Budding Bird Blind

Last year, the Planting Fields Foundation in Oyster Bay, New York, commissioned the sculptor David Brooks to design a bird blind for the estate’s bird sanctuary. A bird blind is a construction built within a natural bird habitat to help camouflage people who wish to bird watch, though the history of such structures also involves the concealment of hunters. Brooks and a second artist, Mark Dion who created another piece for this commission, each were asked to reflect on the ‘culture of nature’ at Planting Fields and develop individual designs for a specific site. The final pieces exist on the Long Island estate’s park, which was designed by the renowned Olmsted Brothers, who are also known for New York City’s Fort Tryon Park, and Baltimore’s Carroll Park as well as the Johns Hopkins University campus. 

Given the dire decline of species and the loss of their habitats around the world, Brooks wanted to make a bird blind that was generative long after the artwork was gone. He thus conceptualized a structure intended to dematerialize over time. When it does cease to exist, it will serve its subversive yet intended purpose—to provide uninterrupted habitat for the birds local to Oyster Bay.  

With this concept in mind, Brooks completed a bird blind through which trees grow, and planted in close proximity numerous saplings, the species of which are highly attractive to birds. Over time, as the trees mature, Brooks will dismantle sections of the bird blind structure to allow for the continuous growth of the trees. Eventually, after a number of years, there will no longer be any of the bird blind remaining. It will, by then, be replaced by actual bird habitat through a process akin to the phenomenon of forest succession—in which a forest moves through expansion and reduction, like that of a body. In this way, the project reveals itself only through numerous return visits to the site. The priority of the project gradually becomes inverted: what was at first a structure to observe birds from ultimately gives way to a habitat for the birds themselves. Initially, the human viewers are the spectators, but seasons later it will be the birds that are the lifelong spectators of this newfound situation. 

Those committed birders who come to the site often will witness this process of inversion and forest succession. The culture of birding is based on a sense of commitment and close observation, and is typically an activity that fosters a sense of care. It is these values that the artist aimed to activate in his Budding Bird Blind.

Brooks also created several sculptural models that demonstrate the multiple phases this piece will undergo over time. He estimates that it will take approximately twelve years for the forest succession to reach fruition, at which point the full structure will be disassembled, leaving only the bird habitat.

David Brooks is a New York based artist whose work investigates how cultural concerns cannot be divorced from the natural world, as well as the terms that nature is perceived and utilized. Brooks has had exhibitions and major projects at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; Storm King Art Center, NY; MoMA/PS1, NYC; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, MA; Tang Teaching Museum, NY; Galerie für Landschaftskunst, Hamburg; SculptureCenter, NYC; The Visual Arts Center, Austin; Cass Sculpture Foundation, UK; as well as large scale public art commissions by Art Production Fund in Times Square; and Governors Island, NYC. davidbrooksstudio.com