“When I make a decoy,” says Natalie Boyett, “it’s almost like I’m making a decoy of a decoy. I’m not looking at a photograph or a model of the actual bird, but a model of a decoy.”
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“That’s why I love them so much. I see these stitched pieces put together, and I see evidence of the human hand–I see the human hand trying really hard to make this beautiful, living, perfect thing, and it always just kind of fails.”
Boyett, who has also been drawn to antique boxing gloves, snowshoes, and fish traps, started reading books by nature writers, listening to recordings of duck calls, and visiting decoy museums (“The best is the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum in Maryland”). She learned about mud ducks made by Native Americans, hollow decoys used to hide illegal kills, and triangular tip-up decoys, which look like a duck’s rear end. She saw decoys made out of sheet metal and of photos pasted onto wood. She also talked to some hunters and learned their rituals–how they choose a spot, place 50 or more decoys in the proper locations, hide in the water, and wait for the ducks to come to them. “In a way any decoy is like a receptacle for guilt,” she says. “Because the body of the bird eventually goes away. It dies and is eaten or thrown away. But the decoys are always there. They’re objects of reverence, I think.”
Nineteen of Boyett’s decoys will be on display through February 2 as part of a multimedia installation, “Birds to Have,” which also includes taped monologues based on her interviews with hunters (and read by an actor), as well as recordings of geese, two-dimensional artworks, and a video projection of a film she made of ducks swimming near Montrose Point. Boyett will be at the free opening reception this Friday from 6 to 11 at Dupreau Gallery, 4229 N. Lincoln (773-528-6440).
