ART CREDITS

The following images are featured on large-screen versions of this website:

Mountainscape by Eve Biddle

Shapes and Patterns and Boxes by Kawandeep Virdee

To learn more about the artists behind these pieces and how we connected with them, keep reading below!

EVE BIDDLE

Eve Biddle is an artist, curator, collaborator, and self-described culture maker who works to foster connections between people, build projects and institutions, facilitate public art, and help bring other artist’s art into the world. She is co-founder and co-director of the The Wassaic Project, an artist-run nonprofit gallery, artist residency, and education center in Wassaic, NY.

In was in her administrative capacity at the Wassaic Project that we were first connected to Eve, via our mutual friend Caitlin Canty, back in 2010. Although our attempt to put together a show in Wassaic came to naught, we've kept tabs on Eve and her work since then. We are so pleased to feature a piece of her artwork as part of the cover artwork collage for Everything Is Alive.

Read more about Eve’s work at her website, evebiddle.works.

KAWANDEEP VIRDEE

Kawandeep Virdee is an author, event organizer, and artist specializing in interactive media and public art. His art has shown at the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston Convention Center, SFMOMA, Transmediale, and the MIT Media Lab, and has been covered in The Atlantic, Science, Vice, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Boston Globe.

Auyon first met Kawandeep at a pre-opening to a climbing gym in Somerville, MA in 2013. Both Auyon and Kawandeep were sporting clear-rimmed glasses and mustaches (Auyon's neatly trimmed, Kawandeep's waxed and curled). Sparks, unsurprisingly, flew. The ebbs, flows, and geographic uncertainty of their respective mid-20s pulled them apart, but Auyon and Kawandeep re-connected in 2023, just in time to incorporate one of Kawandeep's pieces into the cover artwork collage of Everything Is Alive.

Read more about Kawandeep’s latest work at his website, whichlight.com.

BARBARA TAKENAGA

Takenaga_Lift 2011, 54x45, acrylic on linen.jpg

Barbara Takenaga is an abstract painter and has been a professor of art at Williams College (where the band met) for over 30 years. She divides her time between Williamstown, MA, and New York City, where she maintains a studio. Her work has been widely exhibited at institutions including Mass MOCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; National Academy Museum, New York; Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia, PA; and International Print Center, New York.

In 2015 we began looking for a work of visual art to feature on the cover of Birds Say—a search that started and ended with Barbara. Her fantastically rich and detailed pieces often feel both dark and luminous, conjuring both the cosmic and the microscopic. Many of her pieces are also nostalgic, inspired by vivid memories of childhood dreams.

We’re thrilled that we’ve been able to feature Barbara’s work on three full-length albums:

“Lift” (2011, acrylic on linen) — cover of Birds Say (2015)
“Black Triptych (blaze)” (2016, acrylic on linen) — cover of Extralife (2018)
“Small Springs” (2015, acrylic on wood panel) — cover of Instrumentals Vol. 1 (2020) and package design of Fish Pond FIsh (2020)

All works reproduced with permission of the artist and DC Moore Gallery in New York, NY. Please visit Barbara's website here and the gallery’s website here.