Drawing > Grouse

Grouse tail is the first of a series of drawings representing the male ruffed grouse. Seen from behind, the tail of the grouse is fanned out in an intentional display of his feathers in the mating posture as well as a visual indicator to the hunter. Through the removal of the tail from its natural environments as well as its subsequent isolation and re-represntation, the grouse tail becomes an object of ornamentation as well as reverence. In these transformations that I mean to display, I hope to evoke a recognition of the simultaneous celebration and subjugation of nature which lies at the heart of our culture, derived, as it is, materially from nature.