Here’s the second matchbox book I did for the September meeting of my prompt challenge group. It’s part of my artist in a matchbox series, and the artist is John James Audubon, the 19th century bird illustrator.
What inspired me was a poem I read 10 or so years ago by the poet David Wagner. He often writes about birds, and his poem The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct vividly describes the tension of how to accurately draw a bird—often 19th century bird illustrators caught and killed the birds they wanted to draw, so it seemed fitting that a box about Audubon should include bird specimens (that I drew and cut out). The top has a US postage stamp, commemorating Audubon with his illustration of the birds in the box.
