How one artist is ‘painting’ eastern Iowa to attract songbirds

Some of Hembrey’s latest paintings only last a few minutes before they’re destroyed.

He’s delighted when they are.

For the past few months, the contemporary artist has traveled eastern Iowa to create colorful images in the ground; a unique, biodegradable art form he calls “landscape painting.” He uses soil supplements he mixes himself, like charcoal, clay, lime and bone meal, as his “paints.” After one or two rains, his creations are fully absorbed into the earth. But even moments after he finishes, they could be blemished by bird tracks, insect trails and gusts of wind.

Fortunately, that’s the goal of the Songbird Project , Hembrey’s latest artistic undertaking. His landscape paintings, imprinted in circular stamps of sod, depict designs of native Iowa bird plumage, like black-capped chickadees, orchard orioles and wood thrushes.

Each painting and its location is intentional. The colors of the birds, and their corresponding soil supplements, are chosen by Hembrey to provide necessary nutrients for native tree species to thrive. He plants the trees — white oaks, black walnuts, silky dogwoods and red cedars — once the painting is absorbed, in hopes that, once grown, native birds and other species will call the tree their home.

That’s because habitat loss is the primary reason why two thirds of North American songbirds are at risk of extinction, according to the National Audubon Society . In Iowa, threatened bird species include the black-billed cuckoo and the Kentucky warbler.

“I feel so impotent about climate change in our environment,” Hembrey told IPR in his studio, a cluttered corner of the university’s Visual Arts Building that, nonetheless, had space to put his artwork on prominent display. “Like, what can you do? What can one person do? And as an artist, you can call attention to it. But in this case, I'm actually doing tangible habitat restoration.”

Hembrey just finished his residency as one of the University of Iowa’s Grant Wood fellows for painting and drawing, but his artistic endeavors also span installation, experimentation and questioning the very essence of art itself. His “100 artists” project from over a decade ago, for which he put on a fictional global art showcase featuring the work of 100 artists that he invented identities, backgrounds — and even art — for, was the subject of a TED Talk and several national features.

The Arkansas-born artist is now back to creating under his own name, and said the Songbird Project was the perfect way to merge his interests (he says a fated painting class deterred his path to becoming an ornithologist) while creating art and involving the community. He’s done landscape paintings in several Cedar Rapids parks, on the University of Iowa campus and at several private locations, by request. Preschoolers helped paint alongside him at an installation at the Indian Creek Nature Center.

“I think, especially after the derecho, people are really like, ‘Yes! Plant trees!’” he said in his warm Southern drawl. “It’s an easy sell.”

To begin, Hembrey meets with site representatives and arborists to discuss the location and the right type of vegetation to plant. He then tests the earth for its acidity level and any deficiencies that could be supplemented by his soil pigments.

When the time comes to install, he’d drive to location in a university van converted into a “mobile studio” and get to work. He's spent hours a day working with his hands, crouched on a kneeling pad and using handmade stencils and a sifter as his paintbrush. He's planted over 100 trees.

The work is dirty. His hands and face are quickly smeared in dark smudges as he digs and sifts and pats the ground smooth, following drawings he’s sketched out and tucked between the pages of a book of North American birds. But he doesn’t mind the mess.

“It’s like making mud pies,” he joked. “It triggers this joy and glee from working in that way and working on the ground and being outside. It's really so different than sitting in [the studio], painting with the single-hair [brush], because I have to hold my breath every time I make a brushstroke. It's precision.”

As soon as he’s sifted the last of the pigment into place, he races to grab his camera and document the work. There may be only moments before wind shifts the soil. And this time, as he placed the finishing touches on an oriole pattern just outside of Hancher Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus, the future home of a black walnut tree, a caterpillar decided to check out the artwork up close. But Hembrey just smiled.

“I think they're really beautiful as they get destroyed,” he said.