Buzzard

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    Photo: Ron Lee/The Silver Factory
1989
Found wood, nail, paint
16 x 9.75 x 4 inches
Collection of
Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

Griffin's Buzzard, black folklore's talisman of death, displays cauterized, oozing wings, as if the great African American metaphor of flight has itself become disabled; the scavenger-wizard becomes carrion-fowl. (The buzzard is often described in folktales as unable to plan for or anticipate the nature: in one tale he shivers through rain, muttering that he will build himself a home as soon as the storm passes, then when the sun begins to shine, he convinces himself that the rain will never come back.) The buzzard is dying death: if death is dying, is it then rejuvenating, living again as something new?