Written by Terry Graff

Warbird and Pandemic Horror
In 2019, I received a Creation grant from artsnb and, in 2022, the Canada Council for the Arts confirmed my grant application to the Concept to Realization component of the Explore and Create Program, which provided me with the opportunity to create over 1,000 drawings, collages, paintings, assemblages and sculptures in a body of work I titled the “Warbird Series.”

Installation view of War Birds in the exhibition Terry Graff: Avian Cyborgs at UNB Art Centre, 2024. Photo credit: Chris Giles.

The remarkable level of support from these programs helped me to develop and expand my ideas surrounding my long-standing focus on the relationship between nature and technology, which resulted in a national touring exhibition (Terry Graff: Avian Cyborgs) in 2023/24. It also triggered numerous opportunities for reaching larger audiences through the production of a major accompanying publication and coverage in several arts and other magazines in Canada and the USA. Spinoff benefits included new connections with curators and collectors and several invitations to participate in future exhibitions and projects. Writing about the ideas and themes that I explore in my work is an integral part of my process, and a selection of my writings related to this project were published in various publications.

The COVID-19 outbreak occurred amidst production of the Warbird Series that led to increased time in my studio and an intensification of my art production. In fact, it spawned another large body of work titled “The Pandemic Horror Series,” which connected seamlessly with the direction of my work. For example, I noticed how military rhetoric and war metaphors were being used by politicians and journalists to describe the challenges posed by the invading coronavirus, which incidentally resembles a naval mine.

Both the Warbird and Pandemic Horror Series (both featured in my Avian Cyborgs exhibition) reinforced my focus on topical narrative content as much as on aesthetics and technical process and have prompted many new ideas for future production. Works from these series were acquired by the Woodstock Art Gallery, UNB Art Centre, and Galerie Colline for their permanent collections. I am grateful to artsnb for Career Development grants (Professionalization & Promotion and Arts by Invitation) and a Documentation grant related to this project, which enabled me to fully chronicle my touring exhibition “Avian Cyborgs,” to cover a portion of the transportation expense, and to create a website. Finally, this highly ambitious period of art production has led me to begin a whole new body of work.

The exhibition Terry Graff: Avian Cyborgs at UNB Art Centre, 2024. Credit: Chris Giles.

On Becoming an Artist: Then and Now
I don’t ever recall making a conscious decision to be an artist. Art has been my calling and all-consuming passion as far back as I can remember. My childhood drawings in the 1960s were diaristic and document my activities, interests, popular culture and environment of the time. There are drawings of my family at our cottage, of our pet dog and budgies, of local gas stations, and of TV shows like Disney’s “Old Yeller.” In 1961, at age six, I made a drawing of a jack-in-the-pulpit, a favorite wildflower that I had transplanted in our backyard. My mother entered it in a contest organized by CK.C.O. TV’s Big Al’s Ranch Party, a popular kid’s show, for which I won a tricycle, and enrolled me in adult drawing classes because there were no classes for kids available at the time, as well as painting classes at the home of the Canadian landscape painter Homer Watson.

Terry Graff, age 6, with his winning drawing, 1961. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

As a kid, birds were a dominant subject of my drawings. I often imagined I was a bird and that I could fly. Birds were magical beings and when I found out they had evolved from dinosaurs I was even more intrigued. I was an avid bird watcher, collected bird skulls, feathers, and nests, and assembled and painted numerous plastic Bachmann bird model kits (owl, cardinal, cedar waxwing, blue-jay, hummingbird, and so many more), which I fastened to an actual tree installed in my bedroom. A prized object was “The Visible Pigeon”, a life-sized anatomical model that included the bird’s vital organs and skeleton.

At the same time that I focused on birds, I was equally fascinated by the aesthetics and function of machines. My father was the quintessential handyman, a masterful problem-solver and an inventor (US patent for Copper Compression Ring, 1972), who had all kinds of machines and taught me how to use power tools. In retrospect, it was inevitable that birds and machines would converge in my work as a life-long exploration and expression of the relationship between nature and technology.

Childhood drawing of robot toy Mr. Mercury, 1960s. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

The most rewarding aspect about being an artist is the joy, challenge, wonder, magic, and love of creation. It’s finding solutions to visual problems and building on a vision and sharing that vision with others. It’s working with my hands and eyes, honing my skills and acquiring new knowledge and wisdom. It’s taking risks and not being afraid of making mistakes, or as the saying goes, “The bird who dares to fall is the bird who learns to fly.”

As I got older, environmental issues became an important focus of my work, although environmental themes can be found in my childhood art and even more so in my high school art. As I evolved as an artist, at a certain point I could no longer simply depict birds in their natural environment, as I was compelled to say something about their grim plight due to the many troubling environmental stresses imposed on them by humankind. Since 1970, three billion birds have disappeared in North America alone, and one in eight birds are currently on the endangered list.

The apocalyptic theme in my work stems from a childhood drawing of a nightmare I had of animals crying out like victims of some rabid fit. They were anemic, spasmodic. Animals of all shapes and sizes ̶ giraffes, zebras, wolves, deer, lions, elephants, rodents – were wheezing and vomiting. They ran over fields and ditches, across swamps and deserts, through forests and jungles, across the arctic tundra. Firey rocks fell from the sky. They kept running, but there was no escape. They ran and they ran until they disappeared, until they burst into flames and were swallowed whole, falling through oceans of ice that were breaking up.

Exorcising the Demon Virus, 2020, acrylic on wood panel, 66.04 X 50.08 cm (Collection: UNB Art Centre). Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Integrating birds with machinery and the baggage of human culture became my way of expressing the anthropocentric way in which we see the nonhuman other and how we’ve altered and manipulated nature with technology to serve human ends. More importantly, it was a way to hold a mirror to ourselves, an allegory about what we’ve done to the earth’s eco-systems. Over the years, I’ve continually expanded my research into the relationship between art and ecology, honed my use of both humour and horror in my work, and explored myriad ways of making art through a variety of media, most particularly from recycled materials.

In 2015, I embarked on the “Warbird Series,” which features a fusion of birds with war machinery and combat weaponry in a black comedy of nature fighting back for its survival. In the tradition of George Orwell, who used animals to satirize the human predicament and expose issues of injustice, exploitation and inequality in society, I use birds of all shapes, sizes and species and transform them into lethal mechanized killing machines to comment on the civilization that sanctifies such horror.

Raketenschleuder (missile slingshot) #2, 2021, mixed media assemblage sculpture, 61.18 X 91.44 X 15.24 cm (Collection: Galerie Colline). Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Looking to the future, I am driven to expand my activist work, my exploration of our dual character as part of nature yet transformed by technology in a violent world of political, cultural, social and environmental decay. To this end, I will continue to draw on memories of my childhood as, for me, I don’t think it possible to make art without the influences of childhood and the guidance of my inner child.

art has the power to convey emotions, to protest perceived wrongs, and to contribute to critical discourse in a tumultuous world of suffering, loss, political upheaval, and radical change. It is a healing and cathartic force that can stimulate greater understanding, appreciation, respect, and wonder for the natural systems of which we are all a part. It makes us more tolerant of difference and mitigates our adaptation to a life-altering world of unprecedented technological development and ecological disaster. Art offers a transformative experience that can expand our imaginaries of the future and open our minds to new and creative possibilities for our well-being and possibly for our very survival.

Endzeitgeist
I am currently working on a project titled “Endzeitgeist” (which means “end-time spirit” in German), a combination of surreal sci-fi fantasy and absurdist black humour in response to the real-life hell-on-earth events unfolding on the planet. It’s a monumental, multimedia sculptural wall installation combining elements of assemblage, collage and painting in the presentation of an epic Warbird battle scene representative of nature’s retaliation against humanity’s all-out war against nature. Layered with multiple cultural, historical, military and ornithological references, my research includes topical media reports on war, cinematic imagery of war, and war-themed video games (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series), as well as iconic history paintings that focus on the atrocities of war and on how artists throughout history have envisioned the “end times” in relation to cataclysmic events specific to their particular time and place.

Warbirds Unlimited, 2019, acrylic and collage on wood panel, 66.04 X 82.55 cm, (Collection: Woodstock Art Gallery). Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

More specifically, this massive storytelling montage, constructed from recycled and repurposed materials and objects (in the spirit of my Doomsday Clocks), will give focus to the devastating ecological damage caused by the wounds of war currently being inflicted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war. Both of these conflicts are not only horrific humanitarian catastrophes, but have exacted a toll on the bird life in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, threatening a significant number of rare and globally vulnerable bird species. Along with a visual interpretation of war’s impact on life-sustaining ecosystems, is the evocation of nature striking back with force and fury, the unleashing of powerful storms, hurricanes, floods, landslides, wildfires, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.

I am excited by this dark and challenging project, which is supported by a Creation grant from artsnb and is the most ambitious work to date in my Warbird Series. It will feature the largest and most complex grouping of Warbirds (over 100 of them) engaged in conflict that I’ve attempted to orchestrate in a single work.

---

His Recent Writings
War, Literature & the Arts: an international journal of the humanities (Volume 34, 2022): “Revenge of the Warbirds: The Impact of Armed Conflict on Nature”: https://www.wlajournal.com/copy-of-table-of-contentsv2-1
The AutoEthnographer (Volume 2, Issue 1, 2022 Winter): “Ode to Bygone Birds of Childhood, Part 1 – drawings”: https://theautoethnographer.com/autoethnographic-art-and-essay-ode-to-bygone-birds-of-childhood-part-1-drawings/
The AutoEthnographer (Special Issue, May 2022): “Ode to Bygone Birds of Childhood, Part 2 – Automatons and Mutants”:
https://theautoethnographer.com/autoethnographic-art-and-essay-ode-to-bygone-birds-of-childhood-part-2-automatons-and-mutants/