Insectual Design

This post is appropriate with this spooky weekend ahead, with Halloween and things are not as they seem.

I learned of Jennifer Angus’ work from a recent Washington Post article. She is a Madison, Wisconsin based artist, whose work will be exhibited at the Renwick Gallery in DC and will adorn their walls with bugs, that’s right, bugs!!

I’d say this is a case of intellectual + insect =  ” insectual ” design!

Her work is truly fascinating! She based her buggy design on wallpaper!! Her insect use was inspired by her ongoing use of arthropods in her artwork and Victorian pattern, inherent in her teaching at the University of Wisconsin. The insects she uses in this installation are all different colors, shapes, sizes with many iridescent, shimmering shapes. They come together carefully placed on a beautifully, pink-colorwashed backdrop to form an overall design scheme, which is viewed as one succinct visual to the onlooker. The impression is similar to what one might have when walking into someone’s home for the first time and being awe-struck by their room’s ambiance and décor. It’s only after one views more closely that the individual design objects are bugs. As she states, “Many people who visit my exhibitions were never aware that such unusual insects exist.” She describes the purpose and her ethical use of real insects in her work on her website.

This effort is for the long-awaited re-opening of the Renwick, here in Washington, DC after two years of extensive renovation.

Angus’ work is entitled The Midnight Garden and is just one gallery that is a part of the Renwick’s Wonder exhibition, which features 8 other artists who, “transform perception, and work on the border between art and craft,” as stated on Dezeen magazine, where you can also see other bug-related articles. (You can see related posts on this blog on Janet Echelman and Patrick Dougherty, just a few of the artists featured, whom I’ve been inspired by for quite some time.)

While the nine artists featured in WONDER create strikingly different works, they are connected by their interest in creating large-scale installations from unexpected materials. Index cards, marbles, strips of wood—all objects so commonplace and ordinary we often overlook them—are assembled, massed, and juxtaposed to utterly transform spaces and engage us in the most surprising ways. The works are expressions of process, labor, and materials that are grounded in our everyday world, but that combine to produce awe-inspiring results. (via Renwick Gallery)

Nicholas R. Bell, the curator for the show, so eloquently explains this exhibition’s significance in this statement on Dezeen magazine, “The concept of ‘wonder’ – that moment of awe in the face of something new and unknown that transports us out of the everyday – is deeply intertwined with how we experience art…These elements matter in the context of this museum, devoted for more than four decades to the skilled working of materials in extraordinary ways.“

The exhibition will be on view for 3 months but I’m so excited to see it and hope to make the opening on November 13. It is truly going to be “wonderful!”

I’ve written about bug / insect art previously with these posts:

Brooke Duckart

and below with my hand-painted butterflies along with many butterfly-written posts.

Click this link for a recent interview in the UK regarding the passion and artwork for Casart coverings and using the unexpected.

You can read a more extensive version of this post on Slipcovers for Your Walls.

Happy Halloween!