Parlor + Watch Your Eyes

A gigantic birdcage hangs from a live oak, literally made from the history of New Orleans' salvaged wrought iron. Within the cage, two elaborately feather-plumed individuals act out a domestic scene. Coon collaborates with fabric artist Tora Lopez to create the intricate costumes. The birds feather-dust, sing and dance, read, and wash in a birdbath. In the cage with them are a number of live birds, twittering and singing about.

They prepare and eat deviled eggs, suggesting both a blind cannibalistic tendency as well as the industrious will to make ends meet. Feeding on the flesh of our past and future, we cannot always see far beyond the confines of our respective cages. The image is both foreboding and mythically hopeful. The human birds are beautiful, elegant, forthright and gracious, but nonetheless trapped, feeding their eggs to the passing audience.

Like a modern rendering of the phoenix, we are eternally willful to rise from the ashes. And yet the bitter irony is that we are creating the fire of destruction within which we burn.