Kindred Spirits
Hello, all my siblings of Mother Earth! Very recently, I was one of 30 lucky artists to be chosen to paint a giant crow sculpture for the Wildwood: Follow the Crows trail. This is an art trail to celebrate the release of “Wildwood”; the new Laika animation, based on the book of the same name, in late October. I was asked to write an artist statement for my design in 200 words or less. This was excruciating. Not because I dislike writing artist statements (I do), but because 200 words can not do justice to how I feel about our dark-feathered neighbors. So allow me to give anyone curious a more well-rounded idea of what really went behind my piece “Kindred Spirits”.
In life, if we value our own curiosity, we often find that nature is our greatest teacher. We can learn a lot by observing our environment, but the most profound lessons are the ones we learn about ourselves when we begin to interact with nature with the gentle purpose of finding our own place within it. I have felt out of place in any environment I've found myself in; like there was a piece of me missing that was directly responsible for any sense of belonging. I was disconnected from my environment and other humans and I was consumed by depression. That is, until I listened to an indigenous woman talking about how we could become naturalized to a place by putting our love into it and then letting it love us back. We can not do this by mimicking other cultures, but rather, by finding our own path to ways of knowing that might have been lost over time. If you're wondering who this woman is, her name is Robin Wall Kimmerer and I was listening to her book “Braiding Sweetgrass”. This experience led me to read "To Speak for the Trees" by Diana Beresford-Kroeger; the last child raised under the Brehon law of Ireland. A wealth of knowledge on land and life. These two women have shaped me in an immeasurable way.
Digging deeper into my Irish heritage has given me many new ways to learn and to know, including how to learn from my favorite professor: the crow.
Crows often get a bad rap as harbingers of death. They are often brutal in their hunting and they don't fill the air with a fairytale-like bird song. Some might think “murder” is a rather fitting name for a flock of bad omens, but let me share with you what crows and my heritage have taught me.
When I first started interacting with the crows in my neighborhood in St. John's (yes, the very same St. John's where Wildwood is set), the gift I received most was laughter. Once they trusted me to be near them, I got to see a lot more of their personalities. Watching them stash their food bits under piles of leaves, rally their friends around my home when they knew free walnuts were imminent, and stretching their claws over their wings to scratch an annoying itch at the back of their heads gave me a sense of community I didn't expect. Often, I found myself eating handfuls of walnuts as I laid them out for the crows. It feels a bit like a cross-species potluck. That's why you'll find walnuts drawn throughout my crow piece, and just below you'll see some pics of one of my neighborhood crow babies ❤️
In Irish lore, crows aren't just omens. They are unique in their ability to pass through the veil between our world and the “other world”. The “other world” is often represented as a fantasy fairy realm, but it was also representative of all the unknown, including the unknown within ourselves. Exploring our inner world with curiosity rather than fear can lead us to greater adaptability. Just like our crow teacher, we can make a happy home for ourselves almost anywhere, if we know ourselves well enough.
We should explore our inner world as voraciously as we would the world around us. We should be like the crow, passing between worlds and using the wisdom that this exploration gives us to navigate our day to day lives. Who are we, really? And are the darker parts of ourselves something we should shove into the recesses of our minds for fear that shedding light on them might give them more power? The crow has taught me that there is a place for my goofiness, for my wanderlust, and for my rage. Yes, RAGE. Crows will rally and show their discontent when one of their own lay dead in the street from our human negligence. We should do the same for our fallen neighbors and all who have been tread on. Nothing less than a blood-curdling cry and a rally of defense will do when we lose a soul to an avoidable lack of care. The crows are begging us to look deeper within ourselves and find the part of ourselves that knows we belong. We are not separate from each other or our beautiful planet. All flourishing is mutual and all suffering is shared.
“Kindred Spirits” is my personal dedication to what the crow has taught me, what my heritage has taught me, and what indigenous people have taught me through all the generous gifts they've given this planet and the People of Ireland specifically. They knew that flourishing was mutual and they shared in the sorrow of the Irish during The Great Hunger, even amidst the Trail of Tears. The Choctaw people of Oklahoma gathered money for donation to Irish families who were starving in their own land due to a very similar form of oppression to what was being inflicted upon them in that moment. In their own pain, they chose to share. This one moment in time has had immeasurable positive effects for the Irish diaspora. To honor this solidarity, a beautiful public art piece was erected in 2017 in County Cork, Ireland; 9 giant sculpted eagle feathers, standing on end, in a large and welcoming circle. This installation was aptly named “Kindred Spirits”. A thank you from across the ocean.
In 2024, the 8 foot tall metal sculpture named “Eternal Heart” was unveiled in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma. A massive celtic trinity knot intertwined with a heart and sitting on a base of diamond shapes (representative of the rattlesnake), oriented to face Ireland. Created by Choctaw artist Samuel Stitt, this continued dedication to solidarity honors the shared sorrow of The Great Hunger and the Trail of Tears. Please read more about this sculpture. It’s beautiful work!
As I've navigated my own experiences of joy, pain, and injustice, I've felt the ripple effects of that bond. As an Irish-American, I feel so lucky to still be receiving the blessings of those choices, that neighborly love. So when I conceptualized my own “Kindred Spirits” work, I did so with the hope that all could feel the Grá Mór (Big Love) I've been gifted from these continued acts of reaching for each other. I am listening to my crow teachers. I am reaching out into the noise, hoping to find a hand that's reaching too.
Below you'll find a gallery of my "Kindred Spirits" crow as well as the Ogham and Irish language used throughout. I hope you enjoy exploring all the love I put into it 💚🖤💚
Above is the Ogham alphabet. I chose to keep it simple and didn't use any of the more complex characters from the fifth aicme on the crow. You might have noticed that some letters are not represented by the Ogham alphabet, so instead of "K" I used "C". There is no "W" either. Some people choose to write "U" twice right next to each other, but I opted for "BH" because that creates the W sound in the Irish language. Here's a translation of all the Ogham language in "Kindred Spirits":
A brief note that I was quite fresh to the Irish language when I started this work and I am still quite green. There may be some Irish terminology that is misplaced or not quite used in the proper context because I am still early on in my language learning journey. As much as I'd love this crow to be perfect, I must learn from the crows and embrace that imperfect side of myself. Instead, I'll just choose to be proud of myself for taking the time to learn and share. I'm okay sharing this imperfection with the public, because I am human, just like you, Neighbor. I want to see your humanness too. And your crowness, if you find it.
Slaínte! Cheers!
*Special thanks to Downtown Portland Clean and Safe, Laika, Wild in Art, and my sponsor McMenamin's, for making all this possible. Thank you to Portugal. The man, for featuring my crow in their music video for "You Can Count On Me". And the biggest thanks to the city of Portland for making so much space for artists of all kinds!
Here's the Portugal. The man video!
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