Starling and the Tattoo

by Tony Fitzpatrick

Mixed Media

The day I got my first tattoo, I learned a lesson in writing and looking at art. I’d learned a technique at a workshop with writing teacher, Pricilla Long, for writing with authenticity by creating a lexicon of specificity before typing a first sentence. Following her recommendation, I began creating and keeping lexicons from different situations. With that in mind, as I chatted up the artist applying my Celtic knot, I asked him the correct name for the machine he used for tattooing. He said, “it’s called a tattoo machine.”

With that memory called to mind, I descended to the lower level of Great Lakes Tattoo Shop, to see Songbirds and Crucifixions, an exhibit of twenty mixed media collages by Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick. The show opened October 6^th 2025; sadly Fitzpatrick passed away from a heart attack six days later. The official obituary creates a picture of a man with extraordinary productive creativity: poet, actor, published author, gallery owner, musician, playwright, radio host, newspaper columnist, printmaker, and painter. His work is found in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum to name a few. His work is in collections owned by Bill Gates, Harrison Ford, Martin Scorsese, and others. Posts on social media show a prolific, kind, engaging person whose artwork is on album covers, wine, beer and hard cider bottles, tattoos, and book covers. His fascination and dedication to birds is a frequent focus. His t-shirt designs helped fund Chicago Bird (high-rise) Collision Monitors.

A dog features in three of the works in the show, one or more birds center all the others. I zero in on a work with a starling, a song bird with a target on its breast. This piece includes elements recurring in others: a faux postage cancel stamp with Fitzpatrick’s place and date of birth - Chicago, Nov. 24, 1958; a Chiquita banana sticker; pieces of a Chicago map; matchbook cover from a local restaurant; umbrellas; S&H Green -Trading Stamps used until the late eighties; musical notes; half-moons or fans, in this case in black and white; greenery; and his signature, T.F. inside a red hand-drawn oval, and a date. On a white background, a graph supports the entire image, as if the artist envisioned a running stitch in black sewn from top to bottom, side to side, inside a thin red raised border, which cuts in at each corner to allow for collage elements, primarily cancelled US postage stamps, to appear “outside the box.”  

Unique to this collage is the specific year, 1987, when Fitzpatrick was 29 years old. A record rainfall, the wettest in Chicago history fell that summer. The umbrella elements would be useful, but not much help against the floods and chaos it caused. Small circles in red, gray, yellow, and blue act as points on the graph, but more likely, as Chicagoans often point out, Chicago is easy to get around, it’s laid out on a grid; perhaps each circle is a point on that Chicago grid. Two Chicago map pieces name areas where at least one of his studios was located, are up against a cancelled stamp commemorating poet Carl Sandburg, perhaps an homage to Sandburg who shared Fitzpatrick’s reputation for connecting with many strands of life and a deep respect for Chicago.  A globe offers a clue that there’s a bigger world. A repeat of the American flag in cancelled postage stamps and in elements entering the bottom and as if people are falling   from beneath, it at the top. A hand-drawn red bridge behind it, ending somewhere on the grid, or leading out of the picture. Chicago is central, there are people entering with cover from the flag, or from over the bridge.

Starlings, the most prominent element of the collage, are social creatures, with loud calls and massive flocks that fly in hypnotic murmuration. Their noise, corrosive droppings, and damage to crops target them for vilification. This starling in this collage stands bold, an orange halo around its head, its eye looks directly at the viewer, depicting its dignity and disdain even as it sings on.  The starling is a starling, is anyone vilified. Fitzpatrick donated his art and name to causes for birds and for underserved people. However, there is another side to starlings. They are considered an invasive species which aggressively compete with natives for food and nesting sites.  This collage was created recently, perhaps, Fitzpatrick suggests that there is goodness in those who are vilified, much as aggressive immigrants are alleged to compete for jobs, food, and housing.

Describing this collage is a lot like the lesson of the name of the tattoo machine. Each element is exactly what it looks like. Within the frame, in juxtaposition to the central character, to the items near it, and to the whole, it is so much more.