Each May, a chirpy flock of songbirds returns to Appleton Farms in Ipswich. The declining, migratory bobolinks settle in there to mate and hide their nests in the historic property’s grassy fields. But when they arrive this year, the bobolinks will become the stars of a pastoral art installation called “Perch.” It’s debuting during Earth Week, and, as I found out on a farm visit earlier this month, the project is — literally — for the birds.
With airplanes, azure sky and puffy, white clouds overhead — artist Jean Shin was hammering shiny nails through a copper cut-out laid flat on the surface of a dissected, decomposing tree trunk. “One down, a hundred more to go,” Shin said, laughing...
