Clay Anderson: Bird Artist

Editor’s Note: Clay Anderson 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 Clay, all our artists, and GGBA by purchasing their beautiful work!

 

By Ilana DeBare

 

Golden Gate Bird Alliance members who know Clay Anderson probably know him as an environmental educator—kneeling to show kids a lizard, or helping them train binoculars on a soaring hawk.

But Anderson—manager of GGBA’s Eco-Education program, which serves public elementary schools in low-income sections of San Francisco, Oakland, and Richmond—is also a talented nature artist.

In fact, nature study and art have been intertwined for Anderson as long as he can remember.

“My mother kept a piece of my art from kindergarten—a picture of all these different kinds of plants,” he recalled recently. “I can’t tell you which came first. It [nature observation and art] has always been together in a package.”

Clay Anderson works on a chalk-art drawing of a Black-crowned Night-Heron, part of a Golden Gate Bird Alliance campaign to protect Oakland’s herons. By Ilana DeBare

Anderson grew up on the south side of Chicago, a suburban area that was “pretty close to rural” where he and his six siblings could roam freely in tall grass prairie between the scattered houses. His mother introduced him to birds. His Aunt Rosie bought him the first of many aquariums.

“I was probably five to eight years old and was totally blown away that you could look inside water and see fish,” he said. “That’s when I started focusing on animals. I didn’t have birds, but I had all the fish I could afford, plus frogs, a turtle, spiders—at one point we even had a crocodile—any kind of thing you could put in an aquarium. I had about five or ten aquariums in our basement.”

While accumulating aquariums, Anderson was also drawing. Some of that came from his mother, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who worked as an illustrator for the Chicago Defender, the prominent African-American newspaper. Anderson drew plants and animals, cars, imaginary monsters, anything he could.

“In fifth grade, I remember kids stealing my drawings,” he said. “I was kind of upset but then someone told me to take the perspective that they were doing it because it was really good stuff. I started taking pride in it.”

In college, Anderson initially tried environmental studies but realized he wasn’t academically prepared for the advanced science. He moved to California and switched to art, where he received a B.A. in drawing and painting from San Jose State.

Anderson’s finished picture of the juvenile Black-crowned Night-Heron

His first job out of college wasn’t in art though: It was doing environmental education in San Jose. His career has focused on nature education, with art as a personal pastime.

Since his hire at Golden Gate Bird Alliance in 2016, though, Anderson has had occasions to blend his two passions.

He’s taken part in several chalk-art events organized by GGBA. One depicted Black-crowned Night-Herons on the sidewalks of Oakland, part of a campaign to protect the city’s nesting population of herons. The other depicted Ospreys on the sidewalks of Richmond, to celebrate their selection as the City of Richmond’s official bird.

In 2019, Anderson also launched a monthly Nature Journaling class for GGBA at the Rotary Nature Center on Lake Merritt. That class continues in 2020, although it is currently on hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I was surprised because most of the people who came to the class wanted to learn to draw [rather than write], which was nice for me because I get to draw more,” he said.

For GGBA’s first-ever Online Bird Art Auction this month, Anderson has offered a unique auction prize—a personal chalk-art rendering of a bird on the sidewalk of the buyer’s home or business.

“I’ll do whatever bird they want,” he said.

Anderson creating a chalk-art Osprey in Richmond.

What does Anderson like most about drawing birds?

“It’s like a journey when I really get into it,” he said. “I want to do all the details. I lose a sense of time while considering every little thing about it. There’s a meditative part of it, a creative part of it, a learning part of it. And it’s something that’s part of our world—the real thing, not out of Hollywood. Nature never ceases to amaze.”

Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Online Bird Art Auction runs from May 17 through June 1, 2020. You can view all the auction items at http://goldengatebirdalliance.org/auction. Or click here to view and bid on Clay Anderson’s chalk art depiction of a bird.