Brookfield Central High School, 2021 - 2024
flock | artist residency | 2026
This 3-month residency at Arts @ Large invited folks to explore moving together like starlings in a murmuration or geese in a V formation, practicing liberated shapes as a collective. FLOCK hosted two community workshops, three school trips, a Puppet Club, and a Bird Puppet Parade.
The Bird Puppet Parade:
We embodied a murmuration as we danced, marched, screamed, set intentions, and breathed together on a warm summer night. The celebration featured local dancers from Panadanza and Tamarind, musicians from Samba Da Vida, and educators from the Audubon Nature Center.
The Gallery:
The gallery displayed three interactive bird puppets, 20 wooden bird paintings and sculptures, a mural depicting the upcoming Bird Parade, and interactive art activities like writing memories of your own flock, making your own bird puppet, and painting a bird on the studio windows.
The Community Workshops: Making Hope
At the community workshops, participants created flags for the Bird Puppet Parade, both drawing themselves as a bird, and writing affirmations and mantras for freedom. We practiced intuitive art-making strategies like timed drawing, automatic writing, meditation, and breathing.
The Field Trips: It's Us With Wings
Students from three different local schools visited FLOCK. After a drawing exercise inspired by flocking geese, students were asked what they want to offer or create for their flock. They wrote their intentions onto the birds, then performed their puppets together to embody their offerings.
Puppet Club:
In this biweekly club, folks brought their own puppet projects to work on or they helped build the flock of bird puppets and flags for the Bird Parade. This club was started during FLOCK, but continues to create artist community in Milwaukee every other Tuesday at Studio B.
Show Statement:
Like a flock of birds, our human bodies are designed to exist together. But we are out of practice. The Bird Parade invites us to move like starlings in a murmuration, or geese in a V formation, exploring how we want to relate to each other in a liberated future. During the parade, we breathe, scream, march, dance, and set intentions together, following the rhythm of the dancers and drummers. The simple movement of operating a bird puppet or waving a flag in the parade helps us channel the freedom of bird-ness and become more fully embodied as we reconnect. In a world where our social and ecological webs have been deeply disrupted, this residency offers the space to restore our relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to our bird kin.