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Artist Amy Switzer creates birds from books

Amy Switzer's Word Bird: Mortimer (detail).

Barrie, Ontario, artist Amy Switzer’s latest exhibition, Bird Call, investigates our endless fascination with, and apparent need to anthropomorphize, animals (Lolcats, anyone?).

For her lifelike paper-bird sculptures, which she contains under glass domes, Switzer layers strips of text from classic books to create the illusion of feathers. Word Bird: Mortimer is a nod to Eugene Schieffelin, the man who first introduced those noisy, pesky starlings to New York City’s Central Park in 1871. Schieffelin’s master plan was to bring all of the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to North America, so Switzer created Mortimer out of pages from Henry IV. Another paper-bird sculpture, “Loulou,” was inspired by a character of the same name from Gustave Flaubert’s short story “A Simple Heart.”

Bird Call runs until July 9 at Toronto’s Telephone Booth Gallery.