Feathered friends: Pelham wildlife sculptor unveils an artistic aviary

By Bonnie Wells
Staff Writer

Published on July 25, 2008

She was one of those nature-besotted kids who spent every spare moment rambling the woods and beaches of her North Shore environs. In her early teens she began whittling wooden images of the creatures she found there - and never stopped.

Now Pelham artist Holland Hoagland is known for her wildlife sculptures in wood, which have migrated to many public and private collections and have been exhibited at the National Sculpture Society in New York, at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and in Amherst at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment, the University of Massachusetts and at Hampshire College.

Her monumental "Eco-log" has stood sentry outside the Pelham Elementary School since 1994. The 101/2-foot-tall tree carving depicts 40 animals, including humans, from four major climate zones of the earth. A 2005 sculpture, the 8-foot-tall "Women and Children Refugees of War," spent a month on exhibit in the front window of Food For Thought Books in downtown Amherst.

"That was such an emotionally and physically intense piece for me," Hoagland said, adding that when it was completed, three years ago, she was ready for a sculpting change of pace. She began experimenting with another plant material, paper, to create images of another of her favorite creatures, birds. A collection of her new avian sculptures, titled "Feathering," is on view through Aug. 29 in the gallery at the Northeast Regional Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Hadley. Hoagland will celebrate the show at a reception Aug. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Capturing a moment

A life-size osprey greets visitors to the gallery, flying above the entryway, five-foot wings outstretched, clasping a brown trout.

"I wanted to capture the moment when he's just lifting the fish off the water," Hoagland said on a tour of the exhibit last week. "My whole thing is to capture the bird in action. The moment is so important to me, capturing that instant of the bird's daily life."

An avid hiker and kayaker, Hoagland has spent countless hours observing, sketching and photographing the birds in their habitats, and then devouring books on their anatomy and habits, to bring authenticity and realism to her sculptures.

Her attention to minute detail is evident in her sculpture of a whimbrel, a shore bird that finds its supper by sticking its long beak into the hole made by a fiddler crab in the sand. In her sculptural evocation, two or three tiny grains of sand cling to the beak from a recent snack attack.

"The best compliment I ever received was when someone said [of one of the bird sculptures], Oh, I thought it was taxidermed!' "

This guest-book comment from John and Wendy Mason has to be a close second: "... Audubon, of course, set the bar, but his artistry is static. Holland Hoagland's birds are so alive, one expects them to soar away on the moment."

Feather by feather

Over the years of experimenting with several varieties of plant-fiber papers, Hoagland has developed a process of creating the figures that begins with a light wood and/or wire structure. From there, she forms a torso from a "clay" she makes with paper, water and paste, and then painstakingly attaches the paper feathers, one by one.

"For the tail feathers, I might use a stiffer paper, made from banana or bamboo," she explained, "and then choose a more delicate paper like mulberry or silk for the 'coverts,' the feathers over the tail feathers."

Among the aviary on display in Hadley is a ruby-throated hummingbird, beak-deep in a hibiscus blossom; an Eastern bluebird, transferring a worm to the waiting maw of its chick; a semipalmated plover, a sharp-shinned hawk, an American kestrel and a saw-whet owl. Each is presented in a sparse tableau of its natural habitat, on a base of found wood, say, or surrounded by leaves or river grasses.

Gliding from the ceiling at the rear of the gallery is a turkey vulture. One of Hoagland's favorite rituals is to climb the Holyoke Range to watch flocks of them migrating back to the Valley in the spring.

All the birds are shown true-to-size but one. A graceful, larger-than-life great blue heron minces among river reeds, dipping its long, arching neck. Hoagland said she began work on it after hearing about the slaughter of hundreds of the birds at a trout hatchery in Sunderland two years ago, and made it larger as a tribute.

While she still works in wood - she is currently working on a commission for a mahogany cheetah - Hoagland said she is learning more all the time about how to create her feathered friends, and has many more images she'd like to try, like a New Guinea Bird of Paradise and maybe some reptiles.

"There's so many forms of nature I want to express," she said. "It's going to take me a lifetime."

The Hadley office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is located at 300 Westgate Center Drive. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission to the gallery is free but a photo ID is required to enter the building. More information on the artist and a gallery of images can be seen at the Web site www.hollandhoaglandart.com.