Birds of a feather: owls and artists

If the 21st century plays out as the 20th century did in terms of development, diminution of resources, unabated population growth and persistent pollution, we are doomed. Or, rather our grandchildren and their grandchildren are doomed. Toast.

Our only recourse? Ensure owl habitat. Paul Bannick is not pessimistic. Many La Connerites were among the 350 people packing Maple Hall for his talk during the first birding showcase two weeks ago.

Bannick’s message was hopeful: “just” appreciate owls and their habitats, and protect those habitats. It is not a matter of eating granola, he all but said. Yes, maintain your consumer lifestyles but commit to understanding the needs of owls.

But that is a trick equation. Once we understand that owls need diverse habitats, and commit to conserving and expanding those lands, we will change. A pledge to preserve owls means improving as well as maintaining the landscapes out our windows, literally. If owls nesting territories are our backyards – and they are – we have to stop fouling our own nests. That will require individual, family, community and societal change. Bannick tricked us into preserving ourselves by committing to owl preservation. The real trick is in the follow-through.

Art, like owls, is all around us, if we will only pay attention. Across the street from Maple Hall, at the FORUM Arts gallery, Joseph Rossano’s “The Hunted: Reflection of the Hunter” exhibit can be viewed through the window. Rossano is not pessimistic either. But he is subtle.

The exhibit will evolve, through its March run. And it is immersive – from a distance. View it from the sidewalk, through the window.

Now, in this phase, there are waterfowl and all manner of birds, insects, stones and abstract objects. And vanities.

Rossano also bets on people understanding. Our close attention to nature and “attempt to understand it reveals the fragility of its varied systems,” he writes.

Looking closely. Artists and biologists have that in common, looking closely at the natural world – at our world.

Bannick and Rossano have placed a conversation of our natural environment front and center to people with eyes that see and ears that hear, as Jesus was purported to have said “This is why I speak to them in parables: Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”

Artists do that: create representations of the world, their interpretations of the real.

It may be that only when we are amazed, curious, grateful and joyful that we will embrace the reality of the distress of the natural world and take up the challenge to change. Poisoned, polluted, flooded, flamed, burned over and now mudslide-d and still the American instinct is to conquer, to throw salt over our shoulder and move on.

Bannick and Rossano, in their own ways, are saying, “there is no on to move on to.” There is only the here and now.

And either we save nature – and ourselves – or we don’t.