Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Group

2007, 27.5 in x 21.5 in

One framed version in bright green has been sold. A very few slight variations are available.

$1000 framed, $800 unframed

In this woodcut, bright, verdant green images on a Modernist black field depict a family group of Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers. Two different blocks were used to create the green woodgrain pattern and the black and white relief image of chisel-billed woodpeckers, printed at Mannaken Press. These woodpecker family groupings were likely made extinct when their old-growth forest habitat was logged for the manufacture of Singer sewing machines, between 1937 and the mid-1940s. Many efforts have been made to located remaining populations, without conclusive evidence of their survival.

Central to my life and art is the realization that urgent, immediate conservation of critical habitats, such as this one, is essential to the survival of all living beings. Themes explored since childhood have developed into my mature commitment to promote wildlife protection and habitat preservation. An Audubon Society field trip to the Florida Everglades provided my first significant insight into the diminishment of natural habitats and the resultant depletion of freshwater. This profound experience enhanced my resolve to apply art expression in the promotion of conservation. My subsequent travels to Africa, the Amazon, Belize, the Galapagos, Costa Rica, Brazil’s Pantanal, and Trinidad and Tobago provided factual expansion to my world view. The huge impact of live observation of the depletion of biodiversity lead me to environmentally based subject and content choices that are primarily expressed through painting and printmaking techniques.

Because it was one of the rarest birds in the world, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is exceedingly appropriate for inclusion in my work. For more than half of a century this species existed only as study skins stored in museum cases throughout the world. Most were collected in the 19th century when the birds were fairly common, but the species has been classified as “probably extinct” since the 1940’s. My research was from study skins in the collections at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and from my venture to Arkansas.

 In February of 2004, in the Bayou de View area of the Cache River and White River National Wildlife Refuges of southeastern Arkansas, two experts claimed to observe an Ivory bill, but were unable to document their sighting, which would have been the first documented in more than 60 years. In December of 2005 and 2006, when visiting these vast, swampy bottomland forests, it was evident that photographically capturing elusive birds high in old growth forest trees, to provide documentation of their existence, will be nearly impossible.

Imagining that a small population of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers may still exist might offer hope for rediscovery, renewal and survival, as long as necessary habitat still exists. This woodcut represents specimens from Chicago’s Field Museum, collected in Florida between 1883 and 1888.  Viewing and sketching them as I did can make one dream of when Ivorybills lived in pristine, old-growth forests and swamps of the southeastern United States with panthers, wolves, and passenger pigeons still blackening the skies with their abundance. What was true then is even more critical today. One wonders why the protection of great natural treasures is not of the highest priority for the survival of us all.