Jane
Kim's mural documents the rise of Aves across the world, while staying true to
the artist’s aesthetic.
November
08, 2018
In late
2015, California-based science illustrator Jane Kim finished
the final brush stroke of a mural featuring all 243 families of
modern birds and their extinct predecessors—a process that took no less than
two-and-a-half years. Wanting to maintain both artistry and scientific
integrity, she consulted dozens of ornithologists on how to best represent each
of the 270 life-size species and map them according to their respective places
of origin. Every detail, from shape to color palette, was scrutinized and
vetted.
Kim’s
magnum opus, titled From So Simple a
Beginning, lives in the Cornell Lab
of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, though you don’t have
to travel all the way there to see it. The mural is now
available in book form: a 224-page tour of the motley avian crew and
its backstory, with essays from Kim, her Inkdwell partner
Thayer Walker, and Cornell scientists. Wall of Birdsinvites readers to not
only see the stunning paintings up close, but also to explore the evolutionary
genesis of their favorite birds, continent by continent.
