Installed: 4/10/2025
About the Mural: This mosaic mural in Harlem offers a window into the boreal forest—the massive biome that offers critical habitat for birds and essential resources for life on this planet. Stretching across 1.5 billion acres at the top of the continent, the North American boreal is sometimes referred to as the “bird nursery” of the continent, the nesting ground where hundreds of species start their lives; each year after nesting season, up to 5 billion birds fan out from the region across the hemisphere. “It’s just a forest with no comparison on Earth,” says artist Susan Stair.
The boreal contains a range of landscapes that different species depend on, a diversity that Stair highlights through four different habitats in this mural: scrub, wetlands, waterways, and forest. Stair carefully pieced together these 14 birds and their environments using a range of materials—hand-poured glass pieces, mirrored bathroom tiles, gold leaf, clay impressions from trees and plants. She tried to capture the individuality of each bird in the hopes that her neighbors could get to know them better. “They’re not generalities. They are specific,” Stair says. “And each one is spectacular.”
Stair calls the piece a guerilla mosaic, a style she’s created of applying her colorful pieces to light, weatherproof panels so they can be easily installed and moved around in public spaces. She’s previously used the technique to highlight the issue of climate change in public parks across the city. Now, she hopes to inspire conservation for the boreal forest, whose vital habitat and massive stores of carbon are threatened by industrial logging and mining. “You only save what you love,” Stair says, which means “we have to all start loving that forest a great deal.”
About the Birds: The mural offers snapshots of four varied landscapes in the boreal and the birds that rely on them. All of them face risks from a changing climate, which is already transforming the boreal with shorter winters, thawing permafrost, and increasing wildfires.
The first panel (far left) depicts species that nest in scrub habitat, the semi-open areas of shrubs and thickets along the tundra. These include the Harris’s Sparrow, Orange-crowned Warbler, and Alder Flycatcher, which peek out from their tiled perches. The Northern Shrike, a tough predator that soars above the scene in its striking black-and-white plumage, could lose up to 93 percent of its summer range—nearly all of it in the boreal—if warming continues at its current pace, according to Audubon’s Survival By Degrees report.
The North American boreal is home to the world’s largest source of unfrozen freshwater. That includes a quarter of the world’s remaining wetlands, and in the next panel, Stair features birds that depend on this important network: Greater Yellowlegs, LeConte’s Sparrow, and Yellow Rail—a secretive marsh dweller whose populations have already declined from habitat loss. Larger water bodies in the boreal include rivers and more than 1.5 million lakes, the ecosystems depicted in Stair’s third panel. Among the birds that rely on these: the colorful Barrow’s Goldeneye and Harlequin Duck, along with the striking Whooping Crane. After being brought back from near extinction, the only self-sustaining population of Whooping Cranes flies 2,500 miles to breed in the boreal.
The final mosaic scene focuses on the forest, home to small yet hardy species like the White-winged Crossbill, Boreal Chickadee, and Canada Jay, as well as the powerful Northern Hawk Owl, which hovers above the treetops. All of these species are projected to lose most of their summer range if climate change keeps up its pace—but limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would allow them to stay on the majority of that habitat. The boreal itself could play a major role in slowing that warming: The ecosystem stores enormous amounts of carbon in its soils, peatlands, and trees, which make up the largest stretch of intact forest left on the planet. So protecting the landscape from industrial activity, and keeping that carbon out of the atmosphere, is one way to address climate change.
About the Artist: Susan Stair grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia and spent much of her childhood among the half-acre of trees on her family’s land. “If I was upset, I would go into trees,” Stair says. “They have a presence.” Stair studied printmaking at the University of Delaware and lived in Asia for years, exhibiting her works in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan before making her way to New York City. Today, she lives and works in Harlem, where she continues to infuse her mixed-media works with her love of nature and enthusiasm for learning about the environment. “I am basically art by background, but a definite science nerd,” she says.
Stair is still particularly drawn to trees, and one of her signature methods involves creating large-scale impressions of trees by rolling large pieces of clay onto their bark. She’s used her public art pieces, including several produced for New York City parks and schools, to highlight the urgent challenges of climate change and the importance of protecting forest ecosystems. “Setting the Stage for Climate Change,” an installation in Morningside Park, used melted laundry bottles and repurposed wood to create a tableau of industrial pollution and natural landscapes. “Roots on Fire,” in Marcus Garvey Park, drew parallels between Harlem’s multicultural tapestry and the root network that connects trees in the forest. Stair hopes her work can highlight the importance of protecting ecosystems for their sake and for ours, since nature offers essential solutions for pollution and climate change. “We have so much power here in the natural systems,” she says. “I want people to really understand that.”
