Parliament of Owls began as a big week of birding for artists to observe birds in the field with bird nerd experts during spring migration in Ottawa. We visited the Ornithology collection at the Museum of Nature, we learned to identify birds by song with the Ottawa Bird Count, we helped rescue birds injured in window collisions with Safe Wings Ottawa. When the program moved online in 2020 we expanded our research to include ornithologists at many international Universities including Cornell and Cambridge.

We have had the pleasure of studying insects with the following artists

Click on images to see more about each artist.

Alexis Williams, Ottawa, Ontario
Director of the Biophilium

Alexis is an everyday wildlife photographer seldom seen without her long lens slung over her shoulder. The camera acts as a touch stone to maintain focus and ensures every effort to observe ambient wildlife or as a stand in for a foraging basket. She has been photographing birds obsessively since 2020, previously, her wild mushroom photography obsession spanned over a decade.

Making daily lists of bird sightings keeps her happy and connected to seasonal nuances. Seeking out new birds to photograph and draw takes her to wild places around the world. She is deeply interested in bird behaviour and communication, especially inter-species interactions.

She is currently in Mexico working on bringing her life list up from 500 to 600 species.

Ashlee Mays, Pigeon Forge, TN
Biophilium Research Leader
Director of the Museum of Infinate Outcomes

It is one thing to say something, it is another thing to write it down, and it is a completely different thing to carve, engrave, design, and print that same thing. My work focuses on these symbols that signify our human desires, and their motion. Their motion through both their mechanization of production, and the way they disseminate into banality.

Many of my pieces move from place to place, sometimes through space and sometimes through ownership. Printmaking provides the conceptual spine that supports my interdisciplinary practice. My art pieces are almost always interactive, asking the viewer to physically place themselves in this portrait of connectivity.

Nowadays we do not rely on movable type to get us our daily news. It seems that we no longer rely on the accuracy of the artist’s hand to illustrate scientific information. Printmaking mobilized the first information revolution. We are experiencing another one, and this one did not appear out of thin air. I am looking to expose the seemingly invisible lines that connect our day to day experiences with a larger mechanism. It appears to me that Botanists are sometimes doing the same thing.

The parking ticket you got last week, the souvenir from your last vacation- these artifacts all have a complex history. They quietly shape an experience that you are actively participating in.

Renée Magaña, Kallnach, Switzerland

My artistic practice unfolds over more than two decades of practice. My work has evolved through multiple mediums, from individual paintings on canvas, to series and, more recently to objects and dioramas.. I intertwine different thematic thoughts, allowing associations to accumulate, overlap, and transform. My work exists within a portal between memory, farewell, and transformation, where art becomes a threshold and a language for what remains. At its core, my work explores death and transformation. I have collected hundreds of overlooked, abandoned, and discarded objects, focusing on the silent narratives embedded within them. As I form them into art, these remnants are honored as witnesses and carriers of mortality, nostalgia, and persistence.

I live and work in an old parsonage built in 1621. Here, my daily life and artistic practice are inseparable. Life and death coexist without opposition. In my garden, I cultivate wild and medicinal plants used in my grief counselling practice. These, in turn, feed the countless critters within. In time, they die, and I forage their bodies and bones to use in my work, not as symbols of decay, but as agents of continuity.

Within my underlying engagement with death, birds recur. Across cultures, birds accompany the dead between worlds. In Mexican cosmology, owls and crows stand beside Mictecacihuatl, the goddess of the underworld Mictlán. Recently, I have become the godmother to a tawny owl, carrying this lineage beyond symbol and into life.

Nature has been a lifelong source of artistic inspiration for me. More than 20 years ago I cut my teeth as an artist working for a theatre company in an urban park, and my life has never been the same. I have created a lot of work intended to be presented outdoors; including plays, art installations, processions, dance events, giant puppets, workshops and concerts, all en plein air. In 2010 I moved to a rural community, and wilderness is a constant presence and source of wonder in my life (just this morning I pulled over to the side of the road to watch otters playing on a frozen creek).

Animals feature prominently in my artwork, and I try to use imagery of fauna local to my area wherever possible. As I create a lot of community-based art it is important for me to create work that is specific to the place I live. I frequently collaborate with naturalists, biologists, geologists and more to help better understand the world around me. Some of my favourite creatures are the most modest; pigeons, squirrels and snails are all recurring characters in my body of work. I use my art to celebrate our natural world, ultimately hoping to inspire others and promote conservation.

Maryse Goudreau,

Drawing on her experience with the world of nature, Maryse Goudreau creates universes that accompany us as we grapple with unprecedented environmental issues. Her work sometimes takes the form of books, playwriting or cinematographic narratives, and more often in visual art exhibitions that emerge from conversations, shared experiences with various scientific actors or artistic complicities. Her work is a hybrid of photography, video essays, sculpture, immersive devices, action art and social art, with several participatory projects, including Manifestation pour la mémoire des quais and Festival du tank d'Escuminac - first and last editions.

Since 2012, she has been creating an archive dedicated to the beluga whale, which she hopes to complete over twenty years. She sees it as an open work for which she assembles multiple data and creations. Although the beluga whale is emblematic for her, her current projects also touch on other subjects that also widen the circle of ecological compassion.

Franci Duran,

My artwork looks at history, memory and violence through the aperture of the archive: assembled and accidental. I create films, video installation, and 2D, photo-based, mixed-media works. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1967, I came to Canada as a refugee following the 1973 military coup that ousted elected president Salvador Allende. This event – the experience of exile and its reckoning – is integral to my artistic practice.

I am interested in traces and lost, irretrievable things. I take images and audio apart, and reassemble them to reveal the tactile qualities of media that are often thought of as ephemeral. Using a variety of digital and analogue media, processes and methodologies — photographs, film and digital video, hand drawing and digital illustration, analogue and digital found footage, downloaded images, texts and type, animation — I seek to make visible, to give a graphical representation and physicality to what is usually perceived as invisible and intangible, for instance, light, sound and memory. I strive to locate and follow circuitous paths produced by the intersections of the body, language and translation, popular culture, new technologies, old technologies, lost and abandoned technologies, humans and other-than-humans, archival films and recordings, personal stories, news stories, historical documents, politics, and works of art.

I am interested in the acts of looking and documenting and in the results, both pleasurable and painful. These formal and material experimentations act as metaphor for memory.

Adele Medina O'Dowd

My ceramics reflect a personal exploration of particles, molecules, organisms, and natural forces, how they interact and emerge in liminal space, and what physics, chemistry, ecology and biology reveals to us about the universe. I am astonished that even while we are immersed within it, the way the universe functions is nearly invisible to our senses and perception. Discussing this with others is mindblowing and joyful. We grasp it better with observation and contemplation—something I do, perhaps excessively. I’d like to live in a universe where scientific conversation is normal and fluent. We can do that.

Making vessels that are chemically transformed in an atmospheric wood fired kiln is the perfect medium for me to grapple with the scientific concepts I want to comprehend and with which to express my wonder. I hope others will use and interact with these artworks in their lives with family and friends, touching them, and be prompted to consider all kinds of metamorphoses, systems and relationships, even if only fleetingly.

Going forward I want to expand my practice with clay to incorporate multimedia, other natural materials like fiber, feathers, stone and light with weaving, printing, and 3D construction to build on concepts of scale, time and transformation.

Deana Bada Malony, Chicago, Illinois

Deana Bada Maloney is a multi-medium versed artist and past scientific illustrator who uses ceramic sculpture as the main vehicle to explore the magic and mystery of the natural world. Her work is a deep study of living forms, celebrating the inherent structure of the subject while emphasizing its transcendental presence.

A trained scientific illustrator, Deana graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1990s. Her strong drawing roots are evident in her current ceramic work, where she utilizes a final oxide firing method to capture every mark, giving her sculptures the appearance of 3D drawings. Inspiration for her pieces is drawn from myths, stories, and cultural beliefs concerning the relationship between animals and nature. Her sculptures often tell a story, reflecting a higher conscience or spiritual presence.

A constant theme running through her work is the visual accountability of “the nature we create.” By incorporating found materials and symbolism, she addresses how animals are adapting to the modern world's waste and pollution. Her pieces offer a blend of humor and sadness, inviting viewers to engage with and take accountability for their individual role in this evolving creation.

Daniella Napolitano, Phoenix, AZ

My work is a call to action for people to notice their animal neighbors and take the time to understand or appreciate them. The animals I depict are often overlooked, misidentified, or misunderstood. By highlighting “ordinary,” urban animals in my work, I remind the viewer that humans share a space with wildlife. I believe the first step to caring about something is knowing it exists. It is generally hard for people to think in abstract concepts but if you can point out an animal, call it by its name, and pass on information about it, then maybe steps will be taken to understand it better. I personally take simple pleasure in sharing moments with the animals I encounter every day, but it is an impossible task to try to get everyone to love every animal. However, I can hope to help people recognize an animal’s place in our shared ecosystem.

In his book Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer interviews memory grandmaster Ed Cooke who states, “The general idea… is to change whatever boring thing is being inputted into your memory into something so colorful, so exciting, and so different from anything you’ve seen before that you can’t possibly forget it.” I take inspiration from stories of encounters with animals that are so often associated with the city, they have been rendered invisible at best, a nuisance at worst. I often exaggerate, or add fantastical elements, or humor to these stories as an attempt to be more indelible and endearing to the viewer. Many of these “animal stories” are my own experiences and others have been collected from friends, acquaintances, and even internet forums. In this way, the stories are not only amusing but also relatable—almost everyone has an animal story.

Printmaking’s history is connected to the spread of mass communication and as such, plays an important role in the concept of my work. I am inspired by biologists and science communicators who make complex information more accessible to the public. My earliest influences have been children’s nature books that distill knowledge in a way that is fun for the reader and therefore more memorable. I now look to field guides for the same reason, likening my creative practice to that of a natural historian informed by ecology, biology, and natural history research. I observe animals and plants, translating the information I learn into a “popular” rather than “scientific” form; visual narratives that incorporate observation-based information with a whimsical approach to animal behavior.

Famed natural historian Sir David Attenborough said, “An understanding of the natural world and what’s in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfilment.” It is my wish that my work will motivate viewers to notice the animals around them and attempt to understand them better. If we begin to see urban wildlife as a part

Liz Rae Dalton

For decades, my life on an island near Kingston, Ontario, provided inspiration and materials for art-making. A walk on a shoreline was a gathering opportunity. Surrounded by fields, water, and sky, my compulsion to carve, paint, and draw took hold.

Soon, I’ll weave collected bits of stone, bones, and feathers into a new installation. With this new work, birds will sing. Tall pieces of carved shoreline wood layered with molten encaustic paint may suggest shadows. It will be a story within a story. A little bit of Good Night Moon with a mythical raven on the side.

My art is an opportunity for adventure with ideas and materials.

Carly

Carly is a British interdisciplinary information designer currently based in Michigan whose developing practice explores birds through mixed media, photography, and data visualization and storytelling. Her work is informed by many years of bird rescue, care, and conservation involvement, alongside a background in research, evaluation, and data-focused work. She is deeply committed to creating work that deepens public awareness,
empathy, and advocacy for birds.

Tiffany Deater, Fulton, NY

We live in a culture that thrives on drama and conflict; a barrier between the imagined and the real. This desire for social tension extends beyond the human, and we impose our ideologies onto the animals and environment around us.

We overlook quiet spaces and moments of stillness, forgetting what it means to simply exists as living beings.

My work is about reimagining our relationship with animals, the environment, and each other. Though my video works I seek to connect the viewer with other forms of life, sometimes journeying though their perspective seeking to answer the questions: how do we connect and empathize with other animals? What insight can we gain from their world?

Mary Wilhelm, Tempe, Arizona 

My work is a modern Aesop’s fables, with stories and mythologies that encourage people to not only consider the complex relationships of animals, but also our relationships with each other. As an artist, I often delve into the deeply weird world of online forum discussions, current political events, human psychology, and various spiritual philosophies that influence the narratives of my work. I play the role of critical observer, contemplator, and commentator, my work not only being a way of digesting the world around me, but a way of sharing these thoughts with others.

Animals are the vehicle through which to speak about these observations. Each animal is specifically chosen due to certain biological characteristics or behaviors that I feel lend themselves to the narrative.. People often project their own ideals and psychology onto various animals as a way to understand themselves. Animals become a projection of human behavior; often flattened into a two dimensional avatar for our own projection.

Rosemary Chalmers, London UK

My name's Rose and I'm a concept artist and illustrator specialising in Creature Design, Speculative Biology and SciArt. I'm also the creator and Course Leader of BA (Hons) Comic & Concept Art and MA Creature Design at Leeds Arts University. I live by a river with my husband and polydactyl cat. I enquire into worldbuilding and believability in creature design—exploring creature design methods, science/art collaboration, drawing as inquiry, human-animal relationships, and communication of these themes to wider audiences through interactive platforms. These themes are important and original because they are cross-disciplinary and aim to instil curiosity and concern for biodiversity.

My work has been featured in Speculative Biology zines, eco-educational board games, and I have exhibited alongside Creature Designers Terryl Whitlatch, Brynn Metheney, Kate Pfeilschiefter, and Iris Compiet as part of Creature Design: ex femina; an exhibition celebrating women in creature design and eco-feminist perspectives. I have a BA (Hons) Visual Communication (Illustration) with First Class Honours from
Birmingham City University, MA Concept Art for Games & Animation with Distinction from Teesside University, and I am currently studying MA Anthrozoology with University of Exeter.

Lucy Rupert, Toronto, Canada

My inspirations and artistic process as dance artist are deeply coloured by my naturalist parents: raising butterflies in our bathroom, rehabilitating hawks and owls in our garage, collecting samples of rare wildflower species.  I always have an eye on the relationship between humankind and nature.  Where does animal instinct meet the poetry of art and science? What can we discover by looking at it  through this prism?

The birth of my son has motivated me to find deeper roots for my art: how can it move through my community in a way that is visible, positive, engaging and inspiring for anyone? This is manifesting now in ideas clustered around physics, ecology and cosmology. How poetic naturalism (the natural laws and philosophies or stories we tell about them) translates into a visceral moving beast, how dance performance can cause all participants to resist cynicism, to consider and care more.

I am so inspired by the gorgeousness of human accomplishments. We are capable of such cleverness and ingenuity, surely we can solve and heal where we’ve damaged and neglected. I want to be part of that process, connecting ideas, sensations, filtering it through dynamic, imaginative bodies to offer some thought-provoking spark.

I don’t know if I’m doing that, yet, but I’m trying. After 20 years of making and dancing, there is so much more to learn.

Jane Mutiny, London UK

I grew up in Dorset, UK, and graduated from Falmouth College of Arts in 2007, after which I moved to east London. There, I became immersed in the street art scene, creating murals and artworks highlighting environmental, biodiversity and extinction issues. It was through these actions that I gained the moniker Mutiny. I work across a variety of scales and mediums from pencil drawings, ink and oil paintings, murals and street art, and more recently film. My work is inspired by the wild, human nature, poetry and mythology. I am also greatly interested in science and natural history, particularly birds, which I use to guide my creative work. Alongside my art practise, I sometimes give public talks and workshops on bird identification. With a history enmeshed in the visual dialogue associated with issues around endangered species, and a deep knowledge of the natural world, my work is refocusing on the mythical, poetic, social and political resonances that particular species have within
culture. My studies and creativity have recently turned to the ubiquitous Crow - and the visceral poetry of Ted Hughes which I discovered eighteen years ago, and remain inspired by today. I am always eager to continue learning everything I can about both my art practise and the natural world through networking, sharing and collaboration.

Andrea Charise, Toronto, Canada

My ceramic forms are generous and substantial, deliberately working with curves, size, and texture to fully realize clay’s intrinsic abundance. My functional work often involves wheelthrown, iron-rich, cone 6 stoneware decorated with rustic, expressive lines and non-toxic, food safe glazes. My one-of-a-kind sculptural works explore more abstract, larger-scale, often coil-built forms, ornamented with innovative, experimental glaze formulas developed in conversation with each unique ceramic object. Both functional and sculptural works reflect my interest in emphatically textured, even weathered, surfaces: an aesthetic translation of my professional background in geriatrics, and a personal meditation on the inevitability of aging’s marks on bodies--flesh and clay alike.

The Squared Circle Clay is a medium that traverses seemingly opposite elements, states, and forms: be they liquid|solid, novel|ancient, fragility|endurance, constancy|volatility, or art|science. Long used as an alchemical symbol, the “squared circle” offers a fitting motif for my own understanding of ceramics practice, denoting the interplay of elemental materials in hightemperature conditions to produce extraordinary effects on clay and glaze. Its more personal resonances speak to my integration of creative practices with health research methods—often thought of as diametrically opposed or even incompatible worldviews—as well as my lifelong appreciation for professional wrestling. The wrestling ring (aka "the squared circle") provides contemporary inspiration for my functional and sculptural work. From my signature “Hardcore Pots” functional ware, which utilizes for surface decoration the iconic props of hardcore deathmatches like barbed wire, thumbtacks, and pizzacutters; to more conceptual engagements with the art of wrestling, as in the collectible “Busted Open” sculptural vessel series. Channelling the ancient classical association of Greco-Roman ceramics with wrestling’s aesthetic richness, my pottery debuts a fresh vision of clay’s infinite potential as a twenty-first century art and craft medium.

Annie Rapstoff, Oxfordshire, UK

I am an interdisciplinary artist, interested in the human condition and relationships with other beings in the widest sense of the word. I often work in response to the life of the land and am currently exploring the interrelationship and possibilities for dialogue between humans, birds and trees.

At present my concerns include possibilities of transformation and embodiment exploring the hidden depths of what is heard, felt and experienced through the often unnoticed. I ask questions regarding relationships between nature and humans influenced by animism, somatic practice, deep listening and phenomenology.

My practice includes performance, text, book art and stitch. Work can be collaborative, process-based or ephemeral, taking the form of instructions, events, performance for the camera and in situ, gestures, interventions, video and writing/language.

During lockdown in 2019, a discussion around mask wearing took traction. I became interested in the costume worn by the plague doctors. At the same time I was aware of the growing sound of bird song, accentuated by the reduction in traffic pollution and noise. I began making masks, extending their shape into elongated beaks, which I wore to experience new perspectives and interactions between human and bird bodies.

Sahar Te, Toronto, Canada

I am a Toronto-based artist and writer. My practice exists at the intersection of text, installation, and performance. With my work, I attempt to challenge common approaches to “original” content and look into how parallel contrasted realities often exist simultaneously. My interventions range from linguistics and semiotics, social dynamics and ethics, to media studies and oral histories. Through each project, I engage in sociological, geopolitical, and techno-political discourses to understand hegemony within different power structures.

As an Iran-born artist living and working in Canada, my experience with linguistic communication, and ideas of mistranslation became the basis of my long-term research practice revolving around alternative modes of translation, and the poetic potentialities of miscommunication. Through this engagement with linguistics and communication studies, I became increasingly interested in the musicality of language, and theatricality of social behavior. my experimentations with sound and performance, and collaborations with experimental musicians, programmers and performers continue to inform my research practice and act as a major source of inspiration to explore possibilities in each project.

Additionally, my interdisciplinary interest in literature, translation, sound, oral history, and theatre bring me to an audio-visual practice that involves performances, installations, and experimental texts in the fields of linguistics, theatre, and poetry. Recent examples of such publications include contributions to the Brooklyn Rail Magazine, Intermedialites Journal, Canadian Art Magazine, and Imaginations Journal: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies. My upcoming exhibitions in 2021 will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, CAFKA in Kitchener, and Visual Arts Centre of Clarington.

Yula Kim, London, United Kingdom

My aim is to research the correspondence between the history of human use of birds for their cultural, political, and artistic developments and how these issues have raised the question of human idea of morality and emerge in this world. Also, I am interested in learning biological and ecological order of birds to state their significant roles in our cultural developments in the world, and to conserve natural system in the world.

I am particularly interested in birds since birds narrate many parts of our histories of art and scientific discoveries. Their fascinated feathers always have been a subject of fashion to represent the elegance in many cultures across the world, and the numerous zoological and science typical inventions are also influenced by birds and their biological system. Says to be that John James Audubon’s realistic illustrations of American birds in his book Bird of America have provoked numerous scientists who were interested in discover new scientific orders including Darwin’s Evolution Theory. On the other hand, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring refers the environmental problems through numerous birds examples to state the importance of animals and the natural ecological orders in human life.

I have lived in 4 continents and 4 countries (South Korea,
Hawaii, Uganda and the UK) over my life. And therefore, I have
been advantaged of seeing and having an experience of different
natural environments and different birds in their places.
During my lifetime in Hawai'i in 2017 and the research trip to
Scotland since 2019, I have discovered that local birds have been
the subjects to be suffered due to their innate aesthetically appearances in both areas. On the other hand, the dramatic changes of nature-mostly climate changes and human affection on the nature such as plant of trees in the grassland- in their regions also affect their living system and their biological orders of living in their given habitants. This lead me to consider the ultimate relationship between humans and nature and how humans have treated nature historically.

Ashlee Mays, Pigeon Forge, TN
Expedition Leader

As a printmaker, most of the pieces I make derive from some kind of book structure. The structure of a book is simple and its function is intuitive. While books are generally static objects, they are built to be in motion. The spine of a book demonstrates just the right amount of flexibility to allow access. The book form is a vehicle for information, information that was important enough to mechanize and disseminate. Printmaking for me has always been about a mechanism.

It is one thing to say something, it is another thing to write it down, and it is a completely different thing to carve, engrave, design, and print that same thing. My work focuses on these symbols that signify our human desires, and their motion. Their motion through both their mechanization of production, and the way they disseminate into banality. Many of my pieces move from place to place, sometimes through space and sometimes through ownership. Printmaking provides the conceptual spine that supports my interdisciplinary practice. My art pieces are almost always interactive, asking the viewer to physically place themselves in this portrait of connectivity. Nowadays we do not rely on movable type to get us our daily news. It seems that we no longer rely on the accuracy of the artist’s hand to illustrate scientific information. Printmaking mobilized the first information revolution. We are experiencing another one, and this one did not appear out of thin air. I am looking to expose the seemingly invisible lines that connect our day to day experiences with a larger mechanism. It appears to me that Botanists are sometimes doing the same thing. The parking ticket you got last week, the souvenir from your last vacation- these artifacts all have a complex history. They quietly shape an experience that you are actively participating in.

Lucy Cleek, Maryville, TN

I work mainly in printmaking and drawing. I’ve been an avid animal lover my entire life. I often depict critters I’ve become enamored with as a way to learn more about them. I like to research the life cycle and habitats of the animals I depict. I enjoy finding out weird quirks different species have and fun facts about them. My hope is that I can share the beauty I see in the natural world, even if the subject isn’t one people would normally consider attractive or worthy. Gastropods continue to be a source of wonder and inspiration for me. The more time I’ve spent in nature in recent years has rekindled a childhood love for birds. I have been learning more about identifying them and they have made their way into some prints. I love bright colors and how they can be used to evoke happy emotions. That being said, this past year I have attempted to make more single color prints as a challenge to myself to not rely so heavily on color. I mainly create linocuts, except the times I have access to lithography
equipment. Linoleum allows me to use color reductively, or create single color prints in a way that feels more natural than drawing. I believe everyone should be able to have art in their homes and printmaking also allows me to create affordable art.

The influences for the current series of bird drawings and collages  include my school field trips to the Museum of Natural History in NYC, Audubon bird prints my parents had in our family house, and visits to national history museums in Italy and France.  I have also been looking at scientific illustrations from the past, such as those by Robert Hooke. Another influence is from the Arna artist residency program I attended at a bird sanctuary in Sweden. The works are in black and white to reinforce the sense of the past and to give the impression of being drawings from science books. 
 This series has birds juxtaposed with images of viruses and spores. I am exploring the relationship between art and abstract elements of microscopic images in science. The taxidermy birds are both real and artificial at the same time and the newest work now has both birds and virus images enlarged and functioning as nests/environments.  

Nayla Dabaji, Montreal, Canada

I have lived in Cameroun, France, Lebanon and Quebec. Travel and migration have been a large part of my life and this has had a strong impact on my artistic practice. Like documented journeys, my visual art installations and videos pieces tend to be very explorative, meditative and my approach to context and research is deeply influenced by the people and places around me. I am fascinated by traces, those that I discover by chance and collect in my daily life (images and sounds recorded while I am walking) as well as those that I reconstruct/re-enact in my studio (objects, paintings, writings) or come back to (personal archive and found footage). My collections of traces are fragments of experiences that I de-contextualize and re-use differently, allowing geographies and narratives to be juxtaposed and multi-layered. This dense combination makes concepts of time and space travel within my work, like the spontaneous, yet organized trajectories of migratory birds, like the strange sight of a never-ending road, or the liberating sound of waves repeatedly crashing on the shore.

Alexandra Desipris, Newark, NJ

Alexandra Desipris is a painter, sculptor, and researcher of Greek descent based out of Newark, NJ.  

Her work is about diaspora, displacement, loss, and death.  

Ashlee Mays, Pigeon Forge, TN
Expedition Leader

As a printmaker, most of the pieces I make derive from some kind of book structure. The structure of a book is simple and its function is intuitive. While books are generally static objects, they are built to be in motion. The spine of a book demonstrates just the right amount of flexibility to allow access. The book form is a vehicle for information, information that was important enough to mechanize and disseminate. Printmaking for me has always been about a mechanism.

It is one thing to say something, it is another thing to write it down, and it is a completely different thing to carve, engrave, design, and print that same thing. My work focuses on these symbols that signify our human desires, and their motion. Their motion through both their mechanization of production, and the way they disseminate into banality. Many of my pieces move from place to place, sometimes through space and sometimes through ownership. Printmaking provides the conceptual spine that supports my interdisciplinary practice. My art pieces are almost always interactive, asking the viewer to physically place themselves in this portrait of connectivity. Nowadays we do not rely on movable type to get us our daily news. It seems that we no longer rely on the accuracy of the artist’s hand to illustrate scientific information. Printmaking mobilized the first information revolution. We are experiencing another one, and this one did not appear out of thin air. I am looking to expose the seemingly invisible lines that connect our day to day experiences with a larger mechanism. It appears to me that Botanists are sometimes doing the same thing. The parking ticket you got last week, the souvenir from your last vacation- these artifacts all have a complex history. They quietly shape an experience that you are actively participating in.

Melanie Long, Calgary, AB

My artwork answers the questions that I want to ask the world. My practice is an ongoing
conversation and though my work I continue to research and gather information. I observe and survey human nature for the answers, where I focus on behaviour both intrinsically and externally motivated and individual intuition.

The intuition of an individual is an ongoing thread in my practice. I seek to find connections in individuals through their interpretations of symbols and thought processes. I have found there are abundant connections where there ought not be, and similarities that run deep which on the surface would appear implausible. I studied intuition for my “Herd” project, where I crafted a number of deer heads out of blown glass. Each glass head began as a case study on a specific individual, all of whom were picked at random and administered a series of free association questionnaires. This project is still underway as I continue to investigate the commonalities and differences in how people are connected through their thoughts and intuition.

Symbols are as common in cognitive thought as breathing. They can be universal, such as a cross, or accidental/personal such as a child identifies all giraffes with their mother, who was obsessed with them when they were young. A current project I am working on seeks to gain understanding of thought processes behind specific associations with sports numbers. When athletes are on the rink, court or field they are collectively represented by their team/club, and then individually by a number. I have begun by composing portraits of hockey players with the number 16, and asking the specific question “why did you choose #16?”. The answers I hope to find are whether there is a
commonality behind their associations or nothing at all.

 As I navigate the world through my art I will only continue to dig deeper in the questions I ask, and ask of the world around me. I strive to continue to see the world through fresh eyes and interpret my findings through glass, paint or pen.

Ellen Little, San Francisco

My work is inspired and guided by the natural things I find in my backyard and on my morning walks through urban wild spaces. I am fascinated by how the natural world adapts to the human world. By magnifying that which is small and temporary in nature - flowers, moths, dead birds and other ephemera become poignant reminders of the transience of life.

Throughout history flowers have represented fertility and birth while moths have been associated with death and decay. So I combine flowers and moths in my Backyard Series to suggest the interconnectedness and fragility of life where birth, aging and death are intertwined and nothing remains constant.

My Urban Bird paintings are inspired by an article in the New York Times about FLAP and the birds that crash into windows. I paint from real bird carcasses that I find or that friends bring me.

Sharon Peoples, Australia

Sharon Peoples has worked as an artist in Canberra, Australia, for over 20 years, exhibiting nationally and internationally as well as taking on commissioned work. Her art practice focuses on textiles, both hand and machine embroidery. Peoples’ work has been collected by national and state institutions. In recent years Sharon has been exploring birds and their relationship to suburban gardens. She has done this through portraits: the inner secret garden, artists’ gardens and gardens of the imagination. Her upcoming exhibition Messenger in the Garden at Timeless Textiles (Australia’s only commercial textile gallery) examines this relationship. Fragility of both the environment and the human condition is reflected in the medium: oscillating between hand and machine embroidery to examine this state.

Meg Nicks, Canmore, Alberta

As a visual artist, the intricate details of nature are captivating. Natureʼs flow and rhythms and the interconnectivity of its patterns and design are subjects for art. The mountain environment is my major focus, an apparently solid, but infinitely changeable environment, where life, tough yet fragile, prospers in a severe world. We must look closely to appreciate all that is here. Flowers, mosses, lichen. The black patterns on aspen trees. Salamanders and seeds. Even the rusting of artifacts left behind.

Microscopy brings what is invisible to our attention. This has always interested me. Diatoms, trilobites, the Burgess Shale creatures and views through the microscope.

Shae Warnick, Columbus, IN

Shae is an artist with her roots in nature. If she’s not painting, she’s outside learning the names of things, reading books about birds, or opening drawers in the research collections of natural history museums. Most of Shae’s images are inspired by the ornithological specimens observed in research collections
around the world, and all are inspired by her own personal observations in the field.

An accomplished painter and installation artist, Shae’s rows of painted bird specimens examine repetitiveness and the intimate knowledge to be gained from looking in the same place again and again, questioning whether a reservoir of past observations increases or rather diminishes the value of what we see. Similarly, all of her work deals with perceptions that might be distancing people from nature, and the ever increasing decorative, curated, and customized role that nature plays in our lives. Shae approaches these dialogues as a layperson with unquenchable curiosity, trying to find a balance between science and sentiment, believing that a thoughtful consideration of both sides will engender a more tempered, truthful, and inviting outlook on the natural world.

Adelle Pound, Northern Ireland

I am a wildlife artist and keen birdwatcher. I work in a number of mediums such as acrylic, watercolour, drawing, collage and cut paper. Fieldwork and drawing from life is central to my practice. This is both a creative endeavour in itself and a way of generating resource material. Studying birds in their natural habitat is a crucial process which drives the ideas that inform the development of new work.

In Northern Ireland where we are visited by migratory birds from across the globe. This seasonal coming and going has be part of life and culture here for as long as there have been people to witness it. I am just the latest in a long line of “watchers”. The birds likewise are the latest in generations that go back into the far distant past.

In May 2016 I  took part, with 11 other artists, in the Copeland Art Project. This took the form of a weekend residency at the Copeland Bird Observatory, followed by a series of developing and evolving exhibitions throughout the summer. This resulted in a short graphic story called “to be Continued”. I am currently researching material for more extended narrative pieces.

2019

Field Expeditions

Julya Hajnoczky, Expedition Leader
Calgary, Alberta

Adrian Göllner, Ottawa

I need to become a better birder. I am currently amidst the second year of a conceptual art project in which I take note of every bird I see. My art practice involves the transcription of sound, time and motion into visual forms. Recently, this has manifested in attempts to cast explosions in bronze, but this body of work began more gently as experiments in which traces of the past were conjured out of analogue technologies and given form as drawings. In 2017 I began to make lists of all the birds I saw in the day. Conceiving of my avian neighbours as a collective canary-in-the-coalmine for the environment, I thought I might begin to be able to discern patterns that portend something of our shared future. Making visual the ambient presence of birds within our midst certainly accords with nature of my practice, but the resulting exhibition - All the Birds I Saw Last Year – went further to make evident the need to observe and respect environment. My year of dedicated bird observation has only increased my desire to know more about birds.

Johanna Householder, Toronto

I like to say that I work at the intersection of popular and unpopular culture – in video, performance art, audio and choreography. My interest in how ideas move through bodies has led my often collaborative practice, and I am keenly interested in techniques of embodiment, and the histories of live art as contained between archives and repertoires. Lately, the debate around how to name the present epoch, whether from a scientific or science fictional perspective has compelled me to reconsider a repositioning of ourselves as agents in the world: Holocene, Anthropocene, Plantationocene, or Chthulucene (as Donna Haraway would have it) can assist us humans in the critically needed recognition of ourselves as only one of many animalia… and relative newcomers at that. As we collectively rethink our positions in relation to “the land” and its discontents, artistic practice has a key role to play in conceiving of alternatives to representations of other species that split “semiotic” from “material” reality. I want to work on alternative futures – and pasts – using listening and choreography as research methods. I have been working inside an image of the bird.

Mariana Gabarra Tavares Reis Teixeira, Brasil

For me, art is a way of life. It is a way to face life with curiosity, imagination and creativity. It is to transform and to be transformed. I love to be surprised by the beauty, tenderness and complexity of the daily life. Humankind and nature are two subjects that really move me and keep me intrigued. Nature - with its mixture of colors, textures, patterns, and the individuality that each living thing carries in their own – is very inspiring. The human way of expression, especially in the traditional cultures, is another theme for me. Wherever I go I try to learn from locals some crafting techniques and the history behind it. My work comes as elaborations of all these experiences. I like to explore in my creation process different supports and mediums - such as painting, photography and embroidery. Since I’ve settled my studio in a coffee farm surrounded by legal reserves, I became more aware of preservation and sustainability. I’m constantly looking for disposable materials on my surroundings and then challenge myself to incorporate them inmy work. My last series, for example, is made of used coffee sieves.

2018

Field Expeditions

Dorie Petrochko, Connecticut

What intrigued me to become a bird artist?  Primarily- a passion for birds, and an intense focus on all things avian, including research, birding, travel and conservation. My focus for the past 25 years has been to capture birds in every imaginable pose and habitat using field sketching and photography in the initial stages of preparation, then proceeding to develop my compositions in mixed media (watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil) to complete my paintings. More recently, I have been using experimental backgrounds for my subjects to create more tension between the subject and its environs.

I prefer using mixed water media for quick applications of intense pigment, which serve as backgrounds for my bird renderings. The whole process is very labor intensive, juggling foreground and background, letting the dynamics of color, and the bird’s position, dictate the direction of the painting. I pay specific attention to bird anatomy and the character of birds in my work.

Bird paintings are ever evolving. The added challenge is that there is something intrinsically spiritual and secretive about birds, that is often untouchable. That is what keeps me going.

Gesyk Isaac, Fredericton

I am 28-year-old Mi'gmaq woman residing in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Last year I received a certificate from the Aboriginal Visual Arts (AVA) program from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. My practice centers around my culture and the use of natural materials. I work primarily with black ash, tanning animal skins, beading and some quill work. My interest lies in combining what we see as “Traditional” Indigenous art and fusing it with unexpected mediums such as clay and metal. The idea of place is very influential to my work. I am constantly drawing inspiration from my surroundings and an opportunity like this would benefit me greatly.

Ornithology, botany, and ecology are topics that I am constantly educating myself about. I have studied traditional plant medicine in the past. Having the opportunity to see so many bird species return home is very exciting!

I am a narrative textile artist interested in line, both physical and metaphorical. Physically I enjoy the act of mark-making, the movement, texture and complexity of drawing with dyes and pens, needle and thread.  As a storyteller, I make linear connections, past to present, with storyline, timeline, paths of migration, map lines, family lineage, etc. History and memory are ephemeral and open to interpretation, but integral to who we are, where we are and how we have become in this place at this time. 

            Birds are an important element of my work. Physically they represent motion and freedom. Metaphorically they represent movement to the unknown, whether simple migration, or on a higher, spiritual plane. They are also gloriously wonderful creatures to draw, both at rest and in motion. I love the way a bird's shape texture and movement are so suited to their metaphorical interpretations. Parakeets, pigeons, blackbirds and crows are featured in my art quilts of the past decade.

            I work in textiles both to honor traditional women’s work and because of the tactile experience of handling cloth. It is slow work, and meditative, both anecdote and antidote to my otherwise fast-paced life. 

Karolina Latvyte, Lithuania

I am an artist who likes to explore. I am a traveller. Not only by bus, plane or feet but by my mind itself. I gain the inspiration from nature and wilderness.
If I am not travelling outside the homeland, I am exploring places with my memories, my studio is a temple and the creative process is a mediation which helps me to stay in the present moment. Through the images of landscapes and the wildlife, I am answering the questions which trigger me about the life and human being. The concept I choose to work on, it always comes from my philosophical point of view, I speak about death, time as an illusion and vanishing memories on my canvases. I seek that my artworks, which are full emptiness and loneliness, would help me to get the better connection with a viewer and would speak my words. Lonely objects, empty landscapes and the unfinished canvas guide me all my artistic life. My main technique to create is painting, but I find myself that working with other media as photography and video, helps me to reveal my ideas.
My artistic goal is to inspire people to see the beauty of the world through my aesthetic experience and help them to get the better connection with nature.

Tanya Chaly, NYC

In my work I have been pursuing a number of projects with Natural History
Museums/ Research Institutions as well as Scientists working in the field over the
last five years. My most recent work involved a project looking at ecosystem
regeneration and resilience in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.
I am interested in connecting with scientists and incorporating elements of research
and data into my drawings as I see the two disciplines of art and science as
connected and not separate unrelated fields. They are both ways in which to
understand and analyze the world but through different lenses.
I see drawing as an immediate way in which to recapture a crystalized form of a
vision of nature not always recognized, presenting to the viewer a clinical, or
forensic representation of biodiversity.

2017

Field expeditions

Expedition Leader:
Estraven Lupino-Smith, Montreal

I am an interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates the historical and social forces that shape our interactions with the natural world. I am specifically interested in ideas of home and belonging, urban wildlife and spaces of wildness, human and animal migrations, and relationships between place, space, and identity. I am consistently inspired by the transformative nature of artistic expression, the power of collective action, and the wonder of things found outside.

I work primarily as a printmaker to produce multiples and a sound artist who uses the guitar and baritone guitar. In my sound work I draw on samples from the Macauley Library, the largest online database of wildlife recordings. My practice also involves collaboration, both to produce visual and sound pieces, and is informed by interactions with varied environments: natural, cultural, and constructed. I am also a researcher and a writer. As a human geographer, I investigate spatial relationships, specifically the dynamics of natural and cultural spaces, and the human interventions in the imagined geographies of these places.

My most recent body of work depicts nocturnal and crepuscular species. The prints explore the connections between humans and non-human animals through our interactions in shared environments. Many of the animals featured as a part of this series have been vilified, and are still considered pests or dangerous. I wanted to celebrate these survivors, who live among us in cities and other complicated landscapes.

WHITE WAGTAIL
(a villanelle)

Its tail incessantly flails
as it paces up and down the Corniche
while a strong shamal prevails.

Not at all deterred, it rails
against the wind on the beach.
Its tail incessantly flails.

With such finesse, it scales
the seawall without the slightest screech
while a strong shamal prevails.

Such an inspiration as it sails
along – it doesn’t beseech or preach.
Its tail incessantly flails.

Under such conditions, it still nails
the insect – it could teach how to overreach
while a strong shamal prevails.

In winter, its pied plumage pales
as it migrates – feathers blanched as if bleached.
Its tail incessantly flails
while a strong shamal prevails.

.

Diana Woodcock, Virginia

        I began taking myself seriously as a poet when I first lived abroad – in the former Portuguese colony of Macau.  In 2010, I won the Vernice Quebodeaux International Poetry Prize for Women, and my first poetry book, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders, was published.  It marked me as a poet of witness.  By then, I had worked for nearly eight years in Tibet, Macau and on the Thai/Cambodian border. 

       Environmental issues and poetry’s role in educating people about these issues have interested me for a very long time. Many of my published poems may be labeled ecopoetry.  My second full-length collection, Under the Spell of a Persian Nightingale (2015) promotes caretaking of not only a tiny oil-rich sheikdom at the edge of the Arabian Desert, but of the whole earth.  My sixth chapbook, Beggar in the Everglades (2016), was inspired by a one-month residency (AIRIE/National Park Service) in the Everglades National Park.  My third chapbook, In the Shade of the Sidra Tree (2010) features poems inspired by the people and land of the Arabian Peninsula. My fifth, Desert Ecology: Lessons and Visions (2014), focuses on the flora of the Arabian Desert.   British poet Helen Farish, in her endorsement of my fourth chapbook, Tamed by the Desert, wrote that my poetry is “reminiscent of Amy Clampitt in its scholarly attention to detail and its rigorous insistence on linguistic precision.”

Gabbee Stolp, Australia

Gabbee Stolp is an Australian visual artist whose work involves a philosophical exploration of spirituality, mythology and human connectedness with the natural world, together with a belief in the inseparability of life and death.  Using materials thoughtfully sourced from the lives of animals, Gabbee works with small object and jewellery making in order to provoke ideas of the biological and the metaphysical and to inspire a connection with nature through art. 

Currently living in Melbourne, Gabbee has recently completed a Bachelor of Arts
(Fine Arts) First Class Honours at RMIT University. For her major studio work in Object Based Practice, Gabbee created figurative objects to illustrate ideas of human separation from nature in the midst of the Anthropocene and presented these objects as a memorial to extinct species and as an offering of atonement for anthropocentric sins. 

Joanne Madeley, Edmonton

In the Fall of 2015, a black bear was found in the river valley near my house.  Running through the heart of the city at 48km in length, the North Saskatchewan River Valley Park is the largest uninterrupted parkland in an urban area in Canada.  Like an apparition, the bear was only seen briefly and then it disappeared from whence it came and the incident has haunted me ever since.  

My recent artwork explores nature’s place in an urban environment.  The bear sighting makes me question what will happen to the richness of the wildlife in the city as it develops and expands.  Edmonton is a rapidly growing city and I question if the local flora and fauna will be reduced to a decorative motif or will it be an integrated part of the city’s overall design.

Peter Palfi

My practice is provocative dealing with issues that require certain self-assurance. In crafted installations I build humorous and unnerving narratives with taxidermy animals or other sourced objects. I construct the installations with an attention to detail while my dry, sarcastic sense of humor is the driving element of my practice. In early sculptural painting works I have demonstrated competent making skills and the ability to think through and build complex physical structures and my interest towards animals has led me to the point where I am now.

My practice is mainly dealing with the idea of using an animal as a form of material while creating a humorous, well-crafted surrounding to modernize taxidermy in contemporary art. I am interested in, how an initial idea can change meaning, once it becomes a physical form.
My practice requires intuitive sourcing skills, where I select taxidermy animals or other, intriguing objects relating to an idea, mainly from online websites. This is a big part of the future outcome, as this selection process determines everything about the piece, including size, theme and narrative. Other occasions, when I have a concept to start with, I taxidermy the selected animal myself, so I can dictate the aesthetics of the piece in every way.

I came to focus with my current practice while I was on an Erasmus placement in Switzerland in my second year of my University studies. Before hand, my long died out passion, was painting with oils on canvas, with portrait based subject. Once I got the courage to let go of the paintbrush, I started to explore and use elements, such as humor and nature in my work.

I also started to use live animals in some of my installations, because my researched has developed to study how people perceive the art piece and what are their emotions towards it when they see a living creature feature in the work.

Adelle Pound, Northern Ireland

I am a wildlife artist and keen birdwatcher. I work in a number of mediums such as acrylic, watercolour, drawing, collage and cut paper. Fieldwork and drawing from life is central to my practice. This is both a creative endeavour in itself and a way of generating resource material. Studying birds in their natural habitat is a crucial process which drives the ideas that inform the development of new work.

In Northern Ireland where we are visited by migratory birds from across the globe. This seasonal coming and going has be part of life and culture here for as long as there have been people to witness it. I am just the latest in a long line of “watchers”. The birds likewise are the latest in generations that go back into the far distant past.

In May 2016 I  took part, with 11 other artists, in the Copeland Art Project. This took the form of a weekend residency at the Copeland Bird Observatory, followed by a series of developing and evolving exhibitions throughout the summer. This resulted in a short graphic story called “to be Continued”. I am currently researching material for more extended narrative pieces.

Chelsea Allard, Calgary

Humour, honesty and nature are the most important aspects of my practice. Through my use of relatable animals composed in an illustrative style I hope to engage my audience in a way that makes them feel emotionally connected to my characters. Using themes that are inspired by my own struggles with mental health, I translate them through my use of animals and text to create a scenario for viewers that they can empathize with.

Animals are vital to my work because they create accessible characters that prompt empathy more so than with human characters. Animals with human problems seem a lot sadder to us than ​ humans with human problems and this creates a really lovely space to talk about tough situations that everyone struggles with. 

Humour comes into my practice as a natural extension of my own coping mechanisms. It creates distance between the full force of whatever emotional distress is being experienced and allows a temporary relief from existential dread.