Gracie Baer, Corporeal Worth: The Avifauna
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Observing nature and learning to seperate myself from distractions not organic, or by nature’s hand, allows me to appreciate the intricate details that both flora and fauna hold. I find that it is easy for some to pass by the dead and ignore the beauty of the things soon to be given back to the earth. The deceased birds that I collect enable me to observe their beauty much closer than I would be able to if they were alive and capable of fleeing. Although witnessing death brings grief, it is also an opportunity to study the creature that otherwise tends to scurry at the sight of a human.
With a desire to celebrate their unique features, I create the ties with the red thread and red paint to symbolize a connection back to earth. Holding a strong interest in the recycling of life, nature providing us life and the means to live, then utilizing the dead to create more living things- I want to represent the full circle of living and dying in this body of work. The color red symbolizes a number of feelings- love, death, anger, passion, or lust, thus being the color that can physically tie both the bird and human back to earth with the innate symbiosis that the color provokes.
The winding of the thread through trees is both a performance for the camera and a still image to be interpreted on its own. The process of weaving through trees and limbs takes me to a different place, somewhere I am the only person who has control over the world that I see. The placement of the birds are integrated along with the red to symbolize connections to the heart, to the moon, to the earth’s flora, and to one another, all points on the full circle of life recycling.
