Pigeons are one of my favorite birds and one of, if not the sweetest species of birds on the planet, which is due to their domestication for doing jobs such as delivering messages, racing and even just being pets. However, pigeons are now in grave danger because of us as most pigeons in cities around the world are lost racing pigeons and even more so are descendants of a domesticated species that has lost almost all its skills for survival including how to build nests which is a vital part of survival for any species of bird.
Pigeons have been symbols for transformation, prosperity, fertility, fortune, and luck to people around the world for centuries and are highly decorated in many wars for their contribution to the fight by delivering messages over thousands of miles despite receiving sometimes life-threatening injuries for their work. Despite their contributions to us these birds that have symbolized luck for years, are far from it due to having lost their usefulness to humankind thanks to the continued development of technology making their uses for delivering messages become obsolete.
Humanity as a species prioritises that which it can use to further its own means to an end and once you are no longer useful you are thrown aside like trash and that is what has happened to our feathered friends.
Many believe pigeons are dirty and carry diseases, but this is far from the case as pigeons are some of the cleanest animals on the planet and this association of being unclean and disease ridden most likely stems from them being so frequently mutilated on the streets due to their horrible living conditions that they can’t even escape from thanks to years of domestication.
This is all really to say that I chose pigeons for my project because I relate to them on a personal level, feeling as though in this society if I am not useful then I will be left to rot alone just like they are now. So please be kind to our feathered friends of the streets and maybe think twice before you complain about them when it is our fault they are this way in the first place.
Chuck Mullin is a part time illustrator from London, known for the book ‘Bird Brain, Comics on mental health, staring Pigeons’ which is how I came to know of them and also the reason why I decided on them for one of my artists.
Their art style is very simplistic and cutesy with a soft feel to it that really makes you sympathise for the birds in their little comics which I personally admire greatly and due to my own similar art style when drawing pigeons drew me to their work as a perfect secondary illustrator to cover in my project.
My transcription, I feel, turned out well considering I had to use a different medium due to my lack of access to a drawing tablet which would have helped me emanate their style more easily for this piece. I decided to create a pigeon in their style but not copy one that they have created so that I could put some thought into my transcription.
Accu are our clients for this project and are a well-known component suppliance company who has over 500,000 components that you can mix and match with no minimum to how many you can order of any piece, making them easy to use for anyone looking for components no matter how large or small.
They have a color scheme I find quite interesting; however, I personally did not inspiration for this for my project as I wanted to use colors that more so appealed to my personal taste. Despite this I did take inspiration from the company into my piece with my method of using nuts to create multiple pigeons as nuts are one of the many components, they sell on their website it only made sense to me to incorporate this into my piece somehow.
Brian Mock is an artist from Oregon who creates physical sculptures out of scrap metal, nuts and bolts which is similar to my own final piece which i am planning to make some pigeons on photoshop out of nuts.
His work is very interesting and my personal favorite of his pieces is a sculpture of a dog featured below. I love how the different scraps and pieces are put together to make something new and innovative and it being still clear what it is specifically despite being made of scraps.
I would have done a transcription; however, this has proved difficult as I do not have the means to do so due to health and safety concerns of using equipment for soldering which is often hard to use and dangerous.
Chris Kircher is a metalwork artist who does more whimsical pieces than the second artist I researched, Brian Mock, and while they are both sculpture-based artists I believe their different approaches to the medium are interesting and both deserving of appreciation.
I adore the cute and relatively more abstract approach of Kircher as it is both simple but effective with portraying the animals she is creating and is just as inspiring to me as the work of Mock but in a different light. My favorite of her pieces is a little metal bird made of scraps that is extremely adorable in my honest opinion. Again, I cannot provide a transcription due to personal health and safety issues surrounding melding equipment and my own issues surrounding mobility.
