A Flamboyance of Flamingos

Jo invited me to help her with a public art installation she was participating in as part of UnScruz, Santa Cruz’ regional Burning Man event. She was embellishing 100 unique lawn flamingos, each of which would become part of a larger flock of various contributors’ work to be assembled at an annual UnSCruz event.

We spent hours fashioning outfits for the flamingos and painting colorful wooden stands for them. Our scissors flew feverishly in time to music as we cut, trimmed, and glued jewelry and wings and wigs, giddy anticipation mounting as each plastic bird’s distinct personality emerged from our busy hands. One morphed into a peacock, another a punk teenager with a mohawk of test tubes and a pierced beak.

When Jo started running out of lawn birds, I placed an urgent pink flamingo order. A kind of crisis I was happy to respond to.

Urgently Procured Box of Pink Flamingos

Punk Flamingo