A unique video/photographic art form tracing bird flight will come to earth at the Bosworth Lecture Series on Thursday, Oct 13, at 7 p.m. at the Rogers Free Library. The event is open to the public.

RISD Professor Emeritus Dennis Hlynsky will present his form of “skywriting,” or what he calls photographic frame stacking to create tracings of birds in flight.

“It is like writing smokey letters into a clear blue sky with a plane,” Prof Hlynsky said. “Leaving a trail where the plane has flown,” a practice started in Wordl War II. His own experiments tracing the movement of birds has gained worldwide attention. See  https://vimeo.com/32363204

“It allows you to see what’s too fleeting to the naked eye,” he continued. One favorite skywriting location for Prof Hlynsky is at the junction of Routes 6 and 114A in Seekonk, MA, where starlings gather on the power lines by the thousands at sunset during winter months.

Taking off in unison – as if on some secret cue – their flight patterns create the artform as Prof Hlynsky records and traces the seemingly random bird swirls.

“I’m interested in how art affects the world,” he said. “The relationship between the starlings and our traffic patterns sparked my sociobiology interests. I want us to be more aware of the beauty and wonder all around us.”

He retired recently after 36 years at RISD where he recalled a rewarding comment from one student which was, “You’ve changed the way I look at the sky.”

Another project took him to Lawrence, MA, to shoot video of 60,000 migrating crows. “Crows are great fliers,” Prof Hlynsky said. “They come together around sunset in the winter.” His gallery of six separate videos with soundtracks of crows were displayed at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence.

Prof Hlynsky maintains humankind has urbanized the environment. “Nature didn’t go away….but what has nature become?” he asks. His response has been to build environments for animals in his 20’ by 30’ backyard and mount his trail camera on a tripod to survey the birds, raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs…even the insects and worms. “I record what’s in front of me and see where it goes,” he said.

A professor of video and computer-generated images, Prof Hlynsky began teaching at RISD in the mid-1980s and served as the chair of the Film/Animation/Video Program for 12 years. An early adopter of electronic media, he soon traded sculpture and photography for video.

Influenced by the conceptualists of the 60’s, he focused on the creation of artworks to shape local communities. He has engaged in WaterFire in Providence; May Day in Tiverton; PVD fest 2017; and Providence Independence Day festivities.

Between 1977 and 1987 Dennis also advocated for children and families with life threatening illness by making films in the medical community, a project that has also gained national recognition.

The Roswell S. Bosworth, Jr. Lecture Series is presented by the Men’s Club, a Bristol organization that pays tribute to its founding member and former editor/publisher of the East Bay Newspapers with lectures of general interest.

Upcoming lectures:

Nov. 10: Portsmouth Abbey Brother Sixtus Roslevich on “The Warrior Saints”

Jan 12: Dan Santos on Casey Farm of Historic New England