Yesterday an MLO (Medium Large Owl) emerged fresh from the kiln, all mute greens and golds, looking wind-blown and content.  I’d built this owl outside on the back porch, in a plein-air studio annex location during our in-between-not-too-hot-not-too-cold season, and I put it back outside to save indoor shelf space. Anything on the porch is considered Part of the Field by the local wildlife: the raccoons drink from the water bucket on my work table, the finches and doves and cactus wrens forage around it, and Hoover the hand-tamed African Collared Dove, perched on it, hoo-ing, as he had all through the construction process.

<< Hoover on MLO (all photos A.Shock, click to embiggen)

For him, landing on the clay owl’s head to cock his seed-beady eye at me and beg for safflower and peanuts is no different from landing on a branch or a chair-back to seed-schnorr.

So, the next time you’re tempted to try to “scare birds” from your roof or garden with one of those Plastic Owls, here’s your pin-up poster of how effective it will be: Not.

Still, Good Feathery Detail is its own virtue — this plastic Snowy Owl purchased here in Phoenix (and fully 100% guaranteed to be totally unrecognizable as a threat to desert birds) became ours simply on the strength of its shapely molding and piercing yellow eyes.  It stands impotently in our herb garden perfectly disregarded by greens-pecking quail hens and greedy-cheeked rock squirrels.  Still, despite slightly opaque corneas (UV causes cataracts, you know!), you can tell from its expression that it takes its job very seriously. And in fact, we never have had even one lemming in the garden yet.

By the way, the Medium Large “Windblown” Owl (18″, top photo) will be available (without dove) at the Three Star Owl booth at the Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival at the end of the month.  It’s hand-built, glazed stoneware, one of a kind, and perfectly suited to deter pests (or not) in your garden or outside living space.  (The cheap plastic snowy owl effigy is not for sale, sorry; we fear too greatly potential inroads of the arctic vole here in Phoenix.  You can’t be too vigilant when it comes to inroads, or so our governor tells us.)

I wrote the following promo last month and then promptly forgot all about it in my WordPress “drafts”. So, here it is, to be used as a reminder that the exhibition is almost over:

Allison Shock/Three Star Owl is pleased to debut the new piece “Assemblage: Owl Hives” at the Arizona Clay Annual Juried Exhibition at the Chandler Center for the Arts. The “Assemblage” is a group of artefaux which may provide evidence for the ancient and apocryphal practice of strigiculture — the raising of owls — for either domestication or ritual purposes.

detail, “Assemblage: Owl Hives” (photo and piece by A.Shock, click to enlarge) >>

The Exhibit features work by more than 40 Arizona clay artists, and runs from 18 March – 16 April 2011. Come to the Chandler Center for the Arts, and see what the Arizona clay community is up to.

An Exhibition of Clay Works by Arizona Artists

March 18 – April 16, 2011

Jennifer Allred∗Linda S. Baker∗Barbara Baskerville∗Sandra Blain∗David L. Bradley∗Cheryl Brandon∗Sarah Brodie∗Stephen Bunyard∗Tristyn Bustamante∗Robin Cadigan∗Susan Cielek∗Jeanne Collins∗Shirlee Daulton∗Ken Drolet∗Paulette Galop∗Jan Gaumnitz∗Audrey Goldstein∗Rena Hamilton∗Lisa Harnish∗Pam Harrison∗Susan Hearn∗Julie Hendrickson∗Janet Wills Keller∗Alene Kells∗Sue Kopca∗Gabrielle Koza∗Sandra Luehrsen∗Patricia Manarin∗Steve Marks∗Constance McBride∗Mirjana McLadinov∗Kim Mendoza∗Candice Methe∗Kaye Murphy∗Virginia Pates∗Karen VanBarneveld Price∗Kazuma Sambe∗Allison Shock∗Phyllis Stringer∗Genie Swanstrom∗Christopher Torrez∗Neal Walde∗Diane Marie Watkins∗Annette Weaver

Exhibition Dates: March 18 – April 16, 2011
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Saturdays, Noon – 4 p.m.
at: Chandler Center for the Arts
250 North Arizona Avenue
Chandler AZ 85225
Sponsored by the Chandler Center for the Arts, the Chandler Cultural Foundation, and the Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler Cultural Foundation
Images courtesy of the artists.
For more information call 480-782-2695.

The Owl Hives are in Chandler.

On Friday night, March 18, the All AZ Clay Invitational Exhibition opened at the Chandler Center for the Arts, displaying the work of more than 40 clay artists from all over the state of Arizona.  Among them is an installation of artefaux by me, entitled Assemblage: Owl Hives.

>> Assemblage: Owl Hives (photo and piece, A.Shock 2011)

The piece is composed of a variety of related, archeologically-themed elements, and is intended to be viewed on its own æsthetic merits.  But, if you read this blog regularly, parts of the installation will look familiar to you, since I’ve posted bits and pieces of it before, in progress.  Also, in the Assemblage, you may recognize a tie-in to the fictional posts that appear here irregularly: according to the signs, the piece is purported to be on loan from the august but mysterious Ganskopf Foundation.  In addition, the ubiquitous and insinuating Dr. Darius Danneru has graciously provided an excerpt from a recent article, supplying authoritative and scholarly, if prolix, context for the piece.  <<

I hope you can stop by the Chandler Center for the Arts’ Vision Gallery anytime before April 16, when the show closes, to see what the Arizona clay community is up to, including three pieces by Don Reitz, from the CCA’s collection.  More info below, or click on Three Star Owl events.  (Photo E.Shock>>)

Exhibition Dates, Hours, and Location:

March 18 – April 16, 2011
Vision Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm, Saturdays, Noon – 4 pm
at: Chandler Center for the Arts
MAP/Directions
250 North Arizona Avenue
Chandler AZ 85225
For more information call 480-782-2695.

…among other things.

Tomorrow, Friday, is the first day of Three Star Owl‘s Open Studio, part of the Camelback Studio Tour.  The weather is supposed to be beautiful, but the meteorologists have less lovely predictions for Saturday and Sunday.  We’ll see.  Rain or shine, wind or calm, I’ll be here from 10 – 5 waiting for you to come by and check out the owly and non-owly wares.  Lots of mugs, by the way, from corn to ravens, snakes to scorpions.  And bowls, lots of bowls.

Here is a detail of a small jar fresh out of the kiln: each owlmorph is considerably less than an inch tall. >>

…it’s hard to hide in bright, falling foliage if you’re a flying tiger…

Here’s one of a pair of Great Horned Owls we happened upon yesterday in a cottonwood grove along the Verde River east of the Phoenix metro area.  We were scouting for Tuesday’s official Christmas Bird Count of the Rio Verde area, and accidentally flushed the pair from their day-roost just before midday.

The owls flew a short distance then resettled, each in a spot they felt was secure.  One hid well, disappearing from view, but the other became a shadowy shape in golden foliage.

Great horned owl (Photo A.Shock) >>

It evidently felt sufficiently concealed, since it didn’t fly again, despite our nearness and a raven and a cooper’s hawk hassling it.  Look carefully — even through the screening leaves, you can pick out the owliness of its outline: a solid, chunky form with wispy cranial tufts. “Stink eye” — no one likes their nap interrupted — can be deduced, but not actually discerned in the photo.

I’ve classed this as a Spot the Bird, of sorts, just because.

…Halloween Greetings from Three Star Owl.

(Photo, Detail of “Mother of Owls”, Allison Shock, smoke-fired terracotta, 2001)

What if you had to raise large numbers of owls, herds of owls, swarms of tiny owls, all at once? What if that was your job? What would you need? You might need an Owl Hive. Or a cluster of Owl Hives. What would an owl hive be like? Each hive would have to have entrances, so that the owls could fly in and out. There would have to be an interior chamber, so the owls could build their elaborate, communal owlcomb. There would have to be access for you the Owl Keeper, to extract whatever product the owl colony produced and stored inside, like vole honey or rabbit suede. It would need a lower hole to expel pellets and admit fresh air. At the very least, there would need to be a roof for the owls to land on, and a lofty perch from which to Keep an Eye on Things.

Here are some detail photos of unfinished architectural-effigy-nest-vessel-box objects in progress, some only bisqued, some completely innocent of the kiln as yet — the most recent Three Star Owl clay project. They might be Owl Hives. They might be sculpture or effigy vessels. They might be small ovens or incense censors. Or, they might be actors, waiting to be cast as archæological artifacts in an upcoming fiction post on this blog. Of course, they might be all of the above. Stay tuned to this location to see how it goes. (All photos and objects A.Shock)

…to bring you a tiny owlet.  From Pink to Dink, with hardly a blink.

Friday morning, I came home from delivering E to campus, and blissfully opened the back door to let in the first blast of coolish late summer air.  Instead of the usual morning quiet, the back yard was chattering with angry bird sounds: MOB!  Two Curve-billed thrashers, three cactus wrens, one Costa’s and two un-ID’d hummers, a verdin, a handful of Lesser goldfinch, and a couple of Gila woodpeckers, all shrieking in the upper branches of the messy African sumac right outside the bedroom door.

I stood under the canopy of snaggly twigs and miscellaneous branches for a while, with binox, until I saw the reason for their agitation: the Real Cranky Owlet.  A tiny, tiny owl, with a round head, staring down on me with enormous outrage.  I ran in to get binox and camera, and when I got back outside, it was sitting there still radiating high dudgeon.

It took a bit of hunting to find a window through the leafy snarl, but I finally got the owl in clear view.  At first I thought: it’s a recently fledged Western Screech Owl, too young for cranial tufts (ie, “ears”), wedged up in the twigs, trying to pretend it hadn’t been spotted by half the shouting avifauna of the yard, and one quarter of the interior mammals.  I’d recently been hearing a WESO calling at night in the yard, and we get them around here occasionally (well, they’re probably here all the time, but we hear or see them occasionally).  It was a likely candidate.

<< radiating high dudgeon

But… I looked again, without my binox: it was clearly not a screech owl — the bird was SO TINY!  As any birder will tell you, size is one of the hardest characteristics to judge in the field, and an easy place to go wrong. Comparisons are invaluable. The thrashers mobbing it were considerably bigger than the owl; it was about the same size as the Cactus wrens, although in a vertical format, rather than horizontally arranged like the wrens; it was approximately sparrow-sized.  There’s only one owl that dinky, in the desert or anywhere: the Elf owl (Micrathene whitneyi, en français chevêchette des saguaros, en español tecolotito anano).  The supercilious white “spectacles”, the reddish blotches on the breast, the size of the eyes in the smallish head: it was an Elf owl in our yard! I was able to get a couple of poor snapshots — tough light to boot — which I’ve posted here, magnified.

Like the Western screech owls, Elf owls may be in the neighborhood regularly; we live in an “older” (by Phoenix standards) subdivision with naturalized desert landscape, including mature saguaros with woodpecker holes.  But I hadn’t heard an Elf owl or seen one around here, and believe me, it wasn’t for not listening, or not looking in every saguaro hole I know about. So, since the Elf Owl population in our part of the state is seasonal, it’s also possible that this individual could be a migrant, moving out of its breeding area to its wintering zone, passing through our yard.

detail, Elf owl in saguaro vase (Allison Shock Three Star Owl, stoneware, 14″) >>

The sumac probably seemed like a good day roost.  But, unfortunately, it turned out there were not only hecklers, but a paparazza, and the tiny owl flew a few yards to lose itself in the denser, thorny canopy of the nearby Texas Ebony.  The hecklers followed, but I didn’t. (All photos A.Shock)

The yard’s been hopping, recently.  Click here to read an assortment of posts about what we see right outside our doors, birds and other things.

(This post newly updated with better link to owl sound)

Here’s a Spectacled owl (Pulsatrix perspicillata), staring hard at us from its perch in the tropical lowlands of Sarapiquí in Costa Rica.  What could be more delightful than a cinnamon-and-cholcolate owl with white “spectacles?”

I have the answer: one that makes a strange, rapidly pulsating noise like a ray-gun, pwup-pwup-pwup-pwup.  Click on this previous post for etymological details of its scientific name.

(Photo A.Shock)

I’m dying to make one out of clay — a jar perhaps, with a swiveling head?