where natural history meets art
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”
Many birders—and artists—have a “spark” moment that fueled a lifelong love of birds and birding and took them in unexpected directions. What’s your spark story? How did you start combining birds, birding, art, and science in your art? Does it show in your work? Continue reading “Call to Artists: Spark!”
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”
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.
It’s the last month to discover and share our 2016 community art show, “In Layers: the Art of the Egg” https://www.facebook.com/events/305884369763841/ Visit soon!