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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.…

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.

Pileated Scrabble by Daryl Goldman, one of her two mixed-media works for sale in the auction

“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.…

Nancy Overton: Bird Artist

Editor’s Note: Nancy Overton 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 Nancy, all of our artists, and GGBA by purchasing their beautiful work.

By Nancy Overton

Though I graduated with a fine arts degree in painting, my art life turned three-dimensional in 2008 shortly after I joined the Backyard Bird Count, co-sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon. Counting birds involved knowing whom you were counting, so I bought myself The Sibley Guide to Birds. Suddenly my feeders were not just full of birds, but full of Dark-eyed Juncos and Chestnut-backed Chickadees and House Sparrows.

I made a little wire bird and decorated him with some of the papers I used in my collages. He felt at home on the drawing board and in the house. He inspired me to make more birds—learning species, and investigating sizes and shapes and colors.

White-crowned Sparrow, one of three works by Nancy Overton in the auction

For over ten years now I have been a maker of paper maché birds, creating three-dimensional likenesses of a little bit of life and nature that can live indoors on a shelf or desk.

I “weave” my bird armatures of floral wire using my fingers and needle-nose pliers. I cover the armature first with newspaper, then with colored papers, sheet music, and other ephemera to create the feathers. Depending on the size and complexity, it will take four to fifteen hours to complete a bird.

I’m indebted to those nature photographers who post their photographs on the web. My field research is mostly vicarious. I have not trudged miles and my feet are dry. “Images,” I type into the search engine, “back view of horned owl.”

Black-crowned Night-Heron, one of three works by Nancy Overton in the auction

My favorite bird is often the commissioned bird that I am not yet acquainted with. Such a request requires research about habits and habitats, feather colors, height, and wingspan. It is a new adventure.

Though I have made some 25 species of mostly local birds and probably 500+ models of those species, I never tire of making birds. In crafting a bird, I hope I can inspire a smile, inspire an awareness, a thought about the importance of a bird in the natural world.…

David Tomb: Bird Artist

Editor’s Note: David Tomb is one of many talented artists whose work is featured in GGBA’s first ever online bird art auction, which runs from May 17 through June 1, 2020. We hope you will support David, all of our artists and GGBA, by purchasing their beautiful work!

By Melissa Ramos

Birds mesmerized David as a child.

His mother often recounted his habit of staring at the Turkey Vultures hanging out in a dead Oak tree behind his childhood home in Oakland. David was particularly fascinated with how the vultures sunned their wings in the early morning sunlight. This rather Gothic image is an indelible memory and certainly was the image that helped spark David’s long career in the arts.

Tufted Jay by David Tomb

David always enjoyed drawing but loved drawing birds especially. This natural fit led him to eventually pursue life as a professional artist when he was an adult. Art making always stuck with him. He studied art in college and put in 20 years as a figurative artist, focusing less on birds. After the tragic events of 9/11, David made promise to himself: he would bird more.

Long-billed Curlew, one of David’s many bird drawings.

His new, intensive birding habit naturally circled back into his art; since 2007, David’s work has focused entirely on birds and conservation.

“Odd Job” (Wagler’s Pit Viper with Mindanao Tarictic Hornbill and Collared Kingfisher)

Like many birders, David’s process begins by going out in the field. He birds as much as he can locally. Observing birds in their natural behaviors is a big inspiration for David’s creative process. He supplements his process by visiting museums, galleries, and reading about birds as much as he can. While contemporary and modern art inspires and informs his work, he also allows birds to guide his content and aesthetics.

Aplomado Falcon by David.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s a gallery of David’s work, highlighted below.

“On Demon Pond” (Collared Kingfishers) painted paper cutout collage

Rufous Hornbill, Collection: US Embassy, Manila, Philippines

Thick-billed Parrot by David Tomb

Rock and Rockfowl, painted paper cut-out diorama of Ghana rainforest featuring Yellow-headed Picathartes (Rockfowl), 28 feet wide by 12 feet high. Installed at Fresno Art Museum, 2018, Solo exhibition: Rockfowl and other Wonders

Installation: Philippine Eagle/Haribon nest, painted cut-out paper diorama, Fresno Art Museum, 2018, 25 feet wide by 12 high

Installation detail: Philippine Eagle nest

Detail, Picathartes, Rock and Rockfowl.…

Mandy, Feisty, the Mandarin Duck

By Linda Swanson

My story begins on November 17, 2014 in Golden Gate Park at the inlet curve of Stow Lake. Annually, one or two Wood Duck arrive and take residence among entwined branches at this spot. It was a pleasant surprise to see there was a female Wood Duck on that sunny morning. My thoughts were to post this sighting to the SF Birds forum. As I took confirmation iPhone photos, a walker stopped to see what I was doing. We chatted about her sister’s fondness for Wood Ducks and how nice it was to see one here in our city. I dashed home to compose my posting, reviewing my photos alongside the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, but the ID markings around the eye were not a match for Wood Duck.

I was perplexed.

I turned the pages to the exotic ducks section and was surprised to see this appeared to be a female Mandarin Duck. My ornithology instructor, Joe Morlan, taught us a critical thinking approach to IDing birds. He saved me from a hasty and incorrect report.

Here’s a mantra Joe includes beneath his public postings about birds: “It turns out we’re very good at not seeing things” – Jack Hitt

One of the first iPhone photos taken of Mandy, the Mandarin Duck near the Boathouse at Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park, Monday, November 17, 2014 at 10:11 am.

The Wood Ducks that populate Stow Lake each year are only there for summer months during while they molt. Then they migrate on. But this Mandarin Duck could not be a naturally occurring species as its range is scattered from Russia to Japan. (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Birds of the World”).

So the question remained: how and why did this female Mandarin Duck arrive at Stow Lake?

In the days that followed, the Mandarin Duck took up residence on the opposite side of Stow Lake that provides a nice habitat for the many ducks living there. It became the highlight of my daily run to see the Mandarin (whom I named Mandy). Eventually, I discovered her missing left wing feathers. I brought up the Mandarin in my ornithology class for discussion and learned of previous occurrences of Mandarin Duck nearby, one a decade prior at the Palace of Fine Arts, and in Sonoma County in the 1980s. Where had Mandy come from?…