Feather artist Chris Maynard
Clip: Season 16 | 7m 29sVideo has Closed Captions
Chris Maynard creates intricate art from bird feathers, inspired by his love of the natural world
Chris Maynard creates intricate art entirely from bird feathers. Inspired by his love of the natural world and his background as a biologist, Chris hopes to give people a new perspective on nature through his art. Segment from SCIENCE episode
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Feather artist Chris Maynard
Clip: Season 16 | 7m 29sVideo has Closed Captions
Chris Maynard creates intricate art entirely from bird feathers. Inspired by his love of the natural world and his background as a biologist, Chris hopes to give people a new perspective on nature through his art. Segment from SCIENCE episode
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipFeathers are symbols of our aspirations of flight and hope, kind of our dreams.
Those ideas are why I chose to use feathers in my art.
People say I capture the essence of the birds and that's really a compliment because I like to feel them, like kind of just feel them in my body.
Biology is the study of life.
Birds shed their feathers and I carve them into intricate art.
This feather is from an Asian Jay and this is about as small as I go.
This is part of the wing.
It's not the main wing feather.
They're little coverts, they're called.
They cover up the other feathers and it just has these little bits of blue on them.
I want to support laws that protect birds.
Most of my feathers come from natural shedding in zoos and private aviaries so I can be sure that they're legal.
This is from an Argus pheasant.
Some of the biggest, most heavy feathers in the world.
These are the primaries.
It's what the bird powers its flight with and these are the secondaries and on most birds secondaries help the bird just float in the air.
These are beautifully patterned so the bird uses them for display kind of like a peacock but when its feathers are all tucked in it just blends into its forest background.
Feathers are made of out of keratin which is the strongest of animal materials.
It's like your fingernail but then inside it's more pithy because the other thing about feathers is they're really light.
Another function feathers have is to enhance the bird's sense of the environment.
This is like one big lever that goes into the bird's nerve rich skin.
Each flight feather is attached by a muscle and a tendon so they can move those feathers more or less separately.
They can do things that we can barely imagine.
I grew up near Seattle.
My father was an eye surgeon.
My mother was a professional artist but having three sisters and no brothers mostly I would just go out and explore the woods.
I was a biologist and I focused on entomology.
I do know the plants and the creatures and then I worked with the hydropower industry.
I was sitting behind a desk, in meetings so ten years ago I was thinking about what's my mission in life and it appears to be to foster appreciation and understanding of the natural world.
My father used these glasses for eye surgery.
I need them especially as I get older and these were my dad's tiny little forceps.
They're grooved so they don't slip back and forth and these were his scalpels.
They're really sharp.
My mom really encouraged creativity.
She would teach classes in her home and paint.
After she died, I got her notebooks and I'm looking through one of them and there's birds that she's just probably saw outside the window, went [scribbling noise].
From her drawings I've made some pieces.
I wish she was around to see the results.
I'm carving these little bugs from feathers of the Central American ocellated turkey.
They're shiny like a bug so I'm making what I call Bug Bird.
I want to honor the birds and I want to honor the feathers.
I could paste them flat against the background but I don't.
I pull them away so that they have their natural curve.
Voila.
When I photograph it I want to get the light just right so that I can capture the shadows.
What I feel is important is this feeling of space and design and also a feeling of motion.
I have a barn that the swallows love.
In the spring there's hundreds of them.
When I'm watching the swallows I have this kinesthetic sense of soaring with them.
I like to dance and I get that same feeling of lightness.
My art is seen all over the world and if somebody can see feathers in a different way hopefully it can give them a new perspective on the natural world.
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