Restructured Book. Observed Birds: Magpie
£95.00
Observed Birds. Any facts discovered in this volume are there purely by accident, and any resemblance to actual birds, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Made from an old book, with a small cut out filled with a bird created using paper clay I made from the pages of old books. The book was destined for landfill – I hope it doesn’t mind having a new life.
Size: 14cm x 20.5cm x 3cm.
Regretfully, I do not sell my work outside of the UK.
1 in stock
“Magpies are the glamorous film stars of the garden. |Prior to the invention of moving pictures, magpies were bottom-of-the-bill stage satirists. It was soon realised that they were made for black and white film and became its darlings with their dinner-jacket chic and long, sophisticated tails. Concerns that the advent of colour film would ‘finish’ magpies proved unfounded. Magpies, it turned out, when correctly lit have a subtle iridescence which makes the glow with shifting greens, purples and reds.
Male magpies, in formal attire, traditionally woo their prospective mates over candle-lit dinners, speaking softly and showing off their white bits. At the correct moment the male will fan his tail and the female will swoon, possibly twisting an ankle. They make perfectly enviable couples, living in huge (if untidy) mansions. The male is always marvellously attentive to the brooding female and they raise beautiful if rather dependent children who hang around noisily well into adulthood and need to have their food cut up for them.
Magpies do, indeed, collect shiny things. Awards mainly. Large, gold-coloured figurines preferred.”
