jizai okimono

Jizai Okimono seems to me like the perfect art form for expressing the movement and delicate intricacy that is the jointed legs and external skeleton of hexapods. 
Traditionally these sculptures are crated from metal and feature sculpture perfectly mimicking the appearance and movement of animals, such as the attached photos. However, one of the most impressive examples I have found is of this isopod (a lobster) carved from wood:

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/06/artist-ryousuke-ohtake-carves-incredibly-realistic-lobster-from-boxwood/

 Image Link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sushifactory/sets/72157609672293007/ 

More Examples of Jizai Okimono:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sushifactory/collections/72157609707407762/ 


-R 

Fairies by Cedric Laquieze

 Artist Cedric Laquieze  creates tiny intricate fairies out of the bodies of many  different insects including  scorpions,butterflies,beetles, and even bones and seeds.  You can find his website here
-gabi

Moths (like) cloth

As we've looked at insects over the last couple months, it's been mentioned how their bodies can seem "like paper" or "like cloth,"  but if we take that material analogy along further maybe we end up where the artist Mr. Finch has arrived?

A moth this close to my clothes would terrify me (if I were wearing wool) - Imagine the hole the larvae of this thing would eat out of your sweater!

http://www.ignant.de/2014/04/04/textile-art-by-mr-finch/

 

AY

Anthill Art?

Watch

This is a video of molten aluminum being poured into a fire at colony. The result provides really amazing insight into the complexity of the tunnels these insects form.


Supposedly this species is an imported invader, which might justify death by molten fluid...

The artist sells these sculptures here: http://www.anthillart.com


- Ian

Beetles North-South - Art as Insect Index!

Recently we talked about how studying the evolution of lice was used to date key events in human evolution....

Along that vein of interesting cross-connections, this article talks about how an insect biologist who is also an avid historic print collector tracked down not only the species-level cause of holes in wood printing blocks (those pesky beetle larvae!), but also how different species have changed their geographic ranges over the past few centuries. Fascinating!

AY

Who made the grasshopper?

The Summer Day (by Mary Oliver)

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.

Insect Art, Paper Styley

 Check out some more of these insects (and other stylings) here by Lobulo Design:

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/09/lobulo-design-papercraft/

African Insects - A treasure Trove of Entomology

This past week we discussed how many insect species have been recorded so far, and how many there may in fact still be left to discover.  And in this biodiversity isn't just some other generic looking bug, no indeed. As I argued, insects are the place to look of you are interested in the remarkable elaboration of forms based on a basic "body plan."

...Well, hot of the presses of the New York Times website today, some reports from the field:  A group from Harvard, led by E.O. Wilson, went out to survey some of the insect of Mozambique. (Don't know where that is? Then please consult a map.)

It seems they came across over 3,00 species, recording 1,00 during the trip, and quadrupling the number of ants species known to occur there from 50 to 200. Not bad for a few weeks work. 

For example, they came across this amazing Orthopteran, the insect order of focus for us this week:

  

Antennae were ones of the things of class conversation touched on too. Check out the set this beetle has! I imagine it can pick up TV from Italy with them and maybe your laundry too!

 

You can enjoy the full slideshow HERE.   Be prepared to have your mind blown.

They are not only in Mozambique to survey new species, but also help restore a conservation area there post-civil war (so says the photo essay text)

The photographer, Piotr Naskrecki, does beautiful work and has a book out called 

The Smaller Majority.  

The photo essay mentions how:

 

"To avoid killing his portrait subjects, one of the entomologists Piotr Naskrecki,  built an open-air studio of white fabric that the bugs were free to flee if they wanted. Some did, forcing Naskrecki to chase them down. Others stayed — perhaps out of curiosity. ‘‘They will look at you, they will judge you,’’ he says. ‘‘They were very suspicious of the camera, and they were very wary of me. I’m sure that none of these animals had ever seen a human. They did not know what to make of us.’’

Well that is what I call collecting insects ~

AY

Insectology at Oxbow, Part 4: Insects & Art

One thing that Ox-Bow makes possible is amazing cross-fertilizing. I can't tell you how many of the wonderful insects we've found here have been brought to us by people in the ceramics studio, printmaking, and the kitchen staff too. In kind and in exchange, we seem to have spread our insect meme around to the studios. this started with Jeff Mack's "GlassHopper" in the first week, and has now spread.

I just came to find out that Kyle Ragsdale in the painting studios has been doing a lovely series of paintings (most completed that same day) of us with our nets in hand scrounging around in awe of insects, 

 

Meanwhile, Christa Donner has been doing as series of painted and silk-screened masks that Ox-Bowians have been wearing as part of a photo series of her's....

And then we've taken insects to other art students directly. One of the "Art in the Meadow" classes is for kids, and so we went over to share water bugs, stick insects, and the like:

This, of course, prompted joint efforts between us and the kids to net some nice insects flying around and about...

AY

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

Insect Origami

Silverfish

Pillbug

Longhorn Beetle

Longhorn Beetle

Leaf Insect

Kabutomushi Beetle

Earwig

-Jay

10,000 bugs

This week in the insect world we find an artist taking their numerical dominance seriously in a recent exhibit in Nottingham Castle (of all places).  Remember the estimate is 200 million insects for evey human individual on the globe - while this show only features 10,000 handmade bugs, it is still an impressive feat to say the least.

I don't know anything more about the piece, its intentions, or the use of insects, but this slideshow from the BBC lets us have a look at some of the process...


AY

Bees from the Hive...

This past week as I was working at Common Ground Fair I met some people I thought us hexapod fans should know about. The Beehive Collective, and activist non-profit community, based out of Maine that uses the animal kingdom to depict epic stories of our current world. All of the murals and tapestries are anonymous and bought strictly on suggested donations. Not only does their mission support working together as one organism like a hive but their art uses plenty of six-leggers to reference animal behavior in humans.

Really cool, beautiful stuff. 

Check them out:

Visit the Hive

CAK

ANT COMIC

One of my favorite current young cartoonists, Michael Deforge, is currently working on a project that will consist of 50 one page comics. A new one appears every other Monday and it is called Ant Comic. I'm really excited about this project because Deforge has a great surreal and colorful style and a funny way of storytelling. It's also interesting to see ants depicted in such a human and kind of pathetic way.

-Krystal

"hairs" to insects!

Adrienne Antonson has an interest in two things that might not seemed connected at first: Human hair and insects.  Hmm... how to put these together in to one artistic practice?

Viola - make bugs out of cut bangs.

The Huffington Post reports of Antonson's work and its connection to ethics and material sustainability, as well as of course bugs. Her method of making these insects makes me think of the fly lures that people tie for fly fishing.  SAIC faculty Joseph Grigley did a nice piece on that topic for Cabinet magazine a little while back...

Read about and see a slideshow of some of this  work here ~

AY

Micromachina (I heart beetle art)

Check out some of this lovely and hilarious human/beetle art by Scott Bain.  It plays so well off of the issues of physical scale as well as mechanical biomimicry we've been talking about the last couple of weeks!

AY

Entomologia

A group show in New York last spring, featuring artists who use insects in their work.

Here is a link to the show's site: Entomologia


They have some info on all 14 artists and some really nice images of the show.

-Kelsey

Mike Libby creates these lovely hand crafted steam punk insects, i thought you all might enjoy;

His Insect Lab can be found here

Maggot Art?

Apparently so!
Entomologists are now getting these larvae to paint - or rather getting students to get the larvae to paint - with their very own bodies.



And little article about the project, Maggot Monets.

The idea has clearly taken off, being exhibited at the US Science and Engineering Fair this week, but it has been going on so a while now, as the Maggot Art website attests to.

They say the paint is non-toxic, but do the maggots really do OK with this goop on their bodies? I worry about latex in their tiny trachea...

AY

Coleopteran Decor at Robin Richman

This is the Halloween themed window display at Robin Richman, the boutique I work at. Robin added beetle ornaments and this tiny bronze sculpture of an atlas beetle, done by Dear Swallow. Dear Swallow is designed by Ria Charisse, daughter of a biologist, whose inspiration comes from twigs, rock formations, and other wonders of nature, including insects.


For a closer look, stop by Robin Richman at 2108 N. Damen Avenue!
-Camila