| Feeding Our Souls Through Birds at Lake Merritt For 18 months I observed and interviewed a group of men and women who regularly fed birds at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Most of them congregated around the Wildlife Refugee arriving at different times of the day with large bags of bread. I learned that for some feeding reminds them of their native home where physical boundaries between people and animals were almost none. For others, feeding the birds brings them back to the last time they nurtured their now grown children. For others, it's a way of fighting loneliness. For others it is a way of communicating with a form of nature that they see as disappearing. And for others, the flight of the birds represents their own near departure from life. This project consisted of a ten minute video "Feeding Birds, Feeding Souls" and a set of mixed media paintings. It was made with the collaboration of the staff at the Wild Life Refuge at Lake Merritt and the regular bird feeders at the part. This project aimed at exploring the ways in which people express their humanity when they interact with birds.
©2005, 2006, 2007 Lydia Nakashima Degarrod All rights reserved. |
