Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Insectology at Oxbow, Part 2: "GlassHoppers"


A nice thing about having an insect course at an art school in the woods in the fact that a master glass artist might be leading a class in the next building. You might get talking to him, his name might be Jeff Mack, and next thing you know he is interested in making an insect out of glass the next morning from whatever your students might have collected/dissected.

It just so happened Lauren and Liz had a nice grasshopper sitting around and another set out in "parts" that could quite serendipitously function as a visual guide to making an insect modularly:



Jeff worked fast on this first attempt at an arthropod - studying and sketching, and then working the glass for about 3 hours ~


The final metamorphosis of it as a remarkable glasshopper as none of us had seen before - equal parts mindblowing and lovely. 

 

Still, nothing beats witnessing a grasshopper making itself in the flesh, as this one was doing, molting an old skin for a new one right before our eyes ~


AY

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