Daryl Goldman: Bird Artist
Editor’s Note: Daryl Goldman is one of many talented artists whose work is featured in Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s first-ever online bird art auction, which runs from May 17 through June 1, 2020. We hope you will support Daryl, all of our artists, and GGBA by purchasing their beautiful work.
By Ilana DeBare
Daryl Goldman’s creation of mixed media art boxes began long, long before her love of birds.
“I come from a very creative family and art has always been part of my life,” Goldman said. “As a child, I made more than my share of dioramas for school projects. As an adult, I was drawn to the art boxes of Joseph Cornell and the personal altars of Frieda Kahlo.”
Goldman, an Oakland resident, was a psychologist in private practice for 33 years. She turned to creating art boxes as a way to process her own feelings after a day of seeing clients.
“I found it helpful to make a three-dimensional representation of themes my patients were struggling with, such as having hope, or how to take care of your own needs and care about the environment too,” she said.
In 2010, after years of trying, her wife Jeanette Nichols finally managed to hook Goldman on birdwatching with a trip to the Central Valley to see Sandhill Cranes taking flight.
“I’d resisted it for 12 years but something clicked and my brain has never been the same,” Goldman said.
As she got more and more engaged with birding—including taking Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s year-long Master Birder class in 2016—Goldman started incorporating bird themes into her artwork.
“When my passion and/or obsession with birding took over my brain, more birds made their way into my art,” she said. “My current work, which I call ‘Birds with Words,’ was inspired by my wife’s relationship with Scrabble. (I call Scrabble her ‘other wife.’)”
One of her two works in the Golden Gate Bird Alliance auction is a Scrabble-based mixed-media piece. She uses vintage 1950s wooden Scrabble tiles to spell out bird-related words, and juxtaposes those words with images of birds from old field guides.
“Words, birds, redundancy [of images and words], and humor—I couldn’t be happier,” she said.
Goldman’s other work in the auction is a diorama with a light-hearted take on eBird rare bird postings that will hit home with many birders. Like her other dioramas, it uses ¾-inch-tall figurines from model-train sets.
As much as possible, she finds her materials at flea markets. The Oakland Museum’s annual White Elephant Sale has been a fruitful source of supplies.
“Interestingly, searching for just the right objects for my boxes, and just the right placement, is not all that different from searching for just the right bird,” she said.
Goldman is now retired from her therapy practice, but when she was working, she often had her bird art on display at her office. She let clients know about her love of birding and used it as an example of how to cope with conditions like anxiety.
“It was a good way to model having an interest or passion in your life—a way to enjoy being alone with yourself, with something to focus on instead of your anxiety,” she said. “I tried to help them find whatever it (the equivalent of birding) was for them.”
Goldman’s involvement with the Online Bird Art Auction goes deeper than any of the other artists in the show: As an Audubon member and volunteer, she helped curate the show and reached out to a number of the other artists.
“I love the way GGBA reaches out to the community and gets everyone, young and old, to learn about birds,” she said. “Their classes and field trips really made it possible [for me] to learn at a faster pace because of the decades of birding experience of the instructors. GGBA has provided me with a wonderful community of like-minded people who want to learn, explore, and improve the natural resources of the Bay Area. Environmental issues are extremely important to me, and GGBA provides ways for us to make both small and significant environmental changes.”
Daryl Goldman is donating 100 percent of the proceeds from her auction sales to Golden Gate Bird Alliance. You can visit the auction site at goldengatebirdalliance.org/auction. Outside of the auction, Goldman accepts commissions to create custom Scrabble boxes.
