Language of the bird (2026–27)
Language of the bird is an evolving interdisciplinary project bringing together sculpture, painting, installation, writing, and gesture. Life-size figures inhabit a shifting landscape alongside birds, which are held, carried, followed, and sometimes seemingly listened to.
The bird moves between earth and sky. Within the work, these messengers become both companion and metaphor, as bearers of qualities essential to being human—compassion, courage, dignity, resilience, tenderness, and love. The figures remain grounded in the vulnerability and weight of the body, while the bird suggests another possibility—movement, transformation, and becoming.
Developed through an ongoing studio process, Language of the bird will eventually move intothe landscape, where figures, birds, painting, poetry, movement, and human gathering will come together near the water. The project does not seek to resolve the distance between earth and sky, body and spirit, or vulnerability and strength, but rather inhabits the space between them.
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Language of the bird is an evolving interdisciplinary project supported by a Maine Arts Commission Springboard Grant. The work is being developed as an outdoor installation and gathering at Crescent Beach, Maine, Spring 2027.
Bird think placed on the ocean shore. Life-size plaster work sculpture. Part of the beach project Language of the bird, Spring 2027.
The flight. The light. Hallelujah. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 60 in (183 x 152 cm) with mounted/affixed plaster bird, 2026. Part of the Language of the bird beach project, Spring 2027.
Detail of mounted bird on the painting The flight. The light. Hallelujah.
Studio images of life-size plaster sculptures (2026) to be part of the Language of the bird beach project, 2027.
Studio view of a selection of components for the Spring 2027 beach project, Language of the bird.
Studio group image of sculptures, Bird walk, Bird think and Bird hold. Life-size plaster works. Part of the Language of the bird beach project, Spring 2027.
Detail of Bird think, life-size plaster work sculpture, 2026z
Bird hold (forefront) with other life-size plaster work sculptures, 2026. Studio image.
Detail of Bird Hold. Life-size plaster work sculpture, 2026.
Becoming is not leaving the earth behind. It is meeting the ground so fully that the sky becomes possible.