Solo Show at Peninsula College's PUB Gallery
'Aerial Views'
Nighthawk Neonicotinoids Jar
This piece started coming into focus during the weeks of summer evenings when I watched nighthawks diving and swimming through the air catching insects around my home. I would sit out every evening and watch them dart towards bugs and dodge away from each other. Nighthawks are an incredible species whose populations have dropped in half in the past 50 years due to the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. The pesticides sprayed on insects and the plants they eat slowly poison nighthawks as the parts per million of poisons exponentially increase within their bodies.
During migration, seed-eating birds experience immediate weight loss after consuming sprayed seeds. This weight loss happens even at extremely low doses of pesticides and when it is only on a tiny portion of their daily seed in take. Birds often recover but it delays their migration which severely harms their chances of survival and being able to reproduce.
The jar in this piece references the physical body as well as a vessel to contain, but the cut-out (whose form is mirrored in the shape of the dead nighthawk below) renders the jar useless to hold what is building up inside. Pandora’s box has been forced open; poisonous food and resources are all around us.
Materials: ceramic, green latex paint
