Bird Silhouettes / Women Bird Silhouettes / NYC Silhouettes

Kestrel & Cardinal, 2001. While living on Peaks Island, Maine I began to pay more attention to birds. The house I rented had several bird feeders & there were no squirrels on Peaks! My intrigue with silhouettes was prompted by looking at bird identification books. I’ve had an interest in silhouettes even before that. After all, they were they precursor to photography And, I once wrote a feature article with photographs about a woman in Maine who still cut silhouettes) as they were a precursor to the invention of photography. And, I cut a few of my own bird silhouettes as you see below.

Women/Bird series - top L to R: is Cardinal & Kestrel; bottom L to R: is Kingfisher & Meadowlark.

This series consists of images of women from magazines combined with my cut silhouettes. The magazine imagery was scanned & placed within my hand cut silhouettes of the 4 birds. These preceded and informed my Projections series.

NYC Silhouette series, 2009-10, cut paper & archival pigment prints printed from a 4x5 inch pinhole paper negative

We all know by its shape— if a house, a car, a chair, or a piece of clothing is old or not. Perhaps not the exact year, unless it’s our area of expertise. But shapes change, just like everything else. In this series, I paired my cut silhouette of a women’s dress from a particular time period with a landmark NYC architectural site from the same time period.

Top L to R: The Brooklyn Bridge 1869; the Flatiron building 1902

Bottom L to R: NYC Stock Exchange building 1903; Rockefeller Center, 1933.

Cupboard Finds archival pigment prints each size 22 1/2 x 30 inches. These were made on cyanotype paper which I then scanned & enlarged.