The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach is exhibiting Donna Conlon, an American-Panamanian artist active in Panama, born in 1966. Her still of “From the Ashes (De las cenizas),” a 2019 video, endorses the hummingbird as her current statement toward invasive climate change.
Conlon’s exhibit is as silent as it is real. The exhibition is a two-minute, 57-second soliloquy of the smallest things as a big reminder for nature conservation. Hummingbirds, typically measuring 3–5 inches in length, include the smallest species of the bee hummingbird, just about 2 inches long and weighing less than 2 grams.
That’s small.
But don’t underestimate their size. They have the highest mass-specific metabolic rate of any homeothermic animal. Hummingbirds play a crucial role in maintaining the health and balance of ecosystems. Their co-evolvement with specific plant species makes them highly efficient pollinators, and their ability to travel long distances helps in the cross-pollination of plants promoting genetic diversity. However, habitat loss and range shifts are causing hummingbirds to lose a significant portion of their current range. Reduced nectar secretion due to climate change can reduce the volume and sugar content of nectar. This leads to a decrease in nectar production and means less food for pollinators, which also affects the hummingbirds’ survival and reproduction. Extreme heat can reduce their food intake and energy levels.
While there are around 366 species of hummingbird found in their native lands of the Americas, currently 21 of them are listed as endangered or critically endangered. Although many hummingbirds live from 3 to 5 years, some can live up to a decade or more in the wild. This further emphasizes the need for natural habitat conservation and pollution reduction.
Note that Conlon’s message is likely most relevant when attempting to solve the big problems by focusing on the little things.
Naturalism and Contemporary Conveyance of Reality
While Naturalism emerged in the 19th century as an attempt to resolve the idealized and stylized art between Neoclassicalism (also found at the Norton Museum) and Romanticism’s errors in realistic portrayals of the real world, the conveyance of reality cannot be more employed within a naturalist aspect to address the conservatory issues in contemporary lifestyles today.
Conlon’s statement is blatantly honest. While her work is a socio-archaeological investigation into her immediate environment and daily life, the intersection between these two fields offers valuable correlations between habitat and reality. Social archaeology explores how the social dimensions of human life are reflected in settlement patterns, for example, as Conlon’s artistic focus is on identifying and revealing their idiosyncrasies. Her conveyance is connected and contradicted by human nature inherited from today’s contemporary lifestyles. Settlement patterns, especially under climate change, are as revealing in nature as wildlife, and how their existence thereof underlines the contextual aspect of health stemming from the environment.
Idiosyncrasies: Behavioral Peculiarities, Distinctive Features, and Physical Reactions
In native tribes, the hummingbird represents life, love, beauty, joy, and freedom. This is likely due to its procession of autonomic compliance to these qualities and by adjacency to contemporary dynamic consistencies. Hummingbirds are sensitive to change, making them important indicators of environmental health.
Again, back to the little things, it is not to underestimate them by their size. Watching the muscle power and strength of the bird in Conlon’s slow-motion graphic stimulates the same power of structure and endurance that the strongest swimmer swimming the 800-meter butterfly encompasses. In real time, its wings are flapping as rapidly as up to 80 beats per second.
That’s fast.
Conlon captures this distinctive and peculiar feature in which its idiosyncrasy is a common-sense way of seeing it from a formal point of view about the resilience such small creatures possess. Their power to bestow is entangled with human nature: Different species of hummingbirds prefer different types of flowers, which helps maintain plant diversity of plant species in their habitats. For humans, this means nutrition and food security, medicinal resources, and ecosystem services—and helping climate regulation by plants alone.
Perhaps the hummingbirds’ vibrant colors construct the symbolic joy embodied in human nature. One cannot undermine the beauty of fragility and, in life, as a connotation of peace.
The Little Things—Ways to Conserve at Home
Planting native flowering plants that are as resilient to climate change as the bird’s unique qualities can help ensure a steady food supply for these pollinators. From a natural standpoint, you can attract these lovely neighbors to come and say hello during the day! Planting native flowering plants can also help to house a nest for the female, who is responsible for caring for her young. Lastly, the hummingbird can help in insect control to those pests that may, unwelcomingly, like to hang around.
Donna Conlon resides and works in Panamá City, Panamá. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Kansas (1991). She also has a master’s in fine arts from the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art (2002). Her work is represented by Diablo Rosso in Panamá and by Espacio Minimo in Madrid. For more information about Conlon and her work, go to www.donnaconlon.com.