I remember the first time I stayed up all night. I was young and stood barefoot outside, watching the sun arch over sprawling, yellow fields. I heard melodies of mourning doves and the gentle whinnying of the neighbor’s horses. I remember the first time I killed an animal. A small trout was pinned down on a wooden board while sweat saturated the wood handle of the knife in my hand. Heat flooded my cheeks as blood spilled over onto my feet, speckled with eggs and dirt.
My relationship with the world is complicated, raw, romantic, and visceral. I grew up on a farm and learned about life, death, birth, and sex from animals. I have memories of slaughtering, mourning, aiming, and watching. As I live and experience more and more, old memories resurface–they warp and loop around my head until I can spit them out as ceramic objects. I memorialize the subjects of these memories with coils of clay and gentle patterns, putting them to rest by giving them space in the physical world again.
Bird Nord is a ceramic sculptor who lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. They are fascinated by memorialization and take a great influence from their agricultural upbringing in Parker, Colorado. Presently, Bird is untangling the complexities of a rural, queer upbringing and finding their own space in a family history of decoy painting and bull riding.