Kristina Knowski

"When in my last year of study at the American Academy of Art, I was searching for a theme to focus on for my final portfolio. I had recently finished a series of works on birds in flight where I had visited the Field Museum to study from their mounted specimens. It was a project originally designed to expose us to different textures in nature such as rhino's shoulders, wolf paws, snake scales, shiny frog legs, giraffe's eyelashes, and of course, feathers. I didn't think much of the project until someone had asked if I liked birds during our critique session. Initially, I hadn't thought much of the question, but I started listing all of the ways birds were a part of my life. My family would always feed the birds outside, I happened to have pet birds at home, including a cockatiel, dove, and budgies. That would be enough to justify liking birds, sure. In addition, I had gotten into birding, which to my surprise, I was enjoying. Subsequently, I had painted a series of birds in flight. That project had lead me down the rabbit hole to all sorts of different species, including one I had fallen in love with in particular. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker had captured my attention in a book only to quickly discover it's conservation status: Extinct. Such a beautiful bird, gone. I would never see it except in a museum, stuffed like the birds I had just painted.

It was only then that I realized how much I love birds. It seems silly now, as I've always loved nature and being outdoors, but I caught onto birding more obsessively and I realized that I needed to include birds in my final portfolio. I ran with the love I felt with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and focused on extinct birds. In 2012, I graduated with a body of work focusing on extinction, nonexistence, and our relationship as a species with death. From there I have learned more about extinct birds species, avian conservation, and our native, extant bird species. My work has now shifted to focus almost exclusively on birds, with a strong attention to detail that borders on scientific illustration. While I still show my works in galleries and shows, I've also worked with bird conservation organizations, most notably the Indiana Audubon Society and the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival since 2016. I'm an avid birder and continue to educate myself with Bird Biology classes from Cornell, the Indiana Master Naturalist program, and volunteering with bird banding. This past year, I've been collecting bird specimens from window strikes to build reference material. The work will highlight the impact of our structures affect on bird migrations."