Bird Girl

Bird Girl is a sculpture made in 1936 by Sylvia Shaw Judson in Lake Forest, Illinois. It was sculpted at Ragdale, her family's summer home, and achieved fame when it was featured on the cover of the non-fiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994).

Bird Girl
Front view

Description

Bird Girl is cast in bronze and stands 50 inches (130 cm) tall. She is the image of a young girl wearing a simple dress and a sad or contemplative expression, with her head tilted toward her left shoulder. She stands straight, her elbows propped against her waist as she holds up two bowls out from her sides. The bowls are often described by viewers as "bird feeders".

The sculpture was commissioned as a garden sculpture for a family in Massachusetts. A slight, eight-year-old model named Lorraine Greenman (now Lorraine Ganz) posed for the piece.[1]

The inscription on the pedestal reads:

"We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. II Corinthians 5:8"

Set of four

Only four statues were made from the original plaster cast. The first went to the Massachusetts garden. The second was sent to Washington, D.C., and is now located in Reading, Pennsylvania. The third was purchased by a family in Lake Forest and has never relocated. The fourth and most famous statue was bought by a family in Savannah, Georgia, who named it Little Wendy and set it up at the family's plot in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. It has since been relocated to Telfair Museums' Telfair Academy, where it is on display for museum visitors.[2] Judson donated the original plaster model to the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois.[3]

Book cover

The Bonaventure Cemetery statue sat virtually unnoticed until 1993, when Random House hired Savannah photographer Jack Leigh to shoot an image for the cover of John Berendt's new book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994). At Berendt's suggestion, Leigh searched the Bonaventure Cemetery for a suitable subject. He found the sculpture next to a grave on the Trosdal family plot, at the end of his second day of searching, and had to make the shot quickly as dusk approached. He reportedly spent ten hours in the darkroom adjusting the lighting, giving the photo a moonlit feel and accentuating the halo around the statue's head.

The cover image was an immediate hit, and Berendt called it "one of the strongest book covers I've ever seen". The book, published in 1994, became an all time bestseller, and soon people began flocking to Bonaventure Cemetery to see the sculpture. Due to concern about the amount of traffic at the grave site, the Trosdal family had it removed from the cemetery and later lent it to the Telfair Museums in Savannah, for public display in their Telfair Academy building. In December 2014, the statue was moved from the Telfair Academy to the Telfair Museums' nearby Jepson Center for the Arts. As of April 2019, she is in a special exhibit in the Telfair Academy.[4]

Further casts

In 1995, Judson's daughter Alice Judson Hayes (aka Alice Ryerson Hayes) had a fifth bronze statue created from a mold. That statue was given to Ragdale, an artists' retreat in Lake Forest.[5] Later, an authorized fiberglass replica was made from the original plaster model for use by Macy's in their display windows; it was later moved to a museum in Savannah.[6]

Hayes holds the copyright for the Bird Girl and has actively defended it by filing lawsuits against unauthorized reproductions, especially full-sized replicas. She destroyed the mold that was used to cast the 1995 replica, although the original plaster model still exists. Hayes has licensed smaller-scale replicas, which have sold well. She died on October 13, 2006, passing on the copyright to her daughter, painter Francie Shaw.[7]

Film use

Warner Bros. produced an eponymous film adaptation of Berendt's book in 1997, directed by Clint Eastwood and featuring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. After purchasing the rights to use the sculpture's likeness from Hayes, the studio created a fiberglass replica. The movie incorporated shots of the Bird Girl sculpture on its posters and in the film itself. After the film was completed the replica was sent to the Cliff Dwellers Club in Chicago, Illinois.

Photographer Leigh sued Warner Bros. in November 1997 for copyright infringement over their shots of the Bird Girl replica in the cemetery, which were similar to Leigh's original cover photograph. The lower court ruled that the Hudson sequences with the statue were not infringement, but an appeals court found that the photographs used for promotional purposes, such as posters, bore significant similarities and remanded the matter back to the lower court. Warner Hudson and Leigh then settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Deaths

Sylvia Shaw Judson died in 1978. Although she did not see her Bird Girl sculpture achieve fame, she was already a renowned sculptor whose pieces have been on display in such prestigious locations as the White House, the Massachusetts State House, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Jack Leigh died of colon cancer on May 19, 2004, and is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery, where he took his most famous photograph.

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References
  1. Leroux, Charles (August 25, 1999). "Born in Chicago, Raised in Savannah". Chicago Tribune. Tribune Publishing. Archived from the original on May 31, 2015.
  2. "Telfair Museums Jepson Center". telfair.org. TELFAIR MUSEUMS. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  3. "The Bird Girl". City of Savannah.
  4. "Telfair Museums Jepson Center". telfair.org. TELFAIR MUSEUMS. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  5. "The Bird Girl". City of Savannah.
  6. "The Bird Girl". City of Savannah.
  7. "The Bird Girl". City of Savannah.
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