Creativity took flight when College of Arts and Sciences students teamed up with Birmingham Audubon to spotlight urban birds, from East Lake Park’s yellow crowned night herons to downtown’s swarming chimney swifts. After researching the birds and their habitats, the students created art, illustrations, and fiction for an exhibition, sponsored by the departments of Art and Art History, Biology, and English and the UAB MakerSpace, to mark the birthday of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.
Drawing by Annabelle DeCamillis
Drawing by Cima Khademi
Sixteen painting students, led by professor Gary Chapman, collaborated on the exhibition’s centerpiece (at top and below), a 12-foot by 9-foot charcoal drawing depicting chimney swifts’ natural and manmade environments.
Students in assistant professor Doug Baulos’s scientific illustration course created images that both inspire and inform, such as the 3-D, pop-open piece (below) revealing the digestive tract of the chimney swift. Fiction-writing students taught by associate professor Kerry Madden-Lunsford featured the birds in short vignettes displayed at the exhibition.
Art by Rachel Ozley