Local Spotlight: Troy Abbott

Troy Abbott: A man of many birdcages

As a fine-arts major at the University of Florida, Troy Abbott studied drawing but was increasingly drawn to making videos. After graduating in 1990, he did pastel drawings and big Lichtenstein-style paintings that were all about circles.

"I would take photographs and turn them into half tones like newspaper print and then blow them up really big," he explains. Looking back, he realizes he was trying to figure out what his work was about. As it turns out, it's about birdcages. In them, silent videos of life-sized canaries, finches or doves are depicted via small LCD screens. 

Abbott, who is exhibiting in "9," a group show featuring artists represented by the Robert Fontaine Gallery in Miami, says his first such sculpture included a cage he bought on Lincoln Road and spraypainted black. Inside, a pet shop bird he filmed with his camcorder, appeared on a black-and-white cathode ray tube from a portable television. Perched in the cage, like a quiet pet that requires no food or water, is a bird that never leaves, despite an open door.

To read the rest of Arterpillar's story, visit Sun-Sentinel's June 3 Lifestyle section.