"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli
Friday, April 12, 2013
Passenger Pigeon Diorama
After Steve's post I thought I would put up this picture of the beautiful PP diorama in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. If I remember correctly it is set somewhere in Iowa.
1 comment:
Anonymous
said...
Thanks Reid! Though I'm SURE I've seen this exact same diorama as an illustration in some book or article about the birds before. I once painted a guhzillion Pass P's on a 14 ft. tipi cover I had years ago--I wanted to portray "life before the whiteman" in our Southeatern forests in black silhouettes on the white canvas tipi background(even though yes, I know the tipi was really a Western plains-type shelter, but I used one to camp in--somtimes LIVED in it upon various evictions from whiteman rental houses for usually animal related violations. Practicing the option of "vagrancy" as a lifestyle....)--and I had everything I could think of on that tipi--mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, as well as an Eastern Forest native family and their pack dogs, among numerous trees and other plants. All across the top I painted passenger pigeons in one huge flock, eventually blending together until it was a solid black mass, whereupon I painted the main celestial beings--the sun, moon, and stars. It was quite a project, but I got lots of compliments on it while the tipi lasted(about 10 years). I did take some photos of it back then....Anyway, the passenger pigeons seemed to elicite the most comments from people who saw it, and knew INSTANTLY what I was depicting there!....L.B.
1 comment:
Thanks Reid! Though I'm SURE I've seen this exact same diorama as an illustration in some book or article about the birds before. I once painted a guhzillion Pass P's on a 14 ft. tipi cover I had years ago--I wanted to portray "life before the whiteman" in our Southeatern forests in black silhouettes on the white canvas tipi background(even though yes, I know the tipi was really a Western plains-type shelter, but I used one to camp in--somtimes LIVED in it upon various evictions from whiteman rental houses for usually animal related violations. Practicing the option of "vagrancy" as a lifestyle....)--and I had everything I could think of on that tipi--mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, as well as an Eastern Forest native family and their pack dogs, among numerous trees and other plants. All across the top I painted passenger pigeons in one huge flock, eventually blending together until it was a solid black mass, whereupon I painted the main celestial beings--the sun, moon, and stars. It was quite a project, but I got lots of compliments on it while the tipi lasted(about 10 years). I did take some photos of it back then....Anyway, the passenger pigeons seemed to elicite the most comments from people who saw it, and knew INSTANTLY what I was depicting there!....L.B.
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