Theses and Dissertations Collection

“Ruffled” presents a birds-eye view on the human condition presented in conversation through sensitive black and white prints, poems, and avian illustrations. The artworks are inspired by a love and obsession for birds, of which has become a metaphor for memories, growth, freedom, and trust in self. As updrafts are caught off our fellow flock members we are allowed a leisurely reprieve to drift on our memories as we navigate our own flight path through through life. Nature, always a part of my sense of wonder and my sense of self, is where I look when I am lost, I look to the extraordinary. Only a wondering fledgling so startled by my fall from the tree.

The prints of feathers cast from my muses simply and delicately show us the elegance of what it is to simply be. Coexisting amongst the ease of the Signature feather print series, is Minuet, a series of body prints where I have found feathers within myself. Respectively followed by Birdbrain, prints from my own being join with feathers at crucial junctures, creating a new entity, capable of graceful if awkward movement although caught in a moment of stillness.

The breath between, a creek, holding Bare, mud caught between glass, two feet, same essence.

Companioning all is a small, soft-cover book of poems and illustrations entitled Ruffled: A Bird’s-Eye View on Some Humans, further impressing my fusion turning the avian ordinary into our human extraordinary.