Morris Graves Art Museum, Junque Arte 2024

My favorite piece in last year’s Junque Arte exhibit was “The Little Library of Banned Books,” a sculpture made entirely of reused, recycled materials, mostly books. It clearly showed the arbitrary nature of banned books. The artist who made it described the little library outside her own house and the number of times it was vandalized because she included Charlotte’s Web and a few other banned titles. I was impressed.

This year, I contributed a sculpture of my own, based on my experience with pet parrots and macaws. I have had a pet parrot (male Eclectus, named Raoul, d. 4 yrs old), and a pet macaw (male red-fronted macaw, named Simon, relinquished 2019, age aprox. 20 yrs). These experiences proved to me that these birds do not make good pets, no matter how much we may appreciate them and try to care for them. I still feel bad about giving up Simon to a rescue, even though we were unable to keep him while we traveled. I am not tempted to see if he is still alive and available for re-adoption, either. What does that tell you?

I’ve become aware that trade in exotic birds is a multi-million dollar industry that results in high mortality among birds that are removed from the wild and illegally shipped around the world (est. 40%). People involved in this trade have to be utterly without morals, as they routinely kill birds, or allow birds to die, merely as the cost of doing business. The title of my sculpture is, We Love Them To Death.

I wanted a figure handcuffed to a chair, with birds hidden all over him. I made a few calls, but couldn’t get an entire mannequin to use, and pieces for this exhibit must be made entirely of reused or recycled materials. In addition to hunting for a mannequin, I kept my eyes open for a chair, clothing, a briefcase, and stuffed toys in the form of birds. You would be surprised how few bird-shaped stuffies end up at local thrift stores.

In July, I wheeled home an only slightly broken office chair that was left in the street near our house on trash day. A little grubby, but dark gray, so you don’t really notice. The back is coming loose, but it was fine for my purposes.

I found a number of items in “free” piles around the neighborhood during the year, including a metallic-looking attache case, a few bird items, and a denim jacket.

This year’s entry date was published, and I began to work on my sculpture. I approached my neighbor Nick about using some of the wire he had left over from protecting his new trees to make my figure. With his ok, I cut a couple of pieces and began shaping my person.

It was difficult to see the shape until I put some clothes on him, castoff pants and shirts of Jonathan’s. Suddenly, someone was sitting in the chair!

Friends came to the rescue with a styrofoam head, so I mixed up some paint and gave it a neutral color over all. I was going to paint facial features on him, but in the end I ran out of time, and besides, I’m not much of a painter. I painted my old kitchen gloves the same color for his hands. His handcuffs are made of cardboard painted silver.

Once I had my figure, I needed to add the birds he was smuggling. I had very little luck finding stuffed parrots, cockatoos, or any other birds among the many animals at resale shops. I wanted to show the inhumane conditions in which birds are smuggled by having my person carry a briefcase full of dead birds. All year, I kept an old suitcase to use its colorful plastic for bird cutouts, so I borrowed my son-in-law’s Sawzall and began cutting. What a mess! I ended up using a handsaw, a Dremel, the Sawzall, my bandsaw, and a box cutter to get my shapes. Cutting plastic is tricky because if it melts, tiny bits of hot plastic begin to pelt your face and arms. It’s not hot enough to burn, but it makes you reconsider your methods.

Inspiration for my briefcase was the story of birds being smuggled out of Puerto Rico by boat. When the Coast Guard stopped the boat, all the cages of birds were thrown overboard. By the time they were fished out, all 100+ birds were dead. (It would take at least 10 years to breed that many parrots. That’s a single shipment.)

My final piece looks like this:

I wasn’t happy with the stuffed birds, as only two were parrots, so I printed images of parrots and macaws (all endangered or extinct) and pinned, taped, or tied them to the stuffed animals representing them. The loon on one foot became a palm cockatoo, while the other foot is now a Spix’s macaw, extinct in the wild.

I submitted my piece this week at the Morris Graves Museum in Eureka, where the show will be held, and got my acceptance notice yesterday. The opening is Nov. 2 where the awards will be announced. I got a peek at some of the other entries when I went to drop off the prisoner, and some are really impressive. It’s always fun to chat with the other people there about what they made and why. Maybe I’ll find inspiration for my next artwork.

PS:

I was asked to answer a few questions about my participation in the exhibit by a reporter for the local paper, the Eureka Times-Standard. The resulting article about the Junque Arte exhibit is very nice and has great photos.

From trash to treasure

Here are a few photos I took at the opening, and a photo of my piece taken by my friend Gina.

Pieces in the Junque Arte exhibit at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, CA (11.4.24)

Here is my piece in the exhibit: