Look, Up in the Sky

When artist David Tomb traveled to Mexico to look at birds, what he saw so excited him, he came home and splashed his canvases with the creatures, resulting in his first non-portrait show in twenty years. "Treasures of the Sierra Madre -- Birds of West Mexico" features a stunning array of Mountain Pygmy-Owls, Emerald Toucanets, Great Kiskadees, Resplendent Quetzals, Blue-crowned Motmots, Ringed Kingfishers, and Barred Forest Falcons, all of them perched in trees in his large-scale works. But Tomb, showing the kind of passion we expect from our nation's birders, wasn't finished. He also installed native trees and vegetation from Flora Grubb Gardens, mounted bird specimens from the California Academy of Science, recorded birdcalls from western Mexico, and included a sound art piece by Martyn Stewart of www.naturesound.org. He's also setting aside proceeds from the sale of prints to go to El Triunfo Reserve in Sierra Madre. And still he's not finished. Today, noted bird experts sit for a panel of "all things ornithological" at the stunningly titled discussion, "Tales from the Birding Life: Poisonous Birds, the Horned Guan and the Bristle-thighed Curlew."
March 12-22, 7 p.m., 2008