The Collector

My name is Julia Kemerer, and my piece is titled "The Collector." High up on the wall is a circle that looks as if it were a hole going straight through the wall. Coming through that hole, so big that it just squeezes through, is a large bird. He has a big white belly with black and gray markings on his head, wings, and back. He has a thick black beak with sharp points underneath. Peeking out of the bottom of the hole are sharp black talons to match. His big dark eyes are staring at you. He is a loggerhead shrike, a bird known not only for its hunting skills but for its habit of saving its kills for later by impaling them on a thorn or a barbed-wire fence. Normally, they are very small birds that don't pose any threat to larger creatures, but this one is big enough to be intimidating. Though loggerhead shrikes are very real, this one, of course, isn't. This is a sculpture. It is part of a series of sculptures of oversized birds in circles that I call portals. They are made from plaster, gauze, spackle, and acrylic paint, with plastic spoon eyes and frames made from the rings of ceiling light fixtures. I've been making them for about three years now. Some of them are cute. Some of them, like this one, are a bit creepy, but hopefully all of them make you pause for a moment and wonder what it would be like to come face to face with a large creature suddenly bursting into your human space.