Untitled (Red and White Bird)

Albert Zahn was known as “the Birdman of Door County.” After retiring from his dairy farm on the Wisconsin peninsula, he built a small retirement house and embellished it with hundreds of carved and painted cedar birds, angels, and figures dressed in the attire of his Pomeranian homeland. Zahn was regarded as a devout Lutheran, yet he believed the natural world was the most spiritual of places and spent his days in the cedar woods, watching birds and carving. Manifestations of the winged form and the metaphor of flight were prominent at the site he called Bird’s Park, which was pervaded by the theme of spiritual elevation.