Mirrored Murrelets (2008)

Outdoor Installation
June 7, 2008 – December, 2009

Mirrored Murrelets is a new outdoor art installation created by Arlington, WA, artist Joseph Gregory Rossano for the Museum’s Mezzanine Plaza. Rossano created the glass birds for the installation in the Museum’s Hot Shop during his Visiting Artist residency in January, 2008.

Rossano’s work focuses on the natural world and the animals who live in ecosystems threatened by human impact. Mirrored Murrelets highlights the effect of forestry on the Marbled Murrelet, a small sea bird that nests primarily in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. The installation comprises more than 250 mirrored glass birds that will skim the surface of the Museum’s mid-level pool. The mirrored surfaces of the birds reflect the viewer’s image, symbolically suggesting the impact of humans on the natural world. Fiberglass benches, designed to represent charred stumps that can be found in once abundant old-growth forests, surround the pool. As visitors experience the installation, Rossano hopes they will ”ponder the plight of the bird as well as the beauty of its existence.“

”Throughout my career, I have focused on the interdependence of the natural world to create haunting images of animals who, like us, rely on our primeval forests for their existence,“ comments Rossano. ”I choose to use glass as a medium because, like our environment, glass is transparent, fragile and reflective—transparent in that it hides nothing, fragile in that once damaged it may never be repaired, and reflective of how we have impacted it.“

Artist's Web site »