Live and Let Fly | June 14 - July 20, 2024
Janda Wetherington
Director
jwetherington@gpgallery.com
505-954-5755
Live and Let Fly
Artists: Chris Maynard and Troy Abbott
June 14 – July 20, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, June 14, 5-7 pm.
We are delighted to announce our upcoming exhibition, Live and Let Fly, featuring the work of Chris Maynard and Troy Abbott.
Chris Maynard carves feathers into intricate art to make their natural beauty more noticeable. His work highlights the patterns and colors of the feathers themselves, inviting the viewer to look and look again. For him, feathers represent flight, transformation, and a bridge between our present lives and our dreams. Most of Maynard’s pieces are intimate jewels carved from a single feather, however we will be presenting a few large-scale works which incorporate several feathers and document the lives and activities of entire flocks of birds in their communal activities.
Troy Abbot’s work is a documentation of the dichotomies of man vs. nature, technology vs. analog. Troy’s pieces combine videos of birds, taken by the artist, sitting in cages, both antique and new, created or repurposed by the artist. The works serve as a sort of cautionary tale in which the future may be filled with digital representations of nature. The floors of the antique birdcages are littered with old circuit boards and colored wires, reflecting on the swift obsolescence of technology, and even swifter erasure of the natural world that occurs in the wake of progress.
My art is about making connections, weaving together what might seem like unrelated separate fragments, observing life from different angles and therefore offering the opportunity for new possibilities. For instance, what is it like for a small fish to exist in a world where you could get scooped up in a beak?
Chris Maynard
I like when I can use the feathers of the birds I am representing although these feathers are from a European Swan, not the Trumpeter Swans that I know.
Chris Maynard
Troy Abbott
Gold Homie 2023
Extruded acrylic, 3D printed ABS with 44 minute video loop
Ed. 10/25
10 x 10 x 13 inches
Just like our bodies are metabolized from the food we eat, so do the frogs and other creatures that a heron eats end up as feathers on the bird’s body.
Chris Maynard
A bird eats flying insects, when the bird dies, the same flying insect may eat the bird. And thus, a cycle is completed.
Chris Maynard
Chris Maynard
Birchbark Woodpecker study 2024
Turkey feather on peeled birch bark
8 x 7 inches
Birds shed their feathers that I think of as gifts from the birds, who may still be alive when I use their feathers. The peeling birch bark also seemed like an offering, a gift for me to use this in my art.
Chris Maynard
Troy Abbott
Cloud 2024
Found object, brass, glass, circuit board, various electronics, mixed media and video
15 1/4 x 12 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches
Chris Maynard
Goldfinch and Dandelions #4 2024
Crowned crane secondary wing feathers
23 x 14 1/2 inches
The goldfinches in the garden outside my window nibble at dandelion and Canadian thistle fluff to get the seeds. When they fly off, sometimes if the wind is just right, the thistle down or dandelion fluff flies up with them. Goldfinches seem to be pretty much vegetarian.
Chris Maynard
Troy Abbott
Chrome Homie 2023
Extruded acrylic, 3D printed ABS with 44 minute video loop
Ed. 8/25
I keep each feather’s natural colors. Most feathers are colored by melanin which are the lovely but muted colors of our skins: browns, blacks, greys, and russet reds. Bright primary colors are quite rare in the size of feathers I need for carving. I was lucky to find this feather which shows the same colors of our Salish Sound Pigeon Guillemot: black feathers with bright red feet.
This was made for a friend, Maria Ruth to include in her book about Pigeon Guillemots for Mountaineers Books (out in 2025)
Chris Maynard
Why is this titled, Redone? Because the original mounting incorporated my geese’s feathers into the hand-made paper background and I was unhappy with it because the background stood out too much. So I made a new background, just white.
Chris Maynard
Some feathers I have a lot of, like from the heritage Turkeys that we eat for the holidays. Other feathers I have to search for and maybe only ever find a few, like these tail feathers.
Chris Maynard
Troy Abbott
Homie (Painted Bunting) 2023
Extruded acrylic, 3D printed ABS with 44 minute video loop
10 x 10 x 13 inches
Some feathers I have a lot of, like from the heritage Turkeys that we eat for the holidays. Other feathers I have to search for and maybe only ever find a few, like these tail feathers.
Chris Maynard
