Artist Kate MccGwire Creates Fluid Sculptures from Thousands of Recycled Feathers

It's hard not to be completely taken by artist <a href="http://www.katemccgwire.com/">Kate MccGwire's</a> stunning sculptures. Fluid in form, yet almost frozen in time, these beautiful works of art have been painstakingly created from tens of thousands of <a href="http://inhabitat.com/chicken-feathers-could-be-used-make-stronger-plastics-no-foolin/">feathers</a> from all flocks of life. Working from her studio in <a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/london">London</a>, MccGwire gathers feathers from everything ranging from pigeons, crows, ducks, magpies and more to create site-sensitive sculptural pieces that gleam with a mystical and hypnotic beauty.

But don't let MccGwire's animal sourced <a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/materials">materials </a>ruffle your own feathers. All of her feathers are received from a network of pigeon racers and farmers who mail her the feathers they've collected when their birds begin molting in the Spring.

Otherwise bound for the yard dumpster, MccGwire's <a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/art">artwork </a>gives these feathers a new medium to fly to new heights.

To create all her sculptures, MccGwire collects, cleans and sorts what she's received and carefully plans the arrangement of feathers for her pieces.

Each of her works reference the site they are installed, and the artist consciously tries to connect specific avifauna with the existing and historic context.

For example, as told to Treehugger, for her 2010 piece Evacuate (seen above), she selected the feathers of birds that would have been cooked in the oven of the home over the 300 years it has been in existence.

An installation in a setingt deep below the London streets.

Her 2010 work <em>Slick<em> uses iridescent blue magpie feathers, which took her years to collect, since magpies only boast a few blue feathers each.

Her pieces look radiate with a disarming beauty, and look as if they could come to life at any second.

To see more examples of Kate MccGwire's work click <a href="http://www.allvisualarts.org/artists/kate-mccgwire.aspx">here</a>.