Bird Girl

Coordinates: 32°4.641′N 81°5.355′W / 32.077350°N 81.089250°W / 32.077350; -81.089250

Bird Girl is a sculpture made in 1936 by Sylvia Shaw Judson in Lake Forest, Illinois. It was sculpted at Ragdale, her family's summer home, and achieved fame when it was featured on the cover of the non-fiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994).

Description

Bird Girl is cast in bronze and stands 50 inches tall (127 cm). She is the image of a young girl wearing a simple dress and a sad or contemplative expression, with her head tilted toward her left shoulder. She stands straight, her elbows propped against her waist as she holds up two bowls out from her sides. The bowls are often described by viewers as "bird feeders".

The sculpture was commissioned as a garden sculpture for a family in Massachusetts. A slight, eight-year-old model named Lorraine Greenman (now Lorraine Ganz) posed for the piece.

Set of four

Only four statues were made from the original plaster cast. The first went to the Massachusetts garden. The second was sent to Washington, D.C. and is now located in Reading, Pennsylvania. The third was purchased by a family in Lake Forest and has never relocated. The fourth and most famous statue was bought by a family in Savannah, Georgia, who named it Little Wendy and set it up at her family's plot in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. It has since been relocated to Telfair Museums' Jepson Center for the Arts, where it is on display for museum visitors. Judson donated the original plaster model to the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois.