cheshire

Eva Funderburgh

i will spell trail mix as scroggin and wear jandals on my feet. i would watch footrot flats on TVNZ all night while drinking a lemon & paeroa with a sheep. i'll have a mince pie every day that's worth 11 stupid dollars somehow. i would go to the wop wops every night. i am also more likely to meet JAFAs, Lorde, the director of Shrek and Sirocco the Horny Bachelorparrot.

Hello! These are my prev tags!

I unfortunately can't seem to find the exact article I was thinking of, but I've attached a couple of ones that are relevant and expand on a similar sentiment.

The Spinoff article gets more into the politicisation of the term and how it's been ill defined and weaponised against many groups, not just against Māori including under the current government.

But it's something that was discussed throughout my history courses as an undergrad and when I later tutored them in postgrad! I recall a Māori lecturer also railing against the term, particularly when it's used to portray the positive achievements of Māori as a national collective "win" that everyone can get behind, yet are conversely labelled and identified as "Māori" whenever something negative happens. This was also expressed by Tāmati Coffey several years back now (not to link a Stuff article 😒)

There's also a lot more to unpack (that these articles briefly touch on) around the history of colonisers fashioning an independent identity from that of England by utilising Indigenous flora and fauna, therefore actively attempting to Indigenise themselves, especially as second-generation settler colonial families overtake the number of first-gen colonists. This appropriation obviously has further implications when trying to assert land rights or claim Terra Nullius as in Australia, but I'm trying not to digress too much.

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

And there are all these reports on how new slang is and how to understand it and getting it wrong. BUT 2001 GOT ME