The Beautiful Artwork by Jill Carter
Perhaps you saw this amazing display over the December holiday that was projected onto a building on the corner of 4th and Capitol in Olympia. You’ll be happy to know the artist is Jill Carter, our BHAS website designer. Jill also had her art displayed last holiday season with a similar projection of festive salmon.
Jill says this year’s birds were inspired by the work of Black Hills Audubon. These images are projected onto the empty furniture building using powerful LED lighting instruments that have a small custom made glass “gobo” inside. The Olympia Downtown Alliance commissioned Jill to create the art and paid for the equipment.
There were originally 4 of these projectors to cover the empty furniture building with colorful birds, but in early December someone climbed to the top of the Olympia Federal bank building and stole one of the 4 projectors. It took an incredible amount of effort to climb to the top of a 3 story building and bring along the tools to de-rig the instrument from the pipe to which it was mounted. It is hoped that the projector makes its way back since it is not the kind of thing that would be very easy to sell.
When Jill drew these birds, she looked at photos of real birds as guides. Some are pretty obvious; some are a bit more obscure. See if you can figure out which is which – Great Blue Heron, chickadee, kingfisher, Mourning Dove, swallow and Red-winged Blackbird.
Photo Credit: Raoul Berman
