For the Birds

Laurel Macdonald and Andrew Sewell team up with an exhibit of endangered and regional birds. Laurel will feature endangered birds in lino block prints completed over the past year and Andy Sewell will feature regional birds done in watercolor in the past 30 days.

The opening reception will be Sunday, February 8 from 1 to 3 pm. The Artisan Barn is open from 10 am to 4 pm, Thursday through Sunday.

Come and see what artist Andy Sewell has been up to for the month of January. He took on the challenge of painting one painting per day for the entire month of January. He has done this before and it has been a very challenging yet rewarding experience for him. The last time he did it was two years ago January when he did a painting a day in oils to further become established in that medium. The theme of his paintings was “things I’ve seen from my property” and he followed the alphabet. He did a similar thing this January where he painted a bird a day following the alphabet. So the first painting was a bird starting with the letter “A” then “B” and so on … The last few days of the month are what he calls wild-card days where he can paint whatever bird he’s fond of. The Dahmen Barn gallery will be displaying all 31 watercolors which have been done in various shapes and sizes. People can get a sneak preview of the works on his Facebook page at “Andy Sewell Watercolors”.

In 2014, Laurel Macdonald started drawing and making linocut prints of birds around her farmhouse. She drew magpies, quail, crows, owls, kestrels, and woodpeckers. In addition to these common Idaho birds, Laurel began to draw endangered birds. She couldn’t draw all the endangered birds, but an alphabet book of 26 endangered birds seemed to be a manageable goal. This project took the entire year to complete and she finished the last endangered bird in December. The prints of the endangered birds will be on display in February at the Dahmen Barn. This has been a fun project. She has learned a lot about birds… where they live, what they eat, and why they are endangered. The black and white prints and text about each bird are in Save the Birds: an Alphabet Art Book, available at the Dahmen Barn gift shop. Says Laurel: The birds are stylized. I looked for patterns in their feathers and for features that made them whimsical and endearing. And I tried to incorporate some element from their habitat into the final design. The artwork that will be on display at the Barn is a combination of black and white prints and hand-colored prints, all of them original hand-cut and hand-printed.