LeeAnn Skinner – Fine Art Honorable Mention/ Fall 2024

Congratulations on receiving a Fine Art Honorable Mention/ Spring 2024 and best wishes ongoing to:

LEEANN SKINNER, a Senior at Washburn University

‘I wanted the focus of my upcoming senior exhibition to be a specific species. Whooping Cranes are one of the two endangered bird species in Kansas where I live. They pass through the Quivira and Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands in western Kansas on their migratory route in the spring and fall. Whooping Cranes have a remarkable conservation success story with their population being a mere 21 in 1944, and their population has risen in the last century to over 800. Whooping cranes are intelligent birds that display fascinating social behaviors and form lifelong bonds. Using Watercolor, I am working on a surrealism series based on parallels between the behaviors of Whooping Cranes and people. Behaviors such as the way cranes and humans play, call to each other, and exhibit relaxed social behaviors, which in bird behaviors is called “loafing”. I am merging photographs I have taken of people I know in urban settings, with photos of Whooping Cranes. I am implementing similar lighting on the figures and painting the interiors to have flooded floors to bring in a sense of habitats merging. I hope that by taking a scene with a sense of mundanity and merging it with something unfamiliar, people will take a second glance at the cranes in the scene and wonder what is important about them.”