the thing with feathers

2011- steel and copper wire, wool thread, unspooled cassette tape, found objects

There's a story I used to tell about the origin of this one. It seemed sweet and hopeful at the time, but over the last few years I've begun to see it as the beginning of something rather dark. So the only things I want to say about it today are:

1. It is okay to be a mystery.
2. Sometimes it's also okay to walk away from a fight you can't win.

Having gotten that out of the way, I can also say how delighted I was when I put the eyes on this bird and it came to life:

It lives inside this sculpture:

The skirt is crocheted from old mixtapes that I made in the 90s. I no longer had a tape deck in my car, but I couldn't bring myself to throw the tapes away. So I used them to make the skirt. The tape was hard to work with, and I ended up carrying a wool thread along with it to make it easier. You can see the different colors of thread and tapes in this photo:

And here's one more shot of the bird, from an angle people don't generally get to see: