Christmas Card from Helen and Dick Bishop 1943

This Christmas card was made by Richard Evett Bishop, maybe for Helen and Dick themselves, and it shows a flock of geese in flight. The whole thing is made up of these tiny, etched lines, like he’s building the image one feather at a time. Look at the way those lines swarm together to give you the sense of the bird’s body, then spread out to create the delicate fanning of their wings. The texture of the paper is really nice too, you can almost feel the grain. Bishop's put so much detail into the texture of those wings, the way they catch the light. You can almost hear the whoosh and flap as they cut through the air. It’s like he's saying, "Here’s to lightness, here’s to movement, here’s to taking off." Something that reminds me a little of Audubon’s interest in Ornithology, but here there is something really special, because it’s a gift. It suggests that art is always a conversation, and we’re all invited to join in.