Photograph

Wood Storks (Mycteria americana)

Standing over three feet tall, the Wood Stork is one of the larger birds found in swamps, and sometimes flying high overhead across inland Florida.

Nesting in mangroves and other trees in bayous, bays and protected wetlands, these striking, black and white birds with featherless heads and up to 9-inch long bills, could not look more awkward in a tree, stumbling about and seemingly always losing their balance. In the air on the other hand, they are dinosaurs come back to life, majestically soaring over their landscapes.

Fun Fact: The oldest recorded Wood Stork was over 20 years old!

LOCATION

The Wakodahatchee Wetlands

The Wakodahatchee Wetlands park is located in Delray Beach, FL. It spans across a fifty acre lot, with a three-quarter mile boardwalk that includes multiple gazebos, benches, and informational signage. There are open ponds, marshy areas, mangrove islands for roosting, as well as a wooded area. Formerly utility land, the wetlands were developed as a natural means of managing wastewater. Palm Beach County’s Water Reclamation Facility pumps around two million gallons of water into the park daily. This water is treated, yet still contains excess mineral content. Here in the wetlands the water is naturally purified by the flora of the park and released back into the surface water supply.

Every visit, I see so much life and have yet to be disappointed. Over 150 species of birds have been spotted here as well as turtles, rabbits, and alligators. In the spring you can see large numbers of roosting Wood Storks with their young as well as many young Snowy and Reddish Egrets and Tricolored Herons, stumbling about in the tops of Red Mangroves. Anhingas are ever present, diving for fish or sunbathing atop a perch, wings outstretched. Red-winged Blackbirds chase each other through the tops of tall grasses while Swamp Hens and Gallinules weave through their stems, probing for their next meal.

FRAME

Woman’s Tongue (Albizia lebbeck)

Albizia Lebbeck, as it is scientifically known, is native to the Indian subcontinent and Myanmar. It is commonly grown in Australia and other tropic and subtropic places. I get my supply of Woman’s Tongue from Key West, Florida where it is invasive. A wood salvager who has removed the trees from construction sites and properly mills and drys the wood rather than sending it to the dump is my source for a lot of my wood.

THE ELEMENTS

Fire, Water, Earth, and Air

In the display case in the bottom of the frame, four items are in preserved glass vials. The items represent the elements: fire (wood charcoal), water (mineral oil), earth (soil), and air (a milkweed seed). I include these items in my work as a symbol of the interconnectedness of all life on Earth, and as a reminder that humans must do better.

THE PLAQUE

Magnetic Information Plaque

I engrave a wooden information plaque for each work. The plaque includes what the photograph is of, the location of the photograph, what type of wood the frame is made of, and where I sourced the wood. The plaques also explain why the vials are included in each work. The back of each plaque states the meaning of my logo: “The circle represents our home, Planet Earth. The hourglass represents time. The five horizontal lines in the bottom of the hourglass represent the five mass extinction periods that have occurred in the past. The single line falling through the hourglass represents our current mass extinction period, caused by us.” The plaques are attached magnetically and can be removed to read or to store on the back of each frame if you prefer not to have it displayed on the front.