no i don't have any binary

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

I'm really glad you brought this up because the wave of absolute, unmitigated, brazen antisemitism I've seen in normie spaces ever since the Epstein files dropped has been staggering.

I'm against the "the elites are oppressing us!" framing for two reasons. One, like you say, is that it's perpetually one small step away from becoming "(((the elites))) are oppressing us!" And you don't have control over if and when that happens. You think Nazis aren't taking advantage of that framing? Slipping into progressive/normie spaces and "just asking questions" about this group of elites? Taking people like Epstein and using them as proof that Jewish people were conspiring against us all along? Dropping Nazi dog-whistles into the conversation to signal to other Nazis that this is a safe space?

If you've already primed people to agree that a small group of elites is shadow-ruling the country, you've primed people for antisemitism.

But even if you could completely remove antisemitism from the equation - you can't, but let's pretend - the constant waves of despair I see from people saying "nothing ever changes, nothing ever gets better, we're all under the boot of the oligarchs and there's nothing we can do about it" is both demoralizing and completely untrue.

People who insist that women, gay people, racial minorities, disabled people, etc., have not made any strides since the US was founded are either lying to you or too stupid to be speaking on this subject. You can acknowledge that injustice and discrimination is still deeply-rooted in our society while also acknowledging that decades and centuries of incremental legislation, organizing, and activism have vastly improved the lives of marginalized people.

If your pitch about why society is bad is basically "things suck, they'll always suck, there's nothing we can do about it", why on earth would I join your movement? YOU don't even sound like you believe in it! If you insist that "the elites" will never let us make real progress, then why would I even try? If you insist that incrementalism doesn't work and only violent revolution can free us, I'm not going to think "huh, I guess we gotta revolt", I'm gonna think "well a revolution isn't gonna happen, so I guess I'll stop paying attention to this".

And frankly, I think it's wildly offensive to the people who spent their lives desperately fighting for the progress that lets me live as myself to insist that they didn't actually accomplish anything because nothing has ever gotten better.

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.

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.

Erika, referencing ebenezer scrooge: You, boy! What day is it?!