A small exhibition remains hidden away in two glass cases on the first and second floors of the Racine Art Museum (RAM). By carefully selecting and then inviting several national artists to envision unusual insect environments through the use of varying art mediums, the exhibit reflects the title “Eccentric Insects." This offers a glimpse of dream like worlds where insects wear human faces masked in rhinestones or a tiny spoon bears three dimensional bouquets and bees. Save the necessary time to walk the corridors on each floor to this four part exhibition that transports insects to an imaginary world as one theme in the RAM's current exhibit "All The Buzz."
Dave and Roberta Williamson's small retrospective combines personal antique collecting with their individual artwork. This extensive journey behind the glass case titled Meet Me In Our Secret Garden, 1985-2010 fills the space with vintage objects and the jewelry it poetically inspires. In the middle of the case, a worn brown paperback Little Blue Book 728: Life Among the Bees sits in the background among ornamental pins and rings depicting bees in every size and shape.
In the left front of the case the Williamson's six spoons become miniature biological studies. Appliqued with beetles, bugs, flowers, insect wings, leaves and twigs these functional but also ingenious objects glorify nature. Spend some time observing the numerous decorative forms and memorabilia furnished by this amazing artistic couple.
Wesley Fleming intersects the found natural world, including twigs and bark, with his created glass insects. In MatingDamselflies (2010) two striped insects with silvery blue iridescent wings alight on an actual cattail to display this romantic ritual. Adding drama to the age old dance, the cattail projects into space on an angle while placed in a thin, translucent glass tube. Several of Fleming's other pieces inject an supernatural reality to the exhibition.
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On the second floor Betsy Youngquist and R. Scott Lang grant the Hine's Emerald Dragonfly, an insect on the endangered species list, another life from the one it has lived for around 300 million years. The beautiful green inscet habitates in only four Midwestern states, including Wisconsin. These facts invoked the pair's composition titled The Hine's EmeraldDragonfly Project 2010that portrays this insect's life cycle through mixed media sculptural mosaics.
These particular dragonflies look out from the case with porcelain human faces and bright colored eyes while covered in glistening rhinestones and crystal beads. In each life cycle phase, the dragonfly sparkles with anthropomorphic quatities and meticulous beadwork. This time consuming and elegant medium also resonates with the art's historical context. One ultimately contemplates the existence of this miniscule creature the artists cover in regal splendor, which the world could possibly be without in a short period of time. This concept relates similarly to the human being, who may also eventually become extinct through unwitting self-destruction.
Andrea V. Uravitch constructs oversized insects from clay, fiber, paper and steel that crawl playfully over giant curled leaves in the final glass case. Her artwork titled Trouble in the Garden depicts these friendly bugs often representing symbols of happiness or good luck in other cultures. Such is the case in Hopper, 1993, a long grasshopper that is revered in the Far East and Uravitch adorns with stitched wings and legs fashioned from yarn crocheted with tiny needles. Each of the insects displayed in the exhibition contributes to a valuable ecosystem symbolizing the great diversity in nature. This concept provides a fresh perspective from which to view the insects one encounters on an everyday basis, especially in the summer season.
(The exhibition continues at the RAM until October 17. Check the museum schedule for coordinating educational programming)
