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12/08/2006
Going buggy at DennosExhibit of insects in patterns creates wonder — or repulsion
The female thorny stick will be in an exhibit titled “A Terrible Beauty” debuting Sunday at the Dennos Museum Center. TRAVERSE CITY — From a distance, it looks like patterned wallpaper. Get closer, and you just may want to call an exterminator. Jennifer Angus will show her unique art that involves arranging insects — mostly colorful and exotic beetles — on walls in patterns in an exhibit at Dennos Museum Center. Beginning on Sunday, it's titled "A Terrible Beauty: Compulsion and Repulsion.” Angus, who teaches textile design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, never had a great love for bugs. She got the idea for her brand of art when she was researching tribal dress in Laos and elsewhere in Asia's Golden Triangle region. She saw indigenous people who adorned who adorn their clothes with metallic-looking beetle wings and used other colorful insects as ornaments in their hair. "It wasn't just in this one place and more and more, the insects were of interest to me,” Angus said. "One day I decided to arrange them in patterns and I guess the rest is history.” The arranged insects looked like wallpaper. She was struck by the irony of the beauty it created. "Here's the thing we absolutely don't want in the house,” she said, explaining that using them as household decoration sets up a "tension” in the work. She's seen people approach her exhibits thinking it is ordinary wallpaper, only to be startled when they find out what it really is. "I've seen people take a step back,” she said. For her exhibits, she uses some of the estimated 30,000 insects she collected from Southeast Asia, South America and other places. She keeps the insects in about 70 plastic storage boxes. Before pinning them up, she works out the patterns on computer. She buys beetles, grasshoppers, weevils and other insects from dealers all over the world. They're dead when she buys them, but she has to re-hydrate them to get them to "relax” and have their wings spread. Some people ask her whether her art has a negative impact on the environment. She did her research early on to make sure her own concerns on the topic were addressed. "I needed to sleep at night,” she said. "With the exception of a few species, it's impossible to over-collect insects.” She said she does not collect endangered insects and some of the weevils are farmed. She also doesn't use butterflies because they're "too obviously beautiful.” "I like to use grasshoppers because they are a pest in a lot of places,” she added. "A Terrible Beauty: Compulsion and Repulsion” will be at Dennos from Dec. 10 to March 4. Admission is $4 for adults and $2 for children. For more information call 995-1055.
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