H L Birdsong
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smidgeonpress.bsky.social
H L Birdsong
@smidgeonpress.bsky.social
Artist, etc. in Portland, OR
(she/her/they/them)
https://heatherleebirdsong.com/news

Dec 2025: Russo Lee Gallery, PDX (group)
Mar 2026: Russo Lee Gallery, PDX (solo)
I will be processing my thoughts and feelings about it for a bit. I hope a lot of people visit and enjoy the show—seems likely, if attendance on this cloudy Friday afternoon was any indication.
November 15, 2025 at 1:11 AM
If I read one more uncritically fawning article about LLMs, I might actually throw up. Every article like this should include detailed information about LLMs’ impact on the environment—including how much the rest of us offset costs through increasing utility bills.
November 14, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Honestly, I didn’t either at first, despite my habit
November 12, 2025 at 6:51 AM
I sometimes catch myself holding a pencil in my mouth when working—like when I need hands free to use a ruler, or move my drawing paper to a different angle. And then there are the people who chew on pencils when thinking.
November 12, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Always amused that this modern ruin, whimsically called the Witch’s House, is actually a former public restroom built in the 1930s and damaged in a storm a few decades later, then never repaired. Forest Park exists largely because its silty rise is so unstable (see: history of Leif Erickson Drive)
November 11, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Insisting that we be polite to a programmed script while corporate policy demands maximum human exploitation is exactly the kind of dystopian novel I never wanted to live in
November 11, 2025 at 12:20 AM
I worked in commercial galleries for 10 years, and where an artist got their degree(s)—or if they even had any—was the last thing any of us looked at on a CV. It’s a biographical curiosity, not a criterion for exhibitions or representation. Most (though not all) gallerists see it this way.
November 8, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Which is why I’m so glad to see more and more museum workers unionize, even when institutions fail to recognize or respect them. Without collective bargaining, directors throw the workers who form the foundation of these institutions under the proverbial bus without a second thought.
November 8, 2025 at 10:28 PM
So you have institutions flashing fancy architectural renders, kissing asses of the richest, most morally bankrupt people they can, and screwing over the everyday workers who actually make daily operations possible. Wages for FOH workers are offensively low nation-wide (many are artists, too)
November 8, 2025 at 10:28 PM
(Side-eyeing my own local museum for exactly this—shortfall on capital campaign funding leading to increasingly desperate membership appeals, Ferriso departing, constant entry-level job postings that never get filled because they’re not actually reviewing applications but want to look hopeful)
November 8, 2025 at 10:28 PM
The thing with huge capital campaigns for renovations & rebuilds is that they’re almost always for ego rather than an institution’s mission—and almost always leave the institution more in debt at the end, while whoever spearheaded it flies off to a new (better?) job before the final bills come due
November 8, 2025 at 10:28 PM
I always love seeing this missive pop up. I once suggested “Dear Lucy” as a title for an exhibition I helped curate—in part because I was so surprised I couldn’t find any evidence that anyone had used it before.
November 6, 2025 at 8:20 PM
(I did not color correct this photo at all, which is why it looks a bit dull compared to the earlier detail)
November 5, 2025 at 10:49 PM
Ta-da!
These figures were inspired by a photo of an aunt and uncle (siblings) who were important figures in my youth. Most of my relationships with biological family are—well—complicated, let’s say. They were not exceptions.
November 5, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Margo’s grumpy face is perfect
November 5, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Working out scale and placement for these two figures
November 2, 2025 at 11:51 PM
The HP app is useless. I was endlessly frustrated by it when the artist-run gallery I was part of for a bit got a new HP printer. But it did waste a lot of my volunteer admin time.
October 31, 2025 at 11:25 PM