Pigeon Plumage

Pat McCarthy, born 1987, lives and works in Brooklyn and Andes, New York. He works primarily in sculpture, zines, and video, as well as staging social happenings, many of which include preparing and serving food. McCarthy’s work traverses many crafts and disciplines to explore methods of storytelling.

Since 2012, much of his work is executed on his Brooklyn rooftop, engaging with the hundreds of domestic pigeons he is raising and flying. The cornerstone of his practice is the zine Born to Kill, begun in 2009 with 106 issues to date. Built by hand and printed on Xerox machines, the zines present poetic narratives of the experiments, constructions, and fugitive gestures of the artist.

Since 2018, he has worked part-time with his partner Maddy Ringold-Brown to construct a small farmstead, Niknak’s Farm, on a steep hillside in the Catskill Mountains.

McCarthy is a contributor to the collectives Satan Ceramics and 8 Ball Community. His work is in the collections of MoMA, New York; Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain, Marseille; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; the McEvoy Foundation, San Francisco; and many libraries and private collections internationally.