozens of these tiny paintings interrupted by drawings, collages and natural objects. Kathryn Spence makes pigeons, owls and kestrels, with trash, twine and bits of cast off fabric that she finds in city streets. Her choice of materials conveys both the fragility of birds’ place in the environment and their paradoxical role in urban environments, where certain species thrive and connect citydwellers to the natural world. Both Misako Inaoka and Justin Gibbens create hybrid animals—part bird, part mammal, reptile or insect. Inaoka’s motion-activated sculptures and Gibbens’ watercolor paintings evoke the eerie consequences of genetic mutation. Rigo 23’s embroidered reproductions of “lost bird” notices he collects in the streets of San Francisco capture the ambiguities in our relationship to birds—we admire them for their ability to fly yet we sometime seek to keep them caged.
Works by K irsten F urlong The Center, Hailey July 3 – August 22, 2008
Boise-based artist Kirsten Furlong has produced a body of work that explores the relationship between birds and our cultural understanding of the natural world. Her work examines the impact of institutions like zoos and natural history museums, as well as our consumerist society, on how we see (and often misrepresent) birds and other animals. She writes that birds serve as “metaphors for human desires that ultimately separate us from the natural world.” In a nod to John James Audubon, Furlong titled one of her series Birds of America, part of an ongoing dialogue with artists who have devoted themselves to birds in the past. Opening Celebration, The Center, Hailey Thu, Jul 3, 5:30–7pm Join us for drinks and appetizers. Artist Kirsten Furlong will discuss her work at 6pm.
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Sun Valley Center for the Arts
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June 20 – August 16, 2008
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NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION U S POSTAGE
Sun Valley Center for the Arts P O Box 656 Sun Valley, ID 83353
Center hours & location in Ketchum: M-F 9am-5pm, Sat in Jul & Aug 11am-5pm Exhibition Tours: Tue at 2pm 191 Fifth Street East, Ketchum, Idaho Center hours & location in Hailey: W-F noon-5pm 314 Second Ave. South, Hailey, Idaho Sun Valley Center for the Arts P.O. Box 656, Sun Valley, ID 83353 208.726.9491 www.sunvalleycenter.org images this side: Justin Gibbens, Bird of Paradise XIII.: Ornamented Vireo, 2008, courtesy of the artist and G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle images other side—clockwise from top: Jacqueline Bishop, Terra #485—Green Manakin, 2002, courtesy of the artist and Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans Kirsten Furlong, Still Life (Dodo), 2007, courtesy of the artist Morris Graves, Songbird, n.d., private collection Kathryn Spence, Untitled (Kestrel), 2007, courtesy of the artist and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco
PAID BOISE ID PERMIT NO. 679