During the pandemic, my partner, Bayla, and I began taking daily walks down to Yale’s campus. We often noticed dead birds at the base of the glass walls that wrap the Yale School on Management building when we passed by.
Overlooked casualties of building all-glass buildings. Female and male Ruby-throated hummingbirds with broken beaks, killed by flying into @YaleSOM building. pic.twitter.com/Idl8q0mqWu
— A. Z. Andis Arietta, PhD (@azandisarietta) May 9, 2021
Because we both have working relationships with the Peabody Museum of Natural History, we began saving the bird specimens for the museum’s collection. Through that partnership, we learned that the School of Management building is one of the most lethal pieces of architecture on Yale Campus. We also met Viveca Morris at the Yale Law Ethics and Animals Program who had been helping to organize city-wide bird-strike data collections and spearheading a push to adopt bird-friendly building ordinances in New Haven.
Another @YaleSOM window strike casualty. Yellow warbler.#illustration #watercolour #watercolor #watercolorartist #birdsketch #birdart #deadbird #birdpainting #yellowwarbler #migratorybirds #warblersofinstagram #darkart #baylaart pic.twitter.com/QiX58rc9VX
— Bayla Arietta (@BaylaArt) May 26, 2020
One of the main barriers enacting mitigatory measures at the SOM building was that the lack of hard accounting of the total number of birds killed allowed the administrators of the building to downplay the problem. So, along with Viveca, we began a systematic survey of bird strikes at SOM. I’ll write more about that in a future post.
We also began thinking about the larger picture. How could we get more folks to recognize the magnitude of deaths due to thoughtless architecture? And how could we inspire folks to demand businesses, architects, and municipalities to adopt bird-friend design?
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Bayla began painting some of the specimens we found. She posted a painting of five warblers we collected on a single day at SOM. The response was huge. That image seemed to have struck a chord. We realized that art could be a way to simultaneously introduce the topic and inspire emotions toward enacting change.
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Bayla contacted Talon and Antler galleries in Portland, Oregon which feature some of our favorite contemporary artists and tend toward natural themes.
They agreed to let us curate a show with us. Over the next few months, Bayla contacted artists whose work fit the theme. In total, 62 artists contributed original pieces to the show titled, “Fractured Aviary”, which hung for the month of June 2022.
If you missed the show, you can see some of my favorites below:
