Walton Ford’s Visitation.
Color etching, aquatint, spit-bite and drypoint on paper, 2004; 44 x 31 in.
Walton Ford’s natural history print dramatizes the tornado of life described by Aldo Leopold. As Ford imagines it, the huge flock of voracious birds swarms with life and death. The one male bird crams a giant acorn into the maw of another, while fellow birds lie crushed beneath the mass. A sea of blue bodies stretches to the horizon.
Ford’s print offers an ironic twist on Audubon’s loving pair. It also carries the tone of criticism for the all-devouring hordes that could strip almost all edible mast from the forest floor. The image offers up a mirror of human behavior, showing a group caught up in the frenzy of incessant and excessive consumption, heedless of the consequences.