Please welcome back a brilliant poet and artworker, Karen Pierce Gonzalez to Patricia’s Pen.
Birds of a Feather: two years later and still flying
Karen Pierce Gonzalez
When Honeyguide Literary Journal published my bird psalm collection as a feature in their gorgeous November 2024 Issue (#9), I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
The hybrid work of cherita and photographs is one of my sweetest creations; I so wanted it to take flight in a public way because the vision I held for it spoke to both the unsettling world of climate change atmospheric rivers here in California, and the innate tenacity of survival.
It all started after the first atmospheric deluge the winter of 2023. Tree branches, in some cases, unprotected young tree trunks were downed by vicious winds and rivers of rain. I had gone outside to assess the damage and do some clean up when I noticed a bird nest fragment on the ground at my feet. Ever so small (approx. 5 inches/12.7 cm) , it captured my attention, so I brought it inside.
In the following days I found more bits and pieces and knew I had to do something with them, but what? A few months later, falling in love with the cherita poetry form (3 stanzas of six lines total) I started to pull the fragments together with poetry.
Once published, I converted the feature into an easy-access, free flipbook so this body of work could continue to reach others who had not read the journal.
Fast forward to 2025. Following the appearance of the work in Honeyguide as well as the flipbook, an amazing thing happened.
Friends from across the country and from my neighborhood started to give me bird nests they had found. Fortunately, these nests, abandoned, had already done their job.
Now it was time to do mine. And I had no idea what I was going to do.
Inspired to use bird psalm as a spring board, I envisioned the series BirdSong, agrouping of three real bird nests I ‘nested’ into beds of musical score sheets which I painted, glittered, and otherwise colored before shredding.
Here is an top view of BirdSong: Quail on a pedestal
At the same time, I also began to make abstract, mixed media bird nests that included feathers I found in my area.
Here is BirdSong: Fowl (Chicken and Turkey feathers) mounted to canvas board, designed to ‘fly’ from the ceiling.
All three real bird nests and the three abstract ones are included in a very special summer art show.
As an invited feature artist, I will install these works in the upcoming Sanctuary show, which runs May 16-July 12 at the Cloverdale Arts Alliance Gallery in Northern California.
They will be placed inside a ‘garden fence’ I made of hand-painted Red Apple branches I trimmed off our tree last year.
And who knows? Perhaps gallery-goers will give them new homes in which to be enjoyed.
That is my hope for them.
Patricia M Osborne 