Just the other night Henry and I sat together watching the storm blow in from the big water: me on the dock, him on the old fallen Hemlock. We both raised our shoulders and got smaller as light rain began to fall and make a million tiny circles on the black pond surface. I swatted at bugs and sipped wine and crossed and uncrossed my legs and asked stupid questions, an ungainly and bumbling display. Henry sat unmoved and unbothered by any of it, ever the stately one.

Every bird on these walls is a friend of mine. As a relatively new landowner in these northern woods, I have been learning the deep, full, and slow practice of making friends with individual birds. I say goodnight to Phoebe most nights in her snug little nest in the soffit. Rick and I are always arguing (I mean obviously, look at him). Giiwedin came to me in a blizzard on my birthday, soared a circle over the pond before she disappeared back into the wild white sky. Sega and I watched each other quietly all winter last year. Peter jumps around the pond chasing frogs while I water my garden. Karen bosses me around but is pretty fun to have coffee with. Getting acquainted with these birds and watching them accept me as a part of their home has been one of the greatest honors of my life.

On the one hand, this collection of work is my attempt to exalt, revere, and honor these friends. Look at you, Emily, queen of the fields! Charlotte, thank god for your wild ways! I hope to treat these birds as we do presidents and saints, with portraits and prominent spaces on well-lit white walls.

Of course, our world is changing. We are losing our birds at terrifying rates. Every fall when these friends head south I find myself wondering if I will see them again. As our skyscrapers and light pollution and habitat destruction make migration more difficult, I worry. Is your winter home still there, Tim? Can you find your way back? Has your flight path gone haywire? The abstract pieces here are an exploration of these questions inspired by live migration maps, each one with one beginning thread and one end thread to signify the path of a single bird.

While I celebrate these magnificent creatures for their majesty, I also feel their decline as a deep, deep grief. So the work displayed here is also my attempt to wrestle with this truth. One day, there may be one last individual indigo bunting. One solitary loon left. What if it is Gwen? Will you be the last snowy owl, Annika? Who will be the only one?

Now don’t get me wrong, Henry has his moments, too. I’ve seen him crash into countless trees, land on branches he’s much too heavy for and freak out when they break beneath him, and completely miss a landing in the pond, swimming back to shore like lowly waterfowl. It would be my greatest joy if you could stand in front of him, here, and see, know him, love him for his funny, stoic, dramatic, fierce, vulnerable, clumsy, delicate self. He is indeed a president, a saint, a grump, a seer, a spirit, a trickster, an omen, a friend.