The Hawthorne Birds

The Hawthorne Birds
Section-sewn book with exposed spine

I have spent time in towns and localities less built up, more sparsely populated than my home in Sydney’s Inner West. Each locality has it’s own background noise of birds, but I always expect the countryside to be louder with their song. Every time I return home I am amazed, gratified and delighted to be woken by the raucous din, the joyful racket, the exuberant calls and whistles, shrieks and whoops of the inordinate number—and variety—of birds populating my urban surroundings. My book catalogues those birds of my imagination who live along the section of parkland just down the street from my house. So often invisible in the trees, or flying past at too fast a speed to observe in detail, it is left for me to decide what they look like and how they sound.

Somerset paper, pigment inks, backcloth, Canson paper, linen thread, ribbon, raffia, paper string
Measures 16 cm h x 14 cm w x 3.5 mm d (plus ‘feathers’)
Edition of 5

This book is shortlisted for the GreenWay Cooks River Small Sculpture Prize 2020