Think about the last time you noticed a bird.
Was it soaring through the sky? Building a bird nest? Or maybe foraging for food?
BIRD BODY is a new art exhibit at the Charles Allis Art Museum in Milwaukee that explores what people can learn about themselves by observing the birds around them.
For this month’s Chirp Chat, Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez spoke with Hattie Grimm, the artist in residence at the Charles Allis Art Museum and creator of the new exhibit. She talks about her inspiration for BIRD BODY and how it engages visitors.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the story to hear an audio collage of people sharing their bird memories, which they recorded at Grimm’s exhibit.
Your art exhibition features 20 original wooden paintings and sculptures. What inspired you to create this collection of artwork?
So I formed a relationship with birds when I was going through a hard time, and to cope with that, I started going to the lake every morning for just 10 minutes, and I would stand there. That early in the morning, at sunrise, nobody else is really there except for the birds. So I got to see Mergansers, Grebes, Red-winged blackbirds … and I got to see them swim, hunt and sing. So naturally, birds became a really relevant symbol in my artwork. Birds teach us how to honor our body's intuitive wisdom. They fly thousands of miles into the unknown with no map, trusting in their instincts to lead them and their flock to safety. And our animal bodies have the same instincts to keep us and our flock safe. So I'm really inspired by my journey of trying to tap into my own body's communication and honor it when I need rest, when I need to grieve and when I need to celebrate.
Unfortunately, we have inherited a culture that expects us to ignore or avoid this communication — ignore our desires, our bodily needs, our emotions — in favor of productivity. In favor of what someone with more power tells us we should be doing. So I think it's a really important part of becoming more free and more ourselves to tap back into what our body knows about keeping us safe and happy.
Can you describe your collection of artwork?
So my paintings and my sculptures are not representative of any specific species of bird. They're more just a representation of birds as a symbol of freedom and intuition. So the birds are really a representation of my body — of me as a bird. So some of them are bird-human hybrids. Some are flying, hanging on the wall, and some are standing. Some of the sculptures are also small and could fit in the palm of my hand, and the biggest one is bigger than me, at 6-feet by 4-feet. The sculptures are made out of reclaimed wood that I cut with my jigsaw, and they're painted with really bright colors, like watery blues and yellows, and one of them is hot pink. And inside of the bird and human bodies are swirls and waves and squiggles, and words and pictures to represent the communication that I want to honor, that I feel in my body.
I noticed that another important element of your art exhibition is that it's interactive and encourages people to be curious and reflect on the role birds play in their lives. Why did you decide to do this?
So there are two interactive activities in the show. One is that people are encouraged to draw their own bird, and the other is that you can tell your own bird story. Creating rituals for people to participate in my work is really essential to my philosophy about my artwork. As a former teacher, it's really important for people to be able to engage with my work so that I can show them what I'm talking about, rather than just tell them. So the activities are meant for people to feel a sense of play, a connection to the birds in their environment, a connection to their authentic creative self in a way that there's no stakes, no judgment, no pressure.
You also recently had a bird parade — can you tell me about it?
The bird parade involves a giant bird puppet that I built, and it takes four people to carry it. Myself and my collaborator, Haley Fuhr, developed an intention-setting workshop that is themed around collective liberation and birds as a symbol of freedom. So the workshop involved yoga and meditation and journaling and funneling those things into an intention of what people feel capable of and want to contribute to the cause of their community and collective liberation. So we wrote the intentions down on fabric feathers. We then attached the feathers to the giant bird, and paraded the bird around whatever environment we were in, with music and streamers and twirlers and egg shakers. And it's a really beautiful celebration to feel connected to one another, connected to the natural world, connected to ourselves.
What do you hope people come away with after seeing your artwork?
I hope that people can just offer themselves a moment to tune into their own bodies and emotions, and just give themselves a moment to move away from a state of frozen panic or overwhelm that we can find ourselves in, and more into a flow of feeling feelings and expressing ourselves and connecting with others. I invite them to be thoughtful about the small beauties and birds and their lives, and just be appreciative of the life that we have on earth and the world around us.
You can visit Grimm’s exhibit at the Charles Allis Art Museum through Sept. 25. Grimm will also have an Artist Talk at the Charles Allis Art Museum on Thursday, June 26, and host another bird parade at Oak Fest in Plymouth, WI, during the Fourth of July weekend.
Chirp Chat’s Bird of the Month for May
Mourning doves are a type of dove with a greyish-brown body and black spots on their wings. They’re often found perching high up on power lines, in trees, or low on the ground foraging for seeds.
“I picked [to highlight] them because I find their cooing to be really comforting, how slow and low it is,” Grimm says. “It almost feels like a sound that I can make, that I can relate to. But I've been especially noticing them lately, since my beloved dog, Teddy, passed away. And spending time around a Mourning dove feels kind of like spending time with him. Just sitting and watching and appreciating the day. Having nowhere to be, not rushed, just sitting up on the wire, enjoying the sunshine.”
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