i use, sometimes, dead birds in my constructions & installations, so when my gallery ask me to participate in group show, theme of "birds", i tell them okay fine. yes. "i don't make birds" i keep saying.
finally something come to me: i make three long japanese-style accordion books; birds on the lines outside my back gate.
sometime after, i travel to pittsburgh to visit my family; first time in ten years. [i do not travel well.] i pack with me a case of art materials & encyclopedia of american birds.
for two weeks, i sit at the marble-top coffee table in the room my parents fix for me, cutting out bird heads from the book, making scribbled bodies & ink bodies, bird heads. women bird heads. it felt like my childhood, adolescence again, sitting alone all day, making my drawings, my artwork, at a small table.
my father comes into the room often; "don't u want to drive somewhere? the museum?" and i answer well, okay just let me finish this one piece. i never go.
my last days there, i make for my brother a gift, a birdhead with collage body, watercolor background. coming home, i continue & continue, this cutting & pasting, more birdheads, more birdheads.
so became the "BirdHead/Pittsburgh" series.
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