Author: michelebanks1

Canadian painter Helen Gregory is serving as artist-in-residence at the Canadian Museum of Nature as part of her Ph.D program in at the University of Western Ontario. Since May, she has been exploring the museum’s collections, finding inspiration among the natural history specimens that inspire her work. A show of her work, dramatically titled Unrequited Death, is on exhibit at the museum in Ottawa, Ontario, until September 3.

Unrequited Death features eleven paintings that juxtapose biological specimens with ornate, romantic backgrounds reminiscent of the Victorian era.  Among the pinned butterflies and dead birds, one stands out: the giant squid.  It’s based on an actual specimen in the collection of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s, where it was first shown in 2009. Let’s face it, it’s just not every day you see a 12-foot-long painting of a gigantic deceased cephalopod, so if you’re in Ottawa in the next few months, don’t miss this one.

Gregory uses painting to explore biological specimens both in relation to our knowledge of the natural world and our understanding of cultural meaning. “Objects are imbued with layers of meaning that shift with their context.  For example when a dead bird is picked up, preserved, labeled, catalogued, and held in a museum collection, it becomes more than a biological specimen: it makes the transition from natural to cultural artifact,” she notes.

Gregory will be speaking about her work on June 21 at the museum – details are here.  For more of her work, visit her website.

Love Motel For Insects is an outdoor light installation by Brandon Ballengée in the shape of giant dragonfly wings. The piece, which uses ultra-violet lights on blank fabric to attract insects, creates an opportunity for public interactions with nocturnal arthropods.  Ballengée, an American artist who has been working with environmental themes for years, began creating pieces to attract insects in Central America in 2001.

The dragonfly-wing sculpture seen here, which was on display at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington DC from March 24- June 10, 2012, is one of many such “love motels” that Ballengée has built.  According to the artist, ” Love Motel for Insects is an ongoing series of outdoor installations intended to construct situations between humans and arthropods. The works use ultra-violet lights on enormous blank canvases to attract insects and create an opportunity for public interactions with rarely seen nocturnal arthropods.  At each location, the Love Motels for Insects become the backdrop for community events such as picnics, biodiversity festivals, graffiti jams, scientific investigations, musical events and even local film screenings relating to local insect species.”

Currently, a piece in the shape of a luna moth is on display in New York City at the  sculpture court of  Jim Kempner Fine Art, at 501 West 23^rd Street from June 9 through August 4 2012. Click here for more information. You can find out more about Ballengée’s other environmental artwork at this website.