Rising up within the metal mill hall close to Chicago, artist Lauren Levato Coyne was surrounded by waterbirds. They lived within the marshes and swamps, at the same time as crisscrossing highways and railroads more and more encroached upon their habitat. Levato Coyne drew on that panorama—“all of the birds, the sounds, the smells”—whereas creating this portrait of the Black-crowned Night time-Heron.
Though endangered in Illinois, largely as a result of habitat loss, the fowl has discovered an unlikely refuge in Lincoln Park on the fringe of Lake Michigan. It’s right here that Levato Coyne first grew to become acquainted with the red-eyed waders, listening to their dinosaur-like squawks and rattles above her head whereas strolling by means of the park. “There’s a whole lot of marshland in Lincoln Park, and it butts up proper in opposition to Lincoln Park Zoo,” Levato Coyne says. “There’s an ideal confluence of things to provide rise to a Black-crowned Night time-Heron rookery.” A colony that shaped within the park in 2010 has grown to 600 birds right this moment, one of many largest within the state, providing a treasured glimmer of hope for a regionally threatened species.
That pressure between hope and peril is obvious in Levato Coyne’s acrylic and paper collage. Impressed by a photograph of a wetland on the duvet of a 1996 Audubon situation, she began with water lilies. She painted these in a unfastened, natural, impressionistic method—shiny greens and blues with splashes of pink, orange, and yellow. Over that watery and wealthy wetland, Levato Coyne collaged a cityscape painted with onerous traces and superb element, a pointy distinction to the wild and reckless splotches used for the background. The fowl itself and the Hancock constructing (a landmark recognizable to any Chicagoan) are painted on a single piece of paper—inseparable—whereas the opposite buildings are gathered beneath the heron, nearly like a nest. Town, it appears, is an integral a part of the ecosystem.
Behind the buildings are three shiny orbs, which Levato Coyne repurposed from cast-off components from one other work, and which occur to be within the colours of a site visitors sign: pink, yellow, inexperienced. The truth is, she says, the just about violent strokes of grey and yellow paint behind the fowl that kind an X behind its head are an impressionistic illustration of roads with their dotted yellow traces. “All of that behind could be destruction,” Levato Coyne says, holding up the collage and gesturing on the broad strokes of grey standing in for environmental loss.
That menacing component communicates the actual risk to the Black-crowned Night time-Heron: habitat fragmentation and destruction. Levato Coyne says she needed her portrait to inform the hopeful story of the Black-crowned Night time-Heron carving out a distinct segment for itself in a hostile world, however to additionally present that this steadiness remains to be precarious. “The coexisting might go both means,” Levato Coyne provides. “We might coexist—or we couldn’t.”
This piece initially ran within the Summer time 2024 situation. To obtain our print journal, change into a member by making a donation today.