Kelly M O’Brien, Grounded and Winged, Byrdcliffe Artist Residency 2023
Grounded and Winged
After a 5-month residency immersed in the woodland oasis of Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, NY, this is how I feel: grounded and winged. This installation acknowledges the wildlife and plantlife that have nourished this experience. A chorus of birds, cicadas, tree frogs, chipmunks, crickets, bats, and buzzing pollinators is constant background music. Deer, bears, polecats, and fox watch—some at a distance, others close among us. Cycles of mushrooms and wildflowers abound. The dense woodland shelters and shades us, all beings together.
Originally conceived as a bird sanctuary, Grounded and Winged evolved as I realized that offering fruit would attract ground-based wildlife to the site. The ‘bell meadow’ beneath the habitats is intended to gently startle anyone who might venture in for a closer look, sniff, or snack.
The books I read inform the work. I’ve been immersed in Melanie Challenger’s How to Be Animal: A New History of What it Means to Be Human (2021) while working on this project. After five months of sometimes feral encounters, Challenger’s writing reinforces my sense of co-existing with these more-than-human beings and being animal.
During our final Open Studios of Summer 2023, new music by Harry Sings! (Skyway Transfiguration Relapse, to be released on Spotify, Fall 2023) will accompany the installation. Harry has been a Byrdcliffe Musician in Residence all summer, and you can listen to more of his work here.
A couple of credits are due: the title Grounded and Winged is from a line in Louise Penny’s novel The Beautiful Mystery. And I’ve wanted to try something like the bell meadow ever since seeing a film of Christian Boltanski’s Animitas during my MFA research around artists working with ephemeral materials.
