Birds in Art

June 13, 2015 - August 10, 2015

Every year the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum hosts a juried competition of the finest bird art in the world.  After they debut the final selections at the Woodson Art Museum in September, they begin traveling the show for the next year.  In 2014, we hosted Birds in Art.

900 artworks by 564 artists were submitted to the competition and only 92 were selected.  Sixty of the artworks were traveling the country.  Other venues included the Museum of the Gulf Coast (Port Arthur, TX), Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (Tucson, AZ), Newington-Cropsey Foundation (Hastings-on-Hudson, NY) and the Gilcrease Museum (Tulsa, OK).

The artwork was amazingly diverse: sculpture, watercolor, acrylic, block prints, and oil were all included. Species range from across the globe.

Thanks to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History we also had three bird specimens representing species found in our area and a drop-in drawing activity that all of our visitors enjoyed–with thanks to John Muir Laws and his book, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds.

We are also grateful to the Santa Barbara Audubon Society for providing information about birding areas here in the Central Coast and providing us with their expertise on threatened local bird species, several of which we will profile.  If you are interested in going on your own birding excursion check out their list of Santa Barbara County birding areas!