Devotional is a mural format wall-mounted
piece that is made in four sections with long strips of screen printed
sheets in primarily long white feathers punctuated with stripes and partial
stripes that echo the patterns seen in traditional Ikat weavings. Devotionals
are prayer books dedicated to bringing the reader closer to a spiritual life.
The Devotional mural is conceived as
a hymnal calling viewers dedicating themselves to the love and protection of
our fragile planet and especially its birds.
The piece is created with feathers made from
recycled plastic bags screen-printed with images of endangered birds like the elegant
Agami Heron and the astonishing Red Billed Tropic bird and overprinted with
text in Latin, Yiddish, Ladino, Shorthand, Cho'lol, Zoque and other endangered
indigenous languages and excerpts of Rachel Carson's prescient ‘Silent Spring.’
I started integrating text into my work because as
I researched the plight of endangered birds, I became aware of the concurrent
loss of indigenous languages. In many cases, the factors impacting the loss are
the same. For example, clear-cutting rain forests not only disrupts bird
habitat, but it also interferes with cultures that are thousands of years old.
The ensuing desertification and release of greenhouse gases eventually impacts
the entire globe. My
intensive, multi-layered process requires the help of many assistants, most of
whom are local Mexican women. A team-based approach is required for work of
this scale, just as a community-wide response is required to shift consumption
and policies that may still save some species.
