Carving Birds & Conserving Land: Rand Jack and the Whatcom Land Trust

/in /by

April 27, 2024 - October 27, 2024

Old City Hall

“The reason I carve birds is because it’s a wonderful way to display the wood”  – Rand Jack

Working in close partnership with the Whatcom Land Trust, the Whatcom Museum presents the carved bird sculptures of artist and conservationist Rand Jack. This year marks the Land Trust’s 40th anniversary, and Rand has served on the Land Trust’s Board of Directors since co-founding the organization in 1984. An attorney and educator, Rand has helped facilitate the protection of more than 20,000 acres of land across Whatcom County, ensuring healthy forests, rivers, and shorelines for future generations of all species. These lands include some of Whatcom County’s most iconic open spaces, such as the Stimpson Family Nature Reserve, Galbraith Mountain, Teddy Bear Cove, Canyon Lake Community Forest, Governors Point, and part of the Chuckanut Mountains.

Since 1980, Rand has carved birds from locally sourced wood, sometimes gathered from his forested property in Whatcom County. The exhibition brings together 20 works, along with two new sculptures, all tucked into and around the displays in the museum’s John M. Edson Hall of Birds in Old City Hall.

Rand has a singular focus when carving wood, often spending hours at a time in his workshop highlighting the grains and natural veining in the wood to reflect the features of each bird. He is driven by his excitement and fascination when cracking open a stump to discover the unique characteristics of the wood’s interior features. Carved falcons, ravens, shore birds, and owls emerge from the textured forms of different wood species informed by years of close observation and intimate understanding of the birds that inhabit the 40-acre property he and his wife Dana own in Deming, Washington

Depicting each bird life-sized, Rand’s sculptures range from five-inch nuthatches to elegant sandhill cranes that stand three feet tall. The exhibition explores how Rand puts into practice, both through his artistic pursuits and his commitment to the Whatcom Land Trust, his love of the great outdoors and his drive to make nature accessible for community enjoyment for years to come.

Whatcom Land Trust logo

The Whatcom Museum acknowledges that we gather on the traditional territory of the Lhaq’temish – Lummi People – and the Nuxwsá7aq – Nooksack People – who have lived in the Coast Salish region from time immemorial. The Museum honors our relationship with all of our Coast Salish neighbors and our shared responsibilities to their homeland where we all reside today.

UNEARTHED: Art & Science Survey the Fossil Record

/in /by

April 27, 2024 - October 27, 2024April 27, 2024 - September 29, 2024

Old City Hall

 

Everything we know about extinct animals we have learned from scientists’ careful study of the fossil record: not just a fossil’s dimensions but also its placement, the types of rock and sediment that envelope it, maybe even fragments of iridium – a silvery-white metal – that indicate a cataclysmic event, like an asteroid impact.

But when you think about a saber-toothed cat, do you picture a fossil? Or do you imagine a powerful, sinewy Ice Age carnivore stalking its prey in the open plains millions of years ago? If you’ve ever watched a movie about dinosaurs, read an article about woolly mammoths, or explored a paleontology exhibition at any museum in the world, you didn’t only see fossils. Illustrations and animations depicted how these animals might have looked and behaved. You saw them brought back to life through art.

Unearthed: Art & Science Survey the Fossil Record celebrates the work of acclaimed scientific illustrator David W. Miller with his largest-ever collection of paleoart on display. The exhibition centers the artistry of this niche field with more than 60 richly detailed paintings of the wildest creatures of the past along with their fossil counterparts, on loan from the Burke Museum and the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals. And on view for the first time is a fossil of a woolly mammoth molar from the Whatcom Museum’s permanent collection as well as Miller’s newest painting depicting the mammoth in its Pleistocene habitat.

 

123

About David W. Miller
Miller attended Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, MA, and the Art Students League of New York. His work can be seen in numerous books and publications and has graced the halls of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Yale Peabody Museum, the Burke Museum in Seattle, and the National Museum of Science and Industry in London. Miller also serves as the Whatcom Museum’s preparator and drew the nearly 500 illustrations on display in the museum’s John M. Edson Hall of Birds.

The Whatcom Museum acknowledges that we gather on the traditional territory of the Lhaq’temish – Lummi People – and the Nuxwsá7aq – Nooksack People – who have lived in the Coast Salish region from time immemorial. The Museum honors our relationship with all of our Coast Salish neighbors and our shared responsibilities to their homeland where we all reside today.