where natural history meets art
The school year has started, but that isn’t slowing us down up on Sherman Hollow Road. Check out the fall programs at the Birds of Vermont Museum, sign up for one if you like, or just drop by. We’re open Wednesday – Sunday, 10-4, until Halloween. We’re open by appointment other days and after. The trails are open sunrise to sunset, every day. Libraries have passes, and admission is always free for members (https://birdsofvermont.org/membership/).
We look forward to seeing you!
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”
As you likely know, the Museum had to remain closed due to Covid-19. This was the first spring in 32 years where we didn’t open our doors on May 1. This was the first time since we started Early Birder Morning Walks (more than a decade ago!) that we couldn’t gather for to walk and watch spring migration together.
We have missed you! Although we were saddened to hear of people who were ill or lost their lives; we also are hugely grateful that, by all of us working together, we kept the numbers lower than they could have been. As the number of Vermont cases continues to be encouragingly small, the state is allowing some businesses to open (with restrictions in place).
We are happy to tell you that the Museum opened on Wednesday, June 3! Continue reading “Open for 2020, finally”
Yes, our trails are open! But we ask you to take extra precautions for now:
![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!