Keep your eyes out!
I have quite a few things from this semester that I’ll be photographing and posting in the next few weeks!
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When I was six years old, my grandparents went to South America. Upon their return, they had exotic gifts hidden in the house for all the grandkids to salivate over until after we ate our kosher dinners and had family time. I remember how amazed and excited I was to receive a gigantic, framed iridescent-blue butterfly. Since that day I’ve been enamored with insect collections and I’ve recently started creating and framing my own. I have beetles, butterflies, lantern flies, moths, spiders, scorpions…they are all so tiny and delicate yet they have such odd little intricacies. They’re metallic and symmetrical, with hard edges and tight mechanical joints, as well as soft brightly colored curves and patterns. Their bodies are so different than any other beast, lacking in skin, fur, bone, hair…I wanted to impersonate the oddly mechanical qualities they have, as well as show their soft and delicate designs.
I have such a hard time looking at the insects covering my walls and believing that these works of art were, at one time, living. But these creatures went through many stages of life: embryo, larva, pupa, and imago…much more obvious changes than a human being, where they look completely different from each stage before. Thus using steel, thread, and cloth, I mimicked a chrysalis: the transformative stage in which the insects are becoming their final and adult figure; a phenomenon that no other creature goes through. To show the life and movement going on inside the stagnant pupa, I created the steel ribs at varying sizes as well as sewed veins into the under layer of the fabric skin. When shown in different lighting situations, this chrysalis transforms in itself. In bright light it is a shiny, white, hard-looking piece with red dots down the spine. In evening light, it becomes a soft pink, losing its shine and replacing it with a touchable, unthreatening quality. When backlit, it becomes alive and the red blood layer shines though, showing the veins, creating a feeling of understanding that this metallic, mechanical object is, in fact, a living creature.
Steel, fabric, thread.
2012
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Must get back into my Moleskine!
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