8-1/4" x 9"
$2,500
9" x 8"
$1,500
Work on paper
12-3/4" x 9-1/2"
$1,500
Work on paper
14" x 8-1/2"
$1,500
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Leonardo has found the feather of the Moluccan King Parrot, which he has placed upright in the moss carpet of his bower. Non-edible figs and large red leaves strike the viewer.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
The Harpy Eagle feather is Gauguin's rare treasure
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Leonardo has found a piece of blue cellophane to brighten his bower and bounce light back on an empty battery. His favorite feather, that of the Black Sicklebill Bird of Paradise appears in the lower right. Leonardo measures 44" long.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Warhol has gathered two textiles and two large collections of black fruits for this installation. The smaller shiny black ones are inside the arch while the larger duller are outside. In the lower right corner, one sees the large sold case of an insect, one of many skirting this masterpiece. These cases are not yet known in the wester world and incorporate the birds advantage of going arboreal.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
This year, Leonardo has chosen complimentary colors to celebrate the abundance of light allowed him by the large hole in the canopy caused by the fallen tree in the background. Large blue fruits and many kinds of large orange mushrooms are his choices for the presentation. The ever-present feathers, a King Parrot and Sicklebill rest with a fresh blossom in the lower right.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Leonardo seems intrigued by the effects of light on black. Lichens, charcoal, various black fruits and shiny wild pig dung are featured in this collection. A small opening on the right allows the afternoon light to enter from the west.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Another palette change for Leonardo, who is easily recognizable by his large bold collection of non-edible fruits and flowers. The usual Sicklebill feather is in the lower left.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Leonardo again is expanding and experimenting with a variety of blues. Various berries, mushroom stems, a large blue fruit and tiny bits of lichen all catch the morning sun at the same moment. A sicklebill feather is again on the lower left.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Warhol has bent saplings to form his entry gates. A treasured sardine can has an honored altar to the right. Silver duct tape is from Mary Jo's case for her rolled linen canvas. Plastic tape is stolen from trees marked to identify Bowers the previous year. A fern has been clipped by his unusual beak to increase access to the bower.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Young Leonardo with an abundance of the afternoon sun from the west. Note the crossed sicklebill feathers in the upper left (perhaps part of the morning display) along with a local pitcher plant and endemic orchids.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Van Gogh disappeared early in the study (perhaps to a sanatarium? or eaten by a local?) In this piece, steep on a mountain flank, he displays his passion for color and flowers.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Two perfect Sicklebill tail feathers (each of which exceed 26" long) are carefully crossed on a bed of moss and point to a path of reds, pinks and oranges.
Egg Tempera
35" x 39"
Delicate little piles of ginger berries and pink blossoms. The little blue mushrooms are florescent and thought by the local tribe to light the bower for moonlight dancing. Since these mushrooms cannot be found by hunters, it is thought that they are arboreal. A delicate spray of another berry, Zingiberaceae, is inside the bower and soft fresh vines and orchid leaves soften the roof line as they are interdigitated into the eves.
Work on paper
25" x 37-1/2"
$2,800
Hornbill feathers arranged as if it was a visual Bach Fugue.
15-3/4" x 11-1/2"
$1,700
Mary Jo was attempting to breed spot-billed Toucanettes when this piece was created. Feathers were collected as they molted. The egg finally appeared and was successfully reared several weeks later.
Work on paper
10" x 8"
$600
Himalayan Monal feathers proudly display their magical iridescence.
35-1/2" x 23-1/4"
$2,800
Two blue feathers from a Jay Thrush stand brightly between three serene hornbill feathers.
Work on paper
10" x 8"
$600
Himalayan Monal feathers proudly display their magical iridescence.
Work on paper
13" x 40"
$2,800
Clyde, a blue and gold Macaw, was very ill with "Macaw Wasting Disease" after importation from Bolivia. This work was created while awaiting Clyde's recovery- and he did recover.
11-1/4" x 14-1/2"
$1,700
These feathers were from a Chattering Lory Mary Jo imported from the Celebes Islands, Indonesia. The bird was suffering in a small dirty cage in an open market when Mary Jo decided to rescue him. The battered feathers represent his struggles. Covered in banana and papaya, they finally molted and he became a shiny and proud red bird.
Work on paper
18" x 16-1/2"
$2,000
These molted feathers are from a Yellow-Naped Amazon Parrot named Oliver.
Work on paper
$2,800
A dance of joy after PO, a Turaco, laid her first egg after a difficult journey. PO was bred by the artist PO Kim in NYC.
Mary Jo McConnell
Mary Jo was involved with a PBS Frontline documentary: West Papua: The Clever One, a peculiar bird with a special talent.To learn more about the documentary, visit the PBS website (click blue text to link)
"In the mountain regions of Papua New Guinea lives a small bird known as the Vogelkop, or bowerbird. The species is unique in that it spends its time building - with enormous care - a conspicuous bower, adorned with natural substances such as berries, moss, flowers, dead beetles, as well as scavenged man-made items such as tin cans. In fact, the local tribal word for bowerbird translates as "he who collects things and puts them in piles." Ornithologists believe that the purpose of these bowers is to attract a female; for Boston-based artist Mary Jo McConnell, however, there is a more intriguing explanation. Every year, McConnell travels to a remote region of the Arfak mountains of Irian Jaya, western New Guinea, to document the activities of a group of bowerbirds, in a quest to demonstrate that the birds are functioning just like artists, each with a particular style and colour palette. She has named some of these birds she observes - Van Gogh, Warhol, Klee, Matisse, Leonardo - and traces the progress of their construction from year to year, whether it be the addition of a blue can, placed next to a yellow can with blue detailing, or the arrangement of glittering, amber-like, sap crystals in a pile next to some shiny black beetles.
In a place off-limits to most outsiders, McConnell is welcomed by the villagers, who recognize her as an admirer, rather than a destroyer, of nature. She spends hours sitting alone in the forest, watching, marveling at, and treasuring the unspoilt world around her, and painting the birds at work, collecting information about what she sees as their aesthetic decisions. Though her process is in some ways scientific, it is always governed by her artistic instincts, which she identifies as being very much in line with those of the bowerbirds - chiefly, the desire to collect attractive things and embelish her environment with them. Beauty always comes first, she says.
Back home in Old Marblehead, north of Boston, McConnell shares her rambling, 17th-century house on the harbour with a variety of collections, including beetles, feathers, eggs and stuffed birds, paintings, and ethnic sculptures. It is a private gallery filled with anthropological and archaeological treasures: woodcarvings from Haiti, Balinese combs and wooden figures, tribal masks and headdresses from New Guinea. These treasures were amassed from years of adventures travelling around the world, though, as McConnell points out, without her ever having made a conscious decision to collect - "I'm attracted to the sheer beauty of things and I enjoy having them around me." Among these inanimate objects can be found McConnell's 15 or so live birds, exotic creatures that include an African hornbill called Milly (whom McConnell has owned for 20 years), a hummingbird from Peru, an Amazonian Parrot from Haiti, toucans from South America, and Bolivian macaws. This particular collection exists because McConnell is concerned for the survival of their species: "Birds must be established in captivity for future aviculturists and the protection of the species themselves in case of increased loss of habitat," she says.
Of course, as well as the environmental benefits, McConnell simply adores her birds, who are her friends and who also provide her with constant artistic stimulation. Rather than simply painting their portraits, however, her work is inspired by colour and form, and employs various media. McConnell's art reflects her love for and fascination with objects of wonder, a private world which is, if you like, parallel to that of the bowerbirds with whom she identifies so strongly. "The bowerbirds are interested in the same things I am," she says. "Colour, collecting, and arranging. When you see a bowerbird at work he knows exactly where things should go.""
The article above is from the book 'Obsessions- collectors and their passions' written by Stephen Calloway.
More about the Bowerbirds
According to evolutionary biologist, Jared Diamond, bowerbirds study each other's structures in order to learn how to build their own. The transmission of such information is therefore culturally driven (rather than biologically determined) a theory borne out by regional as well as individual variation of style between one bird's bower and another. Individual birds show markedly different preferences in their choices for materials and for the ways in which they arrange them.
The bowerbird works tirelessly all day long arranging his bower, McConnell writes, "Local inhabitants call the bowerbird, 'clever bird.' Scientists say he sits on the edge of avian evolution. I say he is an artist. They say he 'weeds' and 'harvests.' I say he makes aesthetic decisions." The bird has chosen the site, determined the architecture of his bower and selected decorative elements to place therein; McConnell traverses rugged terrain, sometimes under heavy rain, to sit for house, covered in mosquitoes, to record the bird's progress. Over the years she has identified and followed the work of several individual birds.
As an artist herself, McConnell has access to teritory in the Arfak mountains of West Papua, New Guinea currently off-limits to field biologists. She is perceived as an admirer and preserver of the bowers; everyone knows she comes as an observer, a collector of aesthetic information from the birds. McConnell is always welcomed by a friendly mountain tribe who live in Hungku, a region threatened by big companies looking for natural resources. McConnell writes of the sense of urgency she feels to record the yearly changes in the bowers of the robin-size Vogelkop bowerbird (Ambylornis inornatus).
In choosing decorative nesting materials, individual bowerbirds are functioning like independent artists with particular palettes. This has built a real cabinet of curiosities for Mary Jo. Acting on her passion for the artifacts and people of New Guinea, she has brought home the natural evidence from the birds' bowers (berries, fungus, beetles and butterflies) to use as reference material for her paintings, as well as beads, shell bracelets and fabric used as 'bride price' by the local people.
McConnell (above) with her kukubara
