Lethal Birdbath

This is the Grand Prize winner of the Visuals & Voices Eco-Art, Photography, Poetry and Writing Contest for Bay Area Middle & High School Students.

I thought it was worth some extra-regional exposure...



Pictures are worth a thousand words, but here's the judges' comments:

This is a simply outstanding illustration. It is an exquisite drawing. The Escher-like morphing of the cormorant into the gas nozzle is beautifully done, and the timely nature of the ecological message, given the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, couldn’t be more on target.

One of the things that I think a lot of us have been struggling with is to put into words the sheer magnitude of the disaster in the Gulf. Personally, I've been working on some essays that would somehow process, integrate and explain the many layers and angles of this rippling ecological juggernaut, both intellectually and emotionally, but I find that I'm tying myself into a knot when I get too heady about it.

I'm angry but I don't want to be blinded by anger. I'm devastated but I don't want to lose hope and my love for life and all the beautiful creatures of this earth, including us humans. I'm cynical about capitalism and a political system that thrives on selfish- and wastefulness, but I don't want to dismiss the potential for greater consciousness if we all keep working and fighting for it.

This is where art and music and poetry is one of the most powerful and cathartic channels to process the overwhelming onslaught of input, both externally and internally. What I like about Rhianna's Lethal Birdbath is that it brings home so many of the complex issues and emotions tangled up in our human existence on this fragile planet, that it doesn't have to explain or analyze a single thing. It's very archetypal, and we all understand what it means, even though there will be many different interpretations of it.

I also love that this was created by a 12th grader, which gives me hope that there is a powerful and deeply tuned in generation coming of age that will be an important part of the solutions to our many problems. I look forward to working hard across generational, cross-cultural and any other lines toward a more enlightened human race that can live more humbly and in balance with the divine gifts provided by a truly magnificent yet oh so tender little round ball we get to live on.

Again, there is so much to say and I know we will all be saying a lot more things about this lethal birdbath in the coming weeks and months and years, but sometimes we can learn some things by listening -- to sun and the wind and the rain, to the oceans far and wide and in our hearts, to the birds and the bees and the fish in the seas. And to our youth, the children of our earth-mother and the guardians of our great soul secret that we are all part of One.

(more)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/11/874983/-Lethal-Birdbath