It’s been a busy year with exhibitions of Moving Targets in four states, coordinating centenary programs through Project Passenger Pigeon Pittsburgh, two trips to Southern California, and much more!  Here’s a recap…

January/February

Ruth Fauman Fichman researched our family genealogies for Moving Targets as we transformed our discoveries into mixed media collages. I contacted 14 artists for the Passenger Pigeon Portrait Gallery–each representing a state within the former nesting range. Fabrication for the map backboards was stalling until I finally located professionals to do the job. Trying out my new Richeson baby press was a welcome diversion.

March/April

In March, I headed to L.A. to give a lecture at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla, one of a handful of private libraries in the country. I arrived early to meet up with a high school friend and visit our old stomping grounds in Ojai (below), where we attended what is now Besant Hill School.

I also reconnected with friends and family who I had not seen in years. My cousin Harriet and I pored over family photos and compared notes. The lecture went well, with a lively conversation led by Robert Pincus followed by a wonderful supper at the home of artist Joyce Cutler Shaw.

May/June

Steffi and I installed Moving Targets at Brushwood Center (near Chicago) with Ruth. I also worked with Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace (RHIP) and the Children’s Museum to determine a collaborative project to mark the 69th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I returned to Los Angeles in June for the wedding of  a dear friend’s son. It was a beautiful, relaxed event near Lake Arrowhead, where my family once vacationed. We are pictured here with the groom’s mom (right) and her friend.

July/August

In July, Steffi and I returned to Brushwood to deinstall the exhibition and reinstall the Portrait Gallery at the Art and Environment Gallery, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, UM Ann Arbor, directed by biologist and artist Sara Adlerstein.  Concurrently, a second exhibition of the Portrait Gallery opened at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

RHIP marked the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through a  Shibori Workshop at the Children’s Museum and screening of Kurosawa’s “I Live in Fear” at Pittsburgh Filmmakers followed by skyping with students in Japan. Muralist  JoAnn Moran from Connecticut convinced me to let her paint my concrete floor! It was mayhem , but I now have a gorgeous, faux-tile floor.

September/October

September 1 was the anniversary of the passing of Martha, the last passenger pigeon. Myself and a few other brave souls marked the day by drawing passenger pigeon mounts at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. On September 19, I returned to Ann Arbor for the Portrait Gallery reception, which included a conversation led by Sara Adlerstein with myself and Joel Greenberg. Joel spoke that evening at the UM Natural History Museum. At the end of October, we deinstalled the Ann Arbor show. September and October also featured numerous centenary events in and around Pittsburgh under the umbrella of Project Passenger Pigeon Pittsburgh.

The RHIP Shibori Peace Quilt Project culminated in these awesome quilts made by the Children’s Museum Makeshop. This gorgeous display of the three quilts made us proud. The museum will keep one quilt, one will go to a peace organization in New York and another to a women’s peace organization in Japan. The NYC and Japan quilts will be handed off during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, convening in New York in April.

 November/December

The Portrait Gallery was reunited with Steffi’s and my work for the final exhibition of Moving Targets at the Gumberg Library, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh. The reception was well attended by family, friends, students, faculty and administrators.

Joel Greenberg closed out the  year with a lecture at Duquesne followed by a closing reception for the exhibition. With the support of a PA Council on the Arts grant, a professional photographer documented the exhibition. We have seed funding to get us started on a catalog. For the 2015 anniversary of the passing of Martha, we will reinstall the exhibition with the completed catalog.