The plastic bird, as Price has written, “had become a signpost for the transgression of social and cultural convention.”Īll the while, Pop art and its celebration of mass-produced imagery was making its way into the art-historical canon. Then, in 1979, a group of University of Wisconsin–Madison students covered the lawn outside their dean’s office with 1,000 flamingos-a playful affront to the administration. Before long, the lawn ornament was popping up in gay pride parades. ![]() In Waters’s “Pink Flamingo,” a yard dotted with plastic flamingos served as the backdrop for a story about a bold, brash drag queen. “Before that, only the wealthy could afford to have bad taste.”īy the 1970s, members of the American counterculture had latched onto the bird as not only a symbol of tackiness, but of resistance to cultural norms. ![]() “We sold people tropical elegance in a box for less than $10,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2007, when asked why he thought his flamingos flew off the shelves. Featherstone himself admitted this was an important ingredient of the lawn ornament’s success. “And art critics promptly pegged it as a prime example of the despicable spread of kitsch.”īut instead of faltering under the criticism, the plastic flamingo’s popularity thrived on its reputation as a symbol of kitsch. “Working-class homeowners readily planted it on their modest lawns-a nod to the marble or bronze sculpture on vaster properties,” recalled historian Jenny Price in 2006. But they were just as quickly reviled as markers of bad taste. They were an instant hit, selling by the thousands and spreading over suburban yards across the country. The listing came with the helpful description: “Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape.” They were sold in pairs, via the Sears catalog, for $2.76 a box. Later that year, the forms emerged from the Union Products factory in sunset-pink plastic, complete with wire legs sharp enough to pierce even the thickest, fertilizer-saturated lawns. It took Featherstone about three weeks to sculpt the birds from clay, adding hooked beaks and ridges representing feathers. In one, the bird stood tall in the other, it was bent over, in the midst of snacking. Featherstone chose two images of birds from the article (titled “Ballerinas in Pink”) to work from. But as luck would have it, National Geographic published a feature on the crane-necked creatures at just the right time. Live flamingos weren’t easy to come by in Worcester (they’re native to South America, Africa, and according to a recent study, the state of Florida). Featherstone’s higher-ups were pleased with the results, but it was was his next task-to come up with a design for a pink flamingo-that defined his career (or, as The New York Times has quipped, “blew his duck out of the water”). After placing the duck carefully in the sink so that he could sketch it, he released it into a park. He wanted to do it right, so he bought a live version of the aquatic bird and brought it home. His first assignment was to sculpt a plastic duck (the resonance between his last name and his professional affiliation with fowl was never lost on Featherstone). That decision launched what would become his life’s work. So when he got wind of a job opening at Union Products, a local company specializing in plastic lawn decorations, he applied. ![]() He loved sculpting, but had no burning ambitions to establish his own studio. “Because you’re not getting out alive anyway.”įeatherstone was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1936, and graduated from the school of the Worcester Art Museum at the age of 21. “You don’t take yourself too seriously,” he’d often joke to his wife. It’s also become synonymous with Featherstone himself, an artist who enthusiastically embraced his legacy as the progenitor of a splashy, mass-produced product. The pink flamingo is a barometer of taste the brunt of jokes the city of Madison, Wisconsin’s official bird a symbol of LGBTQ pride and the titular inspiration for a fabulously naughty 1972 cult film by John Waters. In the process, it’s become more than just a flamboyant decorating device. Since then, the Phoenicopterus ruber plasticus, as Featherstone playfully anointed his creation, has been reproduced more than 20 million times. But that’s precisely what he did, several months later, upon hatching the plastic pink flamingo-that neon totem of tropical tackiness. When Don Featherstone graduated from art school in 1957, he had no intention of creating the world’s most famous (or infamous, depending on who you talk to) lawn ornament.
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