Chickadee Heaven

In our modern culture, art and design seem to become further apart because of the different ways of thinking. Artists argue that design is too commercial, and design seems to argue that art holds no importance because it is based on aesthetics. The fact is art and design can co-exist with each other, but they can also be stand alone concepts. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci and Bernini were masters at architecture, drawing, and painting. People see print culture as a fine art practice in our modern world, but they often forget that if it was not for the invention of the Gutenberg Press, we would not have photography, MAC computers, commercialism, or even graphic design today. The possibilities of edition, reproduction, mass production is all made possible because of print culture. Print culture has played a vital role in our modern technology. Like fashion fads, things that go can also return. Chickadee Heaven explores the functionality in design, as well as the aestheticism in art by its printed symbol of the Chickadee that identifies it as a Chickadee bird feeder.

Chickadee Heaven is an ecological project designed to invite the immigration of the Chickadee species of birds into the city. The Chickadee and European Starling are the two most common types of birds in North America. The Chickadee is more common in the forest, and the Starling is more common in the city. The Starling species is known to hoard food and shelter from other birds. There are over 200 million of them living in our society today. The Chickadee Heaven is a bird feeder that would essentially discourage European Starlings from eating from the feeder. It is designed so that the Chickadee will have to eat from the bottom of the feeder. Starlings are not as flexible as the Chickadees, so if they tried to eat from the feeder, they will fall off from the bench that is attached. The digestive system of the European Starlings also can only digest minimal amount of sucrose. That means the food that is contained inside this feeder will mainly hold food that contains sucrose. If multiple editions of these feeders are installed around the parks of a suburban city, perhaps it will regulate the Starlings.

William McDonough is an American architect and a designer in sustainability, he also is a huge inspiration for many of my art works. Many of his ecological projects strive on safety for the environment and for the inhabitants of his architectures. His “Cradle to Cradle” philosophy reminds us to take a step back from our daily habits and rethink about our social economical practices, instead of thinking “Cradle to the grave”. Cradle to Cradle promotes growth in human experiences with beauty, enjoyment, poetry and encourage environmental health at the same time. His phrase, “Waste equals food” means re-using waste and growing it into something that is useful. McDonough has inspired me to change my ways of using art as an object. Art is now a tool to me, and it should not be the object itself. When I used art as an object, I found I was just creating waste because I was taking inspirations from the planet, and not really doing anything with it. I wanted to give back to the planet by creating ecological art.

Chickadee Heaven was constructed with rez-n-bond and plexi glass. The image was hand drawn and then serigraphed on the plexi glass.