Don Featherstone is known for Design creator of pink flamingo yard ornaments, sculpture. Some of them, too, have appropriated the flamingo into their work. Don Featherstone (1936 - 2015) was active/lived in Massachusetts. The flamingos cluster on lawns, emulating nature (just as a lot of art does) but with a big wink-wink.Īnd we have all been in on the joke, not outsiders looking through the gallery glass wall. The interesting difference is that everyday people became, in a sense, the appropriators instead of a famous artist. The pink flamingo is now part of pop culture in the manner of Andy Warhol's soup cans. Waters was making an aesthetic statement that has been misread in some ways.
DON FEATHERSTONE MOVIE
The pink flamingo is rivaled only by the garden gnome for its reputation as tacky, helped along in 1972 John Waters' cult movie Pink Flamingos. "I know some people think plastic flamingos are tasteless and tacky," he said. Featherstone told the Tampa Bay Times in 2002 of his work for plastics company Union Products. "I got myself a National Geographic magazine and found a photograph to use as a model. Featherstone, who suffered from Lewy body dementia, was part of a modern industry that mass-marketed lawn ornaments to a larger public, thus ensuring that tastemakers would become dismissive of them. He was at the Caldwell Home in Fitchburg.ĭon Featherstone had two children, Judith Nelson and Harold Featherstone.Mr. “Donald was a class act,” Nancy Featherstone said of her husband. He got sick years ago, but it was somewhat manageable - that is, until 2 1/2 years ago. Nancy said her husband had a lengthy battle with Lewy body disease, which is a form of dementia. She said she was “saddened, really, to the core, to hear of his passing.”
He had brought a distinction to the Montachusett area because of his famous pink flamingo. “It’s just overwhelming how talented he was. “He was so generous and kind and so artistic,” she said. Judith Lindstedt, director of the documentary “Featherstone’s Flamingo: Pink and Proud,” which was about Don, called him a “marvelous person.” “He always realized how completely goofy it was that people would fall in love with the flamingo, but they did.” “He was a very nice guy,” said Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of Annals of Improbable Research, the organization that awarded Featherstone the Ig Nobel prize, whose title is a parody of the Nobel and which is given for unusual or trivial scientific achievements, in 1996.
“Very good marriage, very strong.Īnd so many others said they were lucky to know him. “Donald and I had a very strong relationship,” she said. Next month - July 23 - would have been their 39th anniversary. Right then, he knew she was the one.Īt the beginning of their first date in January 1976, he gave her an engagement ring. Featherstone has successfully represented a broad range of clients on matters relating to employment, workers' compensation, wage and hour, discrimination, privacy, wrongful. In August 1975, they were both in Chicago for a trade show, and Don saw Nancy walking toward him, she said. In it, there is a character, a pink lawn flamingo, named in his honor: Featherstone, played by Jim Cummings.Ī film distributed by Disney was perhaps the most appropriate, for his life was one of magic, right down to how he and Nancy met. His flamingo also got him into a movie, 2011’s “Gnomeo & Juliet,” distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It ended up on a gift card that is still sold today, she said. One was a version of the painting called “The Bookworm,” which he submitted to a contest at the Fitchburg Public Library. Painting took a back seat.īut when he retired, he got back into painting, sharing his work only with her. He worked for Union Products for 43 years and made over 600 items for them, she said. “He particularly enjoyed sculpting and painting,” she said. “Donald had nine years of formal art training,” Nancy Featherstone said, adding that he was “an extremely talented artist.” Featherstone resided in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he kept 57 plastic flamingos on his back lawn. “He got a kick out of it he enjoyed it,” she said, referring to the recognition he received for his creation.įeatherstone, born in Worcester and raised in Berlin, studied art at the Worcester Art Museum. Donald Featherstone (Janu June 22, 2015) was an American artist most widely known for his 1957 creation of the plastic pink flamingo while working for Union Products. Nancy said she’d tell people - often in Don’s presence - that her husband was the one who created the popular lawn ornament.Īnd they’d say, “I never knew someone actually did that. And it was something for which he’d become famous throughout the world.īut it was never something he’d brag about or bring up on his own. Her husband, who died Monday at the age of 79, was the creator of the pink lawn flamingo. You see, the flamingo wasn’t a random gift.
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