The Bird Lady

This is an ongoing project that combines mythology, comparative art history, gender dynamics, image reproduction, chemistry, and personal psychology. It revolves around a particular iteration of myself, an alter ego I refer to as the Bird Lady, and is the result of several years of research and material experiments coming together. I have long been interested in monsters and the monstrous, in both folklore and cultural analysis, and have focused on the act of transformation into a monster and the power of being a monster in this body of work. Through painting, cyanotype, dry point, and collage I’ve repurposed figures from Italian maiolica, played with repeated imagery and transparency, and developed my own chemical toning and tarnishing techniques. Experimenting with cyanotype and creating my own negatives has been especially interesting, since the story of transformation and mythmaking started mimicking the process: each time beginning slightly anew, several versions reminiscent of each other but morphing even further from the original over time. I am interested in continuing this work further to incorporate more explicit narrative elements and to expand on the ways paper can be used to my advantage.

As the Bird Lady began to form, my research led me in many directions. Over the last couple years, topics that influenced the project include Classical Greek literature, Italian maiolica and Renaissance interest in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Renaissance and Victorian interest in Classical women and femme fatales, butch/femme identity in the 20th century, 90s disposable femininity and re-glorification of “no girl as perfect as a dead girl,” metallic oxidation chemistry, and translation in all its meanings. My current research focuses on ancient religions and the syncretization and transformation of myths themselves.