A new art installation in Reid, “All the Rare Birds,” seeks to memorialize Kyle Martz ‘07, a beloved Whitman alum and staff member and victim of homicide in Walla Walla in the summer of 2019. Martz worked at Whitman for seven years in different positions eventually becoming Whitman’s international student and scholar advisor.
The installation was funded in part by Whitman. The rest was crowdsourced through a GoFundMe started by a group of Whitman alumni who studied with him during their college days or were mentored by him while Martz was a staff member. As of the time of publication, the GoFundMe has raised over $11,000.
One such alumn is Harmony Burright ‘06, who met Martz in 2003 when they were students at Whitman. Burright credits former Whitman professor Elyse Semerdjian’s LinkedIn posts about Martz for inspiring her to take action in her grief. Eventually the two connected in person, and through Semerdjian, Burright met Daniel Forbes ‘93, an adjunct art professor at Whitman and the artist behind the installation.
“I’m so grateful for Daniel’s vision because when he shared it across the dinner table at Elyse’s home, I was like, yes, this feels right,” Burright said. “We proceeded from there to kind of check in with others about how they felt. Every conversation we had, the project morphed, the project changed, the project made space for other ideas. Eventually we had the idea of doing these workshops to bring people in, to co-create the sculpture.”
“All the Rare Birds” took shape over the course of multiple different art-based workshops hosted for those grieving Martz’s death.
“It’s just a different kind of death. It creates a tear in the fabric of reality that is difficult to reckon with,” Burright said.
“I wanted to create a space where people could come together and just be, wherever they were in their experience,” Forbes said. “For myself, art has been such a powerful container and such a tremendous vehicle for catharsis. In this project, I have felt more like a conduit than an author. Part of being that conduit was [asking], ‘how can I bring other people into this project so that they’re represented.’ At the workshops, anyone could have come; it was for people who knew Kyle, but then again, expanding on that notion of the Rare Bird, all of us have people that impacted our lives that may not be here anymore.”
These workshops were driven by alumni who felt Martz did not receive a proper memorial on campus. Michael Espinoza ‘08 is a visual artist who was friends with Martz when they attended Whitman together in the early 2000s. They collaborated with Burright and Forbes in the early stages of the installation.
“Harmony reached out to me after failed attempts at memorial by the college,” Espinoza said.
Such failed attempts include a ginkgo tree that had been potted and decorated as part of a memorial for Martz in the Steven’s Gallery. The tree was later planted behind the Glover-Alston Intercultural Center. Maxx Fidalgo ‘18, a writer who interned for Martz while a student at Whitman, remembers the tree as a place for gathering.
“It was something that at least people could go to. It became a place for people to meet. People would leave little gifts and rocks and little memoriams for him there,” Fidalgo said.
“The thing about Kyle’s tree was it was planted behind a hedge behind the Glover-Alston Center. The first time I went to see his tree, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? It’s so hidden.’ There wasn’t a plaque or anything,” Burright said, adding that “It wasn’t just a tree. It was a part of this space and it was imbued with meaning.”
Earlier this semester, as the new junior-senior housing project broke ground, Martz’s tree was removed.
“They just tore through it,” Fidalgo said.
Of the community workshops that were held this year for the “All the Rare Birds” art installation, one was led by Espinoza in Portland at the Oregon Contemporary Art Museum.
“I created a queer grief ritual in Portland with participants. The purpose of the ritual was to invite the presence of a variety of different queer ancestors, as well as the presence of Kyle, by sharing our memories of [them all]. It started as a kind of space-making, so [we] opened a circle around an altar that I created. From there, we went around the room and talked about memories of Kyle and memories of important people who have intersected our lives… After that, we used our bodies in dancing to activate the space, and then from there we moved into an art-making workshop where we took some templates that were made for the installation and we decorated them,” Espinoza said.
“In some cultures, when you lose someone, there’s physical expression. People are wailing. It is not reserved. It is not quiet. It is shared, and it is vocal,” Burright said.
At the other workshops, many of which were hosted on campus, those grieving Martz were invited to draw while reflecting on the “rare birds” in their lives. These drawings later informed Forbes’s sculptures.
“His birds are assembled from common objects—found objects, household objects—that may not be in use anymore, that may be damaged. He assembles them into creatures,” Burright said.
The network of people grieving Martz spans across the country. Forbes said he was regularly mailed found objects to be included in the sculptures.
“These birds can be angry, they can be sad…We had some people who arrived [at the workshops] and it was clear that it was so uncomfortable for them. I said, ‘these don’t have to be finished. Once you enter this space, you are not required to stay. Whatever you can tolerate, whatever you are able to hold or release, that’s what this is for,’” Forbes said.
The tree itself is based on the mythical tree of life. Forbes says they chose the tree of life as a symbol because its meaning is accessible across many cultures. Moreover, the art piece was installed in Reid because it was where Martz worked for many years.
“There are a lot of stories in that tree,” Burright said.
As of the time of publication, Martz’s name has yet to adorn the art installation. According to Burright and Forbes, his name is coming, and that will mark the material completion of “All the Rare Birds.”