EXHIBIT DETAILS: May 14–June 1, 2024 at CoLab Space, Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University. Read more
Flight/Air/Fire was first inspired by the hundreds of Canadian geese that return each winter to the field across the street.
They spend their winter days in Rhode Island, cackling as they graze looking for corn kernels left behind by the farmer, but I think they eat everything within reach of their long necks. They arrive just after the break of dawn — their honks first just a whisper and then louder and louder as they approach — and depart daily in the creeping darkness just after sunset, just as noisily.
They arrive in formation, large V’s in the sky or small groups in a line, until there are hundreds on the ground feet from my front door where I watch with my coffee in hand. They leave in squadrons or 40, 50 or more, taking off at precisely the same moment, and now I have returned from my walk, glad to watch them depart as they seek the safety of nights on the water nearby, where the coyotes and foxes cannot harm them.
As the ferocity of storms increase in the winter’s cold and the advent of extreme weather, I watch these strong majestic migratory birds in awe. All around the new world approaches — trees fall and die at accelerated rates, snowless winters are common, unusually wet springs and hot dry Augusts are commonplace now.
I wait in in the early fall for them to return, and hardly notice when they depart sometime between a foggy morning and the chirping of the peepers on a March night. How do they understand the changes? How will they survive them? Will they survive them? Will we?
