Recovery in Flight: The Sculptures of Grainger McKoy

Exhibition Website

Oct 12 2018 - Feb 17 2019

Cameron Art Museum

Wilmington, NC

From the detailed beginnings of the single iconic feather, Grainger McKoy transforms his intricately carved birds into gravity-defying sculptures that play with form and space. McKoy finds the greatest poetry from observation and understanding of the bird’s upstroke, or recovery stroke, as he describes, “This motion of the bird is when it is least productive and most vulnerable, yet here can be found a grace and beauty that exist nowhere else.”

The renowned South Carolina wood carver and artist grew up in Sumter, South Carolina, and attended Clemson University, earning a degree in zoology, while also studying architecture. After graduating, McKoy apprenticed for eighteen months with the renowned bird carver Gilbert Maggioni in Beaufort. McKoy’s work has been exhibited at the High Museum of Art, Brandywine River Museum and Brookgreen Gardens.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Sculpture
  • American
  • Animals / Wildlife / Nature
  • Grainger McKoy

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