Mary Curtis Ratcliff: Aviary

March 29 – May 4, 2024

Growing up in the Michigan woods with a mother who was a birdwatcher and a father who hunted ducks, Mary Curtis Ratcliff was fascinated from an early age, by birds, wings, and flight. It was only recently, looking back over her fifty-year art career, that she realized that at every stage of her work birds and flight showed up, taking on the different forms and techniques of her successive aesthetic experiments and styles. Aviary gives a core sample of these various phases as it explores birds and flight. It features bas relief, drawing, painting, collage, kinetic sculpture, and photo transfer —all united by wonder and reverence for winged creatures.