We were very lucky to have Elsie Dentes join us to lead an art experience at our 2008 Celebrate Urban Birds Workshop at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.  She’s originally from Ithaca,…graduated from Cornell,  and she and her husband, George Dentes, returned to Ithaca to raise their children. 

She has worked as a designer and illustrator, and anyone traveling around Ithaca may have seen her artwork featured on Family Reading Partnership banners around town, among many other projects. 

She began quilting in high school but really intensified her interest when she worked at the American Folk Art Museum in NYC.

She works with what she calls a ‘palette’ of fabrics, (please note her use of shape, light, and pattern, and jewel-like color.)  Elsie collaborated with us to develop a fiber/fabric/bird art project that would be easy to conduct with  groups…and help them enjoy doing deep observation. 

Last year, Elsie photographed Killdeer nesting outside the Cornell Lab of Ornithology window. She enlarged the photos (see below), fit them into one coherent image, placed tracing paper over it, and then carefully crafted the cloth collage seen. This is a work in progress.

Elsie describes her process visually