Stacie Birky Greene’s relationship with birds started as a kid, growing up on a farm with ducks and chickens. Years later, she was listening to a story on NPR about the use of pesticides in a village in India that led to the deaths of local birds and cancer diagnoses in the residents. That led to questions about the ways these animals were being affected by people, and how she could use her art to talk about their plight.
“What are the birds that are endangered? That took me on a nine-month research project,” she says. “I started working on figuring out how I was going to draw them and … I started expanding it after that.”
In “Silent Skies,” an exhibition of her paintings and drawings of critically endangered and extinct birds on display at the Pacific Beach/Taylor Library through Friday, she hopes to highlight how these animals are connected to the planet and how they’re part of our survival. (She’ll be featured at a closing reception from 2 to 4 p.m. today at the library.)
The California least tern, Least Bell’s vireo, Western snowy plover, and the light-footed Ridgway’s rail are some of the endangered or threatened birds in and around San Diego, and groups like the San Diego Bird Alliance or the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, have programs and resources centered around restoring habitats and ing and restoring bird populations. Birds are noted for their role in the environment in pollinating plants, spreading seeds, controlling insect populations, cycling nutrients to feed ecosystems, among other benefits, and Birky Greene hopes people gain a greater appreciation and understanding of these winged creatures. She took some time to talk about the 29 pieces in this exhibition, her creative process and inspiration, and why they’re such a special animal. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: How did the idea for your “Silent Skies” exhibit come together?
A: I’ve been working with birds for almost 11 years now, since I started that project. This particular show focuses mostly on extinct and critically endangered birds. There are a few in there that are endangered, but most of them are either extinct or critically endangered, or on the brink of extinction. Once they’re gone, the skies are going to be silent. We won’t have the sounds of the birds anymore.
It’s an ongoing project, but I have pieces in the show that are on wood ing. They’re mosaic, and those are of extinct and critically endangered birds. That’s probably the oldest series that’s in there. I have these wooden rectangles that are scrap wood from guitar manufacturing. On each of the pieces, I grid out the bird amongst those rectangles. I draw each block individually and when they come together, it creates that bird, and those are mounted on wood that I’ve painted to either reflect the colors that are in the bird—because they’re all black and white, or sepia—or in their environment.
That’s one group that I’m doing. I have another group that are oil paintings. That started me on another oil painting project; it’s a visual representation of (the bird’s) song and that goes into the background. So, when you look at those paintings, there are black streaks, but they’re not random streaks — they’re the sounds of the bird.
I have another series that I just started last year, which are birds that are on the brink, so there are 20 or less of them left. Those are ink and white charcoal, and they’re drawn on scrap wood from guitar manufacturing, as well. They’re discards and I’ve kept those just as they are. I haven’t altered them in any way, so however they came to me, that’s how I’m drawing the birds on them.
They’re kind of mixed media paintings because some of them have photos on parchment that are sewn in; photographs that are printed onto parchment and then they’re sewn into the canvas with needle and thread. Then, there’s the ink and watercolor ones, those are on the found wood project. And then the ink and charcoal.
Q: What was your creative process, from concept to execution?
A: When I first started doing endangered birds, I was making paper out of my junk mail-I’m still doing this, these are just not in the show. I started by making paper out of my junk mail and then I would draw the birds on that paper. That was the beginning of this project. There were so many birds, I just started thinking about the extinct ones. I started thinking about the endangered birds and how birds are gorgeous, they’re beautiful, there’s so much to ire about them and their freedom-they have these great personalities, but they’re also part of our ecosystem. As they start dying off, that’s not good for humans, either. So, their demise will eventually lead to our demise. I really wanted to start shedding a light on that, so that was part of my impetus behind awareness and conservation. That’s why I gravitate toward recycled material as much as I can, natural and recycled material. We’re inundated with mail, so that was a natural thing to do, like, ‘OK, I’m just going to turn this into paper and use that.’
Then, I’ve had those little stacks of (wooden) rectangles for years and I’ve done other things with them, but I finally knew that what I needed to do was create this grid. It was partly because the birds are vanished, or vanishing, so that’s why I chose the black-and-white or the sepia. The caged bird trade is one of the causes of extinction, especially in the wild, for some of these birds. They take birds out of the wild, they end up pulling birds out from the wild population and selling those off as pets. As they do that, you’re losing the young generations. Also, there are fewer birds to reproduce in the wild, so it decimates the population. So, (the wooden grid) kind of gives you that sense of a cage. Some people look at that and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s behind a cage,’ like you can see that. So, that’s why I started thinking about that.
Then, I’d been doing so much teaching and drawing, and I wanted to work on my own drawing more. It’s just been fun to get in there with the ink and the patterns, getting lost in each bird after I research them and then start to draw them. I just love that, getting into all of the intricacies of their feathers and their patterns, their eyes. It’s just really satisfying.
Q: What is it about birds that captured your interest, especially creatively?
A: There’s just so much, there’s just endless variety. They’re all so different and they all have such different personalities and I like to capture some of that. It’s always good when I have a bird that I can actually interact with, actually see some of them.
Then, I have to keep researching the endangered ones because there are updates every year. Luckily, some of them get downgraded from being endangered, but some of them are upgraded from endangered to critically endangered. Or, a couple of them have gone extinct.
One of the things I’ve found in researching that complicates this is that there are some birds that are endangered that nobody’s seen since 1982, but there’s a slight possibility that up in this one section of this one mountain, there might be some, but we just don’t know because nobody’s seen it in all this time. So, they could be extinct or they may not. Then, there was the night parrot in New Zealand that they thought was extinct for a long time, but they discovered this little population about 300 miles from where their original habitat was, so they’re actually still around. They just weren’t where they were expected to be. They migrate, they don’t know borders. Borders don’t mean anything to them.
Q: Your website says that you’ve been “appalled by mass deforestation and habitat destruction” and “turned her attention to bird species that have gone extinct since the time of her own birth.” What were you seeing/learning about deforestation and the damage to the environment that led you to focus some of your work toward the lives and habitats of birds?
A: They’re a really good avatar for what’s happening. You always hear about, especially in Brazil and Costa Rica, the mowing down of big swaths of the forests to raise cattle, and the destruction. What are all of the things that are lost? It’s not just the birds, it’s the insects, there are whole ecosystems that get lost, and creatures that we don’t even know about. It’s just heartbreaking and it’s essential to our existence. Those are stories I’ve been hearing since I was a kid and every time I see the pictures, it’s just heartbreaking.
Q: Can you talk about the junk mail project? How are you using it? What is it that you want to say through the use of this material in your work?
A: Yeah, it’s the consumerism. It actually goes back to the deforestation because paper is made out of trees, so we’re pulling down trees to make this paper to to people and most of it just goes in the trash anyway. Most people don’t even look at it, they just throw it away. We have kind of a throwaway society where we generate a lot of trash and it’s not just the junk mail advertising to get us to buy stuff. We buy throwaway clothes, coffee pods, all of these things that just create more waste.
It’s a lot of time, energy, and resources that are going to waste, so I wanted to reclaim that. I started making paper out of it. I do have a series where I use the junk mail to make bird skulls and bird eggs and nests. They’re 3-D, they’re sculptural and to scale. It’s almost a papier-mache kind of thing. I don’t use paste, but I use a medium to adhere to the paper, and I just cut it up and mold it. I have a series of specimen drawers that I’ve used. My father was an engineer and when his company closed, he took these tool cabinets, so I’m using the wooden doors from that cabinet, and I’ve just painted them and lined them. I was always fascinated by those cabinets of curiosities and collections, so I was fashioning those after that.
Q: Issues like bird flu (a virus that can cause serious illness in birds and mammals) and the plight of local endangered bird species have been of concern for advocacy groups and individuals; what comes to mind for you when you hear or read about these kinds of issues, and are there ways that these issues are informing your artwork?
A: Yeah, I totally worry about bird flu. There are birds that have become endangered, or could have become endangered, because of it. It’s really bad. I worry about it ing on to humans and then people not wanting to help because they’re going to be afraid of birds, which would not be good. It’s devastating to hear about whole flocks, hundreds or thousands of bird populations (being affected). With our local endangered birds, I love that there are local organizations, like the San Diego Bird Alliance. I have actually volunteered to help restore habitats for the lease terns, so it’s nice to know that those organizations are working on making sure they’re protected and have their habitats, that they’re working to conserve those populations.
I really want the pieces themselves to be focused on the creature, on the bird. I want the pieces to be about the bird, but if you go to my exhibits, on my labels and on my website there are descriptions of each bird, where they’re from, the cause of their endangered status or extinction, what’s affecting them. I also have QR codes where you can scan and listen to a sound file of their songs and find more information about them. That’s where I get the educational aspect in my work, but the pieces themselves I just want to be an homage to the bird itself.
Q: Do you have favorite spots in San Diego County where you enjoy watching birds? Do have an affinity for any particular types of birds?
A: Yeah, the coast is great. Chula Vista has their estuaries and the parks along the coast. There’s Mission Trails (Regional Park), over by the dam and where the water, or the river, is you can see the least bell’s vireo, it’s one of our local endangered birds. Also, you can go to any of the coves; I like to go to La Jolla Cove and Bird Rock and Torrey Pines.I like the sandpipers, the rails. I think they’re just really fascinating and fun to watch. I love going to the beach and the ocean, so I love the pelicans. They’re so prehistoric looking.
