Category: Woodcarvers and Artists

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Call to Artists: Wings • Waters • Ways

Pale image of a carved and painted wooden female Labrador duck swimming and seen from below underlies brown cursive text that reads Wings-Waters-Ways: a call to artists.

Explore the interwoven history of humans, birds, and waterways with your art. Consider upcoming “250th” celebrations in the US, the much-longer history of humans on the landscape in the Green Mountains and Champlain Valley, and the much, much, much longer stories of how birds have evolved with, use, and been influenced by water and waterways. Ponder habitats, adaptations, and interactions.

The Birds of Vermont Museum invites art submissions that dive and soar with the ways of wings and waters for our 2026 community art show.
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Birds and Myth | 2025 community art show

Art by Cat McKeen: Democracy Phoenix Egg, rising from ashes - 24" left to right, 12" frnt to back, 12" tall. It's flatter in back so it can sit against a wall. It is made of scavenged sticks, branches, grasses, Papermache egg, embossed paper outer shell, base is recycled trophy base and 1800's barnboard. I've used an old metal wreath ring to help stabilize the branches. Acrylic paint, paper strips with words attached to inside of egg shell. Hand-painted parrot feathers, glue, Sage & Cinnamon added as Phoenix nest were supposed to have been made with fragrant wood.

Birds and Myth: meanings, metaphors, and guides

Thief by Elizabeth Mazzilli. Hooked wool on linen: blue background; black, red, and white raven; red and white sun. The raven holds the sun in its beak.
“Thief” by Elizabeth Mazzilli. Hooked wool on linen.

Birds from myth may be symbols, guides, teachers, and/or part of an artist’s cultural and ecological background. For the annual art show, the Birds of Vermont Museum asked creatives to bring such birds into their work. The resulting show explores old legends, represents individual belief, examines misconceptions, and offers new guides. Birds and Myth immerses us in histories, hopes, and imagination.

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Call to Artists: Birds and Myth

Text over a sepia-toned photograph. Text reads Birds and Myth / meanings metaphors and guides / a call to artists. The background is the bristle-ends of 7 paint brushes, radiating out from the center.

Birds and Myth: meanings, metaphors, & guides

We seek to understand the world. Birds are some of our teachers, not only through our senses and observations, but also through our stories about them. These stories can be factual accounts, broader myths, or something in between. A myth might be a traditional legend, a widely-held-but-false belief, or a representation (or misrepresentation) of something true. A myth can offer insight into who we are, individually or collectively. A myth can offer us ways to behave and ideals to live by. What understanding of birds and humans have you gained through myths you have heard, told, or invented?

The Birds of Vermont Museum’s 2025 art show is centered on these ideas. We invite art submissions that bring birds and their meanings into art to retell an old story, weave several together, represent your beliefs, and/or create a myth for the future.
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The Power of Perspective | 2024 community art show

A hawk is silhouetted against a pale sky, seen from beneath flowers. Title: Hunter. Fabric, embroidery by Sarah Ashe. Copyright © 2024 and used with permission. #PowerOfPerspective

The Power of Perspective: shifting points of view

The Birds of Vermont Museum has been hosting themed community art shows since 2014. Each winter, the staff develops a bird-related theme for the exhibit and invites submissions in varied media: visual arts, the written word, sculpture and more.

Our 2024 art show, The Power of Perspective: shifting points of view, poses and answers questions of how our bodies, ideas, and assumptions might alter or affect what we perceive, think about, imagine, and understand about birds.
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Call to Artists: Power of Perspective

The Power of Perspective: a shifting point of view

How do we focus our creative “vision”? Consider the scope of an eagle’s eye—the narrow view of a gleaning warbler—the shadowed sight of a loon underwater. We may see birds above us from the ground, or below us from a plane. We may use a camera lens to record from afar, or a magnifier and lamps to perceive what is normally unknown. How does time influence your perspective? What if we “zoom out” from one bird to a species, to an ecosystem, to a planet? What if we “zoom in” to one bird to its wing, to a feather, to a gene?

How does your art reveal a point of view?
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Spark! fueling a love of birds | 2023 community art show

The Birds of Vermont Museum has been hosting themed community art shows since 2014. Each winter, the staff develops a bird-related theme for the exhibit and posts a Call to Artists, inviting submissions in varied media. Our 2023 art show, Spark!, brings together well over 60 artists, photographers, and poets of all ages. Most artists are from Vermont. Continue reading “Spark! fueling a love of birds | 2023 community art show”

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Fine Feathers, at play with structure and function | 2022 community art show

collage of polaroid photos of submissions to Fine Feathers art show

Our 2022 art show, Fine Feathers, features over 70 works, chosen from over 250 submissions from artists, photographers, and poets. Each piece is inspired by birds and their feathers. The creators are influenced by feather colors, shapes, patterns, and functions. Through illustration, painting, textile, collage, photography, sculpture, and the written word, these creative expressions are as varied as the feathered creatures they depict. Continue reading “Fine Feathers, at play with structure and function | 2022 community art show”

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