Amongst the roaches, butterflies, and scorpions lining the tables of this weekend’s Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, you’ll see something on the macroscopic scale: large stuffed dust mite sculptures made out of re-claimed sweaters from second-hand stores.

Featured in a few of my previous installations and videos, the mites feel right at home this enthusiastic bug-centered event! I had a number of great conversations with bug experts and novices alike on Saturday. If in the LA area on Sunday, come check us out!

Bug Fair
May 15th: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
May 16th: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Free with museum admission
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Right image by Cliff Jette/The Gazette

The artist-run gallery CSPS as well as many Cedar Rapids-based artists have been affected by the floods. Please visit CSPS’ web site to find out more about donating to their artist fund:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2091

Nitckpickers at Legion Arts | CSPS in Cedar Rapids.

Accompanying Body Beasts is a six-minute film depicting used sweaters manipulated and sown into shapes of grotesquely enlarged bugs. The abject creatures traverse the landscape of the human body as well as domestic environments and provide jarring relationships through shifts of scale and contexts. We see them fly through the air, crash to the floor, analyzed in labs, vainly vacuumed, and given back massages. The video examines our instinctual repulsion for the millions of creatures that live, eat, and sleep with us in a continuously symbiotic relationship.

Body Beasts was a multimedia investigation into the uncanny nature of dust mites. The research resulted in disjunctive relationships through shifts of scale and contexts. I explored dualities of sensual tactility and distrusting, fungal, and microscopic references, as I co-mingled disparate sentiments, such as repulsion and attraction, in single pieces. Because my work has a strong natural science overtone I explore viewer’s perception between inspecting vs. experiencing.