Sculpture Review Birdman Houston

¶ … paid a visit to the Eclectic Menagerie Park, which is on the south side of the city. The Menagerie Park is an open-air space, privately-owned but available to the public, that contains a number of large animal sculptures. Some of the best pieces are made from iron. Some of the finer examples include a massive armadillo, a winged dragon-like creature, a stegosaurus, roadrunner and a birdman. The Birdman is constructed out of iron bars, a medium which befits the location adjacent to an iron pipe yard, invoking the same industrial aesthetic. The Birdman's intricate nature is such that it appears to be the most complex work there. The Birdman was created by Ron Lee, who constructed most of the pieces at the park. It is made out of iron. There is no date on the work, so the date of creation is unknown.

Contextually, the Birdman is a mythological creature with a man's body and a bird head or maybe even a pterodactyl head. This example has a very long beak with rows on sharp teeth. The body is large, but slouchy and rounded, so like an almost oafish and very much in contrast with the head. Many ancient societies have Birdman mythology, including that of Easter Island and of ancient peoples of the Southeastern U.S. (Mississippian culture), so there may have been artistic inspiration from this concept. The idea is essentially a man with avian attributes, one of many dual human-animal forms found in ancient cultures. The mythology of flight was powerful in societies that did not have this ability. The Birdman sculpture also fits within the range of creatures at the park, though many are real animals and not mythological in nature; this may be one of the reasons why this particular statue stood out to me.

As a piece of modern art, the Birdman sculpture's purpose is not known but it stands in a collection of works from the same artist, which together form an interesting backdrop to the pipe yard. This is a blending of the industrial and the artistic, backed by the use of industrial materials in the production. The presentation is somewhat random in terms of what is in the park, and how it came about -- the pipe company simply decided to start putting sculptures in its yard, and gravitated towards the iron sculptures over time. The decision to put this particular piece is interesting, in that where most other pieces are more natural, this is a specifically mythical and a bit phantasmagoric in nature.

The material lends itself to sharp angles, which plays a role in the aesthetic that it projects. Most of the pieces are created with flat sheets of iron, but this is bent rebar for the body, creating a hollow, spaghetti-like body. The bird head, however, makes full use of the sharpness of the iron for the long, pointy beak and the rows of impressive, fearsome teeth. The body, by contrast, is rounded, and much softer, its power only really coming from its size. Most of the pieces at the park are larger than a human by far, and the Birdman is no exception. The size fits, however, with the outdoor space -- like creatures roaming free on the Texas flatlands.