Artist Statement: “BEAUX RIVAGES / BEAUTIFUL SHORES.” Attunement: To consciously align your thoughts, emotions and actions with a deeper, more universal source of energy or consciousness… When the Covid lockdowns began in March 2020, “sheltering in place” became for me a practice of cultivating solace and sanctuary outside my home on Beaux Rivages (“Beautiful Shores”) in southeast Shreveport. Living in solitude, I found myself attuning to the natural rhythms and flight patterns of the different species of birds that had found their own place of shelter on Spring Lake. What started with my love for and curiosity about the diversity and unique behaviors of these amazing beings with feathers and wings soon became both a creative process and spiritual practice. I have followed my initial intuitive impulse to capture these moments in time as an “unfiltered” view of their world as seen through the camera and my discerning eyes. Each moment captured is an authentic expression and reflection of a previously unseen relationship between me, my camera’s optical lens, and the birds in their natural surroundings. As a spiritual practice, I have learned to quiet my anxious mind, relax the tension held in my body, open my protected heart, and experience the gifts of presence, stillness, appreciation and wonder. Over the past five years, I have taken thousands of images of birds, chronicling their lives through the different seasons. Spring Lake offers up its own reflections of the seasonal changes through the cold gray days of winter to the vibrant, glimmering hues of autumn. I chose to stay true to each captured moment without editing, enhancing or cropping any of the images. My artistic vision is to offer an immersive experience of the lives of the birds I’ve chronicled in Shreveport, using digital projectors on four walls to illuminate local birdlife during each of the four seasons. Shreveport sits along the Mississippi Flyway, a major route for migrating shorebirds and songbirds, and as wintering grounds for wading birds and waterfowl. If you have the opportunity to view my Spring Lake collection, look for the following birds: American goldfinch, anhinga, belted kingfisher, black-bellied whistling duck, blue jay, brown-headed nuthatch, Canada goose, cedar waxwing, dark-eyed junco, great blue heron, great white egret, green heron, house sparrow, hooded merganser, little green heron, little blue heron, mallard, mourning dove, muscovy duck, northern cardinal, northern mockingbird, snowy egret, white American pekin, wood duck and yellow-crowned night heron. The images in this online portfolio are just a small fraction of my growing collection of birds, not only on Spring Lake but also in other bird-friendly environments such as Costa Rica and the California coastline.