where natural history meets art
What happens when you mix art, playfulness, and insights from birds? Creativity influenced by feather color and pattern, frills and function! From bower birds to city pigeons, feathers come in thousands of sizes and colors, fantastic shapes, in different seasons, and for many reasons. Which of these emerge in your art? We want to know!
Continue reading “Call to Artists: Fine Feathers”
A Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum
The year 2020 asked a lot of us—and taught us even more. As our habitual systems hit rock bottom under the weight of the pandemic, economic hardship, and social injustice, voices rose, and long-time institutions were loudly questioned. New ways of experiencing and perceiving our world opened our minds to new comprehension. How could our art, our creativity, our practices remain unaffected? Our perspectives inevitably changed.
We are a museum about and for birds and conservation. We are part of a community of birders, artists, conservationists, and learners. Your experience and perspective may be unseen or unknown to someone else, even in the same community. For 2021, we’d like to hear and share your artistic voice.
What perspectives exist for birds, birding, and conservation, and the possibilities these offer? We seek works that explore many viewpoints for our 2021 art exhibit, Expanding Voices: perspectives on birding. Continue reading “Call to Artists: Expanding Voices”
![Borders: illusions that constrain us [a call to artists]](https://birdsofvermont.org/wpsite2017/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/paintbrushes-banner.jpg)
A Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum
What borders do birds encounter? Our maps do not typically reflect the territories they perceive, the ranges they travel, or the barriers they comes across. How do birds’ boundaries connect to human borders? To those of other species? Edges of things—physically, spatially, temporally— raise questions, not least of which is “Is it really there?”
We ponder this, wondering, how do and will these encounters and connections alter us, birds, and the borders themselves?
We seek works that share visions of birds, borders, and boundaries, now and into the future, for our 2020 art exhibit, Borders.
A Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum
We wander in gardens, foster habitats, explore ecosystems. Life buzzes, entwines, fosters, interacts—one species to another and another and another. Birds and insects and plants thrive together. Can we pause, notice? Can we let the outside in, become as intimately connected to the world around as a pollinated plant is to its pollinators?
We seek artworks that explore, examine, and express pollination—metaphorical and otherwise—for our 2019 art exhibit, Pollinate This!
A Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum
in recognition of 100 years of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and its conservation consequences
Birds link us. We need the same things: food, water, air, places to live. We humans have sometimes used laws to protect those needs we have in common. In 1918, the US Congress put into place the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—one of the first laws setting limits on what we could and could not do specifically with respect to migratory birds. Since then, we’ve asked new questions, discovered new ramifications, and come to new understandings about what the work of conservation entails. In order for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to be successful, people have to work together across geographic, political, socioeconomic, and ecological boundaries. We need to find—or create—common ground. What does that look like? Continue reading “Call to Artists: Common Grounds”
Most art shows can be viewed without particular attention to their settings, but ‘Birding by the Numbers’ is inseparable from its locale. The Birds of Vermont Museum in Huntington organized the community art exhibit to celebrate its 30th anniversary. …Numbers are the key to ornithology… The artists’ responses to this intersection of ideas range from literal to literary.
Source: Art Review: ‘Birding by the Numbers,’ Birds of Vermont Museum
Read further: the original Call to Artists
Be part of our 2016 eggs-hibition! Do you create? Do you have a thing for birds, science, or conservation? We do too.
The Birds of Vermont Museum seeks art and craft that focus on the beauty, biology, and essence of eggs for our 2016 season Art Exhibit, In Layers: The Art of the Egg. We’re hoping to hatch feelings of passion, delight, commitment, and discovery with this art (watch for additional activities and displays about oology during the season as well).
The show runs from May 1 to October 31 in the Museum’s multi-purpose room, halls, and foyer. Most art will be hung on the walls. We have shelf space for three-dimensional works and some ceiling space if your work is suitable there. Feel free to visit and scope out the options! We are open to all sorts of media and we strive, in choosing works, for a harmonious variety. Continue reading ““In Layers: The Art of the Egg ”: Call to Artists from the Birds of Vermont Museum”
Do you create with fibers? Do you have a thing for birds, science, or conservation? We do too. Please consider sharing your artistic and craft skills with us and our visitors!
The Birds of Vermont Museum seeks both art and craft for our 2015 season Art Exhibit, “Birds of a Fiber”. The show runs from May 1 to October 31 in the Museum’s multi-purpose room, halls, and foyer. Art should speak to or about birds and conservation. Our goal is to show a wide yet harmonious variety of work and media.
We seek fiber-based submissions from art trading card size to double-bed quilts, from felting to weaving to collage to…. Most art will be hung on the walls. We have shelf space for three-dimensional works and some ceiling space if your work is suitable there. Feel free to visit and scope out the options.
You may submit up to 3 works, by sending not more than three (3) .jpgs showing your work to museum@birdsofvermont.org ; please put “Submission for Birds of a Fiber” in the email subject. If you do not have email, you may send up to three prints to the Museum, attention Birds of a Fiber. Please include your contact information and a description of fibers/media, size, and weight. Entries are due by March 1, 2015.
Museum staff will select pieces by March 21 and will let artists know by email if possible. We are looking to showcase diverse interpretations from both new and returning artists. The Museum asks for permission to reproduce images of the selected works in print and online as part of publicity for the exhibit; if you prefer partial or cropped images for this, or have preferred images, please tell us or supply those.
Selected pieces should arrive at the Museum during the first weeks of April and be ready to hang (if applicable). Artists are responsible for shipping, or drop-off/pick-up. Pick-up should occur by November 30, 2015.
Artists who show their work here are invited to sell originals, prints, and/or cards through us (on consignment). We often arrange artist workshops at the Museum as well.
Please call or email Kir Talmage or Allison Gergely with any questions. We can be reached at 802 434-2167 or museum@birdsofvermont.org. We look forward to seeing your work!