Speaking of Art Blog

Magical Merlin, pastel, 12x12"

This pandemic has been quite the life changer, hasn’t it?  It has forced many of us in the arts to rethink our career goals and reinvent ourselves again and again.  I’ve learned to teach pastel class via Zoom, I’ve given a number of art lectures and demos online, and I am stockpiling my artwork everywhere in my house.  But I never would have guessed how a lowly pigeon would change my game also.

It all started in the middle of May 2021 when a beautiful all white pigeon decided that our back yard looked like a good place to call its new home.  It was lost and quite tame, and with a crest on the back of its head and red legs and claws, it was absolutely gorgeous.  It looked like it had been well fed and cared for and it was looking for some TLC in our yard.  So, we provided its basic necessities such as millet and water, and it stuck around.  Meanwhile, I was hurriedly doing as much research as I could about homing pigeons.  I made tons of phone calls and came to find out that there’s a pigeon owner right in my hometown in northwest Indiana.  Once I contacted the pigeon owner, I then had a straight path in learning how to get the pigeon into the adoptive owner’s hands.  Yes, the pigeon has leg bands, but they haven’t been much help because they are what are called vanity bands, not the official bands that most homing pigeons wear.  Therefore, this pigeon’s original owner is yet to be found.  That still remains a mystery to this day.

One thing the local pigeon owner told me after he looked at my pics of the pigeon, is that he was fairly certain this pigeon was a female based on its size and its tame behavior.  So I started calling it Marilyn, as in Marilyn Monroe in her classic all white dress.  Marilyn seemed to really like me and would come pretty close to me when I went outside and talked to her.  I could definitely tell she was used to being photographed, as she would literally pose and strut for me whenever she saw my camera.  How could I resist such a willing model?  I took at least a hundred pics of Marilyn within 2 weeks.  Also, as per the pigeon owner’s instructions, I slowly moved Marilyn’s millet feeder closer and closer to our garage, until finally one day she stepped right inside the garage and I shut the door behind her.  Then I called the pigeon owner and he came over right away to pick her up and bring her back to his home where she could join his 70+ pigeons.  Mission accomplished.  Marilyn is now enjoying life in very capable hands.

But it turns out that that was just the beginning of the story.  Within two days the pigeon owner was emailing me with exciting and surprising news – Marilyn was not a girl!  With pigeons, the only way you can tell a male from a female is to watch their behavior, and instead of acting like a girl when it was placed in a pen with other females, this white pigeon must have thought he had died and gone to breeding Heaven.  Nope, this pigeon was definitely NOT a female.  So off to the male pen he went and I had to come up with a new name.  Merlin the magician seemed to fit.  He had tricked the pigeon owner and he had already worked his charming magic on me for weeks.

As Merlin’s new owner is continuing to dig into Merlin’s past and trying to find his original owner, I started looking through all my photos of Merlin.  One image stuck out, of him standing at the edge of our garage roof with a light breeze ruffling his feathers.  I used another pic for the background, that had fun bird shaped clouds behind him.  Perfect.  I really enjoyed creating this newest pastel painting.  Meanwhile, my neighbor friend who also had received a few visits from Merlin, started encouraging me to consider possibly writing a children’s book about Merlin, with my painting creation being the cover art and all my photographs filling the pages of the book.  At first I dismissed the idea, but I must admit that it’s been growing on me, and I think that’s even the reason why I undertook this painting in particular.  It pretty much looks like a ready-made children’s book cover, doesn't it?

Merlin’s new owner has already found out that Merlin is a very special pigeon.  He is most likely a Serbian Highflyer, a pigeon that can fly very high in the sky and stay aloft for hours on end.  He is used to being the center of attention at Highflyer competitions and is accustomed to being photographed, fawned on, and well cared for.  No wonder Merlin posed for me when he saw my camera.  He was also gone from our yard for hours, but then as soon as one of us would step outside, there he’d be within seconds on our garage roof.  Hmm, could it be that he had been flying high in the sky above our house, watching for when one of us would step outside?  Very possible.

But there are still so many mysteries about Merlin.  How did he get lost?  Who and where is his original owner?  Why did he choose our back yard to call his new home?  If he is released to fly high, which is what he was trained to do, will he even come back to his new owner’s home?  Will he fly back to my yard or to his original owner somewhere in Chicago?  (His one leg band says Chicago.)  

Yes, Merlin the magician still has an aura of mystery about him and he has charmed me with his magic.  I never would have thought that a lowly white pigeon would motivate me to start looking into writing a children’s book, but here I am, doing just that.  What a game changer this has been for me.  I am keeping my eyes wide open as I look toward the future now.  Any sort of magic can happen with Merlin around.

Update: No book yet, but I'm not ruling that out for the future.  I'm busy with my Indiana Dunes National Park Artist-in-Residency right now (2023).