I started taking walks at sunset to feel better. It was January of 2021, nearly a year into the COVID pandemic. On these anti-depressant walks, I kept running into crows, participating in their own sunset ritual, hundreds of them in a raucous shimmering black net. They flew around the city, my hometown, gathering, gossiping, and ultimately sleeping together in trees. I was both intoxicated by and jealous of the nightly crow party—standing under them was my only crowd experience in nine months. For the next three months, I tracked them every night I could. My solo practice of paying the crows attention grew into a participatory art project. The 50 human participants were my community in Providence: my classmates, partner, students, professors, mother, childhood friends. I had the urge to share the crow crowd with my crowd, keeping the parameters of human engagement loose enough to leave room for chaos, refusal, or play. Each walk was different: the crows took a different route, the weather changed. I invited the more performative humans to bring something to share: a poem, a song, a dance, a ritual. I shot video and wrote journal entries documenting each night’s quest. The project grew to include a sculptural-video installation, based on forms the murder of crows makes in flight, which I showed at the RISD Museum in 2021.
Mixed media sculpture with 2-channel video. Materials include felt, latex paint, wood, PVC conduit, corn nuts, fabric, wire, sand, and cedarwood essential oil
10' x 6' x 10'
