This work was curated by Racquel Mullins for the show “Birds of a Feather” hosted at Stove Works. BirdDog was only ever meant to exist as an ephemeral piece, warped by participation, humidity, and the artist’s lack of engineering skills. By the time of the curation, only the animation remained in its original form. The original soft sculptures had been gifted, and the machine had been dismantled and repurposed. In this second version of the work, I chose to focus on the relationship between the two soft sculptures, rather than their movement. I recreated the characters from memory for the show, with subtle differences to distinguish them from the originals. As a result, BirdDog 2.0 was centered on the playful aspects of relationship, reproduction, and memory.

Alea Coble, BirdDog! 2.0, 2022, Chattanooga, TN.