Plucking the Songbird is an installation that explores the stifling of creativity by bureaucracy and excessive regulation. The centerpiece has a hospital guerney with an image of a song bird being plucked (the bird had died.) Over the inset video a sheer straight jacket lays, partly obscuring the images. A sheer curtain surrounds the guerney, reminiscent of hospital privacy curtains and four sheer straight jackets hang like sentinals outside, keeping watch. In one version, birds of prey portraits are featured in a doctor’s “waiting room” along with a silksceened book of instructions on bird taxadermy.
It was shown at Morehead State University, Kentucky in 1994 and a private gallery in Mt. Vernon Ohio the previous year.
It was shown at Morehead State University, Kentucky in 1994 and a private gallery in Mt. Vernon Ohio the previous year.