Going to the birds

MAGPIE MENACE: This piece, by Peter Marshall, is part of the Birds in Art exhibit. It features just the head of an Australian magpie and is about 4 feet wide. Credit: PHOTO COURTESY WILDLING MUSEUM

Birds from all over the world will converge on the Wildling Art Museum and will hang around through the holidays. Well, not really. Images of birds will hang on the museum’s walls. But the images will be from all over the world.

The exhibition is called “Birds in Art” and is a traveling art show organized and distributed by the Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisc. The Wildling will be the last venue to play host to “Birds in Art” through the fall birding season, making it a special one to see.

198 BIRDS ON THE WALL: Naturalist Fred Emerson spoke with guests in front of Kristen Letts Kovak’s Aesthetic Reclassification One: 198 Perching Birds. The piece consists of blue perching birds, which the artist says she arranged from most to least blue and painted them half-scale to better understand their visual pattern. Credit: PHOTO COURTESY WILDLING MUSEUM

“‘Birds in Art’ is one of the largest exhibitions that we’ve ever had at the museum, and it’s spectacular,” said Holly Cline, director of communications and membership at the Wildling Museum.

The exhibit will feature more than 60 pieces of bird art in a multitude of media.

For more than 30 years, the Woodson Art Museum has organized an international competition to showcase birds in various media. Each year’s competition debuts at the Woodson and then travels to several venues the following year. The Wildling Museum applied two years ago to be host to one of the competitions.

TAKE FLIGHT!: The Wildling Art Museum will be host to Birds in Art through Jan. 2, 2011, at the museum, 2928 San Marcos Ave., in Los Olivos. An informal discussion on birds lead by birder and noted author Joan Lentz will take place at 2 p.m. on Nov. 6 at the museum. A slide lecture by Peter Sharpe, a wildlife biologist with the Institute for Wildlife Studies, will be held at 2 p.m. on Dec. 11 at the museum. For more information, call 688-1082 or visit wildlingmuseum.org.

With birds on the brain, the Wildling Museum will continue with the theme and present a couple other events, too. First, in November, noted author and birder Joan Lentz will hold an informal discussion about Santa Barbara County birds in the main exhibit space. She’ll use the art as reference for some of her discussion.

In December, Peter Sharpe, wildlife biologist with the Institute for Wildlife Studies, will give a slide lecture on his work with the bald eagle reintroduction program on the Channel Islands.

The events follow the recent “Backyard Birding with Fred” class hosted by the Wildling and taught by biologist Dr. Fred Emerson, who demonstrated how to identify birds in your own backyard.

Santa Barbara County is home to a variety of birds, both resident and migratory, and bird lovers will find many of these species represented in the “Birds in Art” exhibition, Cline said.

Arts Editor Shelly Cone has feathers, but don’t tell anyone. Contact her at scone@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 4, 2010.