#6 :: The art of entomology
Intro music: "InsectaLoop" by Jake McCarthy.
JAKE Hello. You're listening to InsectaPod Cast Episode 6, The Art of Entomology. Entomologists have created scientific illustrations of insects for centuries. With the aid of microscopes and a unique light projector called a camera lucida, scientists of the past created extraordinarily realistic images of insects. Sometimes, though, we can learn as much through artistic representations as realistic ones. In this episode, we explore the connections between science and visual art. In speaking with one painter with an interest in science we discover yet another way that entomology manages to creep into our lives and captivate our imaginations. I'm Jake McCarthy, the next voice you'll hear is Anna Fiedler, and this is InsectaPod Cast.
ANNA Sandra Davison, a fine art painter who lives in Lansing, Michigan, sees insects as worthy subjects of art. Sandra has used photographs and modern scientific illustrations and added her interpretation of the insect and of the illustrative presentation. She hasn’t always painted insects, but once she found inspiration in landscapes, it was inevitable that bugs would become a more central subject.
SANDRA The work itself often is taking place at a swamp, or several wetlands that I have been working at repeatedly over time and season, and so the beetles were a small piece of that. Of course, there are bugs out when I’m out working, I usually get to meet them under less perfect conditions, and they’re usually making me part of the food chain, instead of my being able to (2:52) observe them, so they’re a little less endearing at that point, but most of my work is landscapes and there’s a little range of other subjects, too. Painting from life is the big focus. The beetles were from reference photos, so a little bit different.”
ANNA Painting outside, however, is difficult in Midwestern winters. Sandra’s interactions with insects went much further than being nibbled on by them a couple of winters ago, when, in search of a live (or once living) subject, she was inspired by a book of beetle illustrations she received as a gift. Sandra most commonly works in pastels, but the beetle images she has created are in watercolor. She described how she sees an interplay between the artist and the medium they choose, the artist’s interpretation, and the subject itself.
SANDRA The watercolors have their own way of behaving, and some of them are quite aggressive and they move through the water and invade spaces that other colors, other pigments are in. So, there was a play between those three things, the real insect, the way I interpreted it with materials, as well as little, I guess they’re little intuitive or maybe emotive qualities that the shapes have. There’s these little twirly shapes and these little kinky things, and unusual qualities that are comic-book- like, you know that’s how I’m processing it because I’m processing it as a person, so the beetles have things that I’ve seen but they’re not my experience, so I’m making up my human interpretation from comic books and color and all of that.
ANNA Many people who enjoy watching insects outdoors as children and as adults find some of the same qualities endearing about them as Sandra does. Sandra has learned primarily about how beetles are structured through her paintings of them, but she certainly associates emotive qualities with the images her paintings are based on, and these come out in the final work. Looking at her insect paintings, it is clear that her knowledge goes deeper than just the aesthetic— she’s learned a lot about insects.
SANDRA Well, that they have these really great feet, I know I’ve mentioned that before, but they have these really great feet that are just so much fun. And they have some pretty amazing engineering, the way that they are built is really other-worldly. The structure of their wings and how they neatly fold, how the precision of things- some animals, like dragonflies, are so precise, and yet a lot of the beetles have a kind of a bumbling-stumbling quality about their movement, that is really endearing. There’s something non-aggressive about it, so a little bit of the beetle behavior, but the form itself is always the thing that I am most intrigued with. It’s so unlike human forms, human forms are soft, they’re rounded, even the hardest hard-bodied person has roundness in every part of them, and insects have a much more rigid quality, as well as the points, and they have a more, what I think of as more abstract sculpture, because of course everything is referring to humans, so I’ve learned a lot about the behavior, and one of the things that I really love is how the differentiation of species is based most often on male genetalia, that cracks me up, just because it seems surprising.
ANNA As an Entomologist listening to these comments from Sandra, I found it fascinating how much she has picked up about the form of insects, without necessarily knowing the scientific terminology for insect physiology. The rigidness in beetles that she describes is lent by the insect exoskeleton, in contrast to the human endoskeleton, which lends us our softer quality. Sandra mentioned to us that she loves the scientific word for beetles, the order Coleoptera. But there is also something to be said for the understanding we gain of objects surrounding us without having to wrack our brains to remember the “official” name for them. Some argue that giving a name to life separates us from it. Scientists have a practice known as “disarticulation” that involves separating an animal body at the joint, whether a human or an insect. This practice allows examination of how the connections between joints allow for movement of them. Sandra reacted to this word, and this practice, shown in the book on beetles:
SANDRA And it seemed like such a cleaned up scientific word for what they had done to this creature, which was pull of his parts off the body and separate him completely, so thorax and head, and all of the mouthparts, and the antennae, and the feet and arms, everything was pulled apart, and it’s like an exploded view of this little creature. So, the word itself, you know I think there is a little danger when we label things, we separate ourselves from them a little bit, and that allows us to do some things that are useful, but it also allows us to do some things that are pretty horrific. And a friend of mine, when I mentioned it to him, he bought on of those particular paintings, he said that disarticulation sounded like something the CIA would call a hit on somebody in another country, you know. So there is that to it, that word, the whole process of scientific labeling is a separation from the being a part of their system.
ANNA Not only are insect joints disarticulated, Entomologists for years have also been doing something that seems as if it must be physically impossible: dissecting insect genetalia, especially of males, to determine whether two individuals belong to the same species or not. The argument is that the specialized formation of the male aedeagus, the male insect reproductive organ that transfers sperm from the male testes to the female during – no, it’s not typically called sex – copulation or mating, limits the females that the male can successfully, um, copulate with to those of the same species. Sandra finds this quirky and fascinating, and it is interesting to think of a group of Entomologists, who many people think of as a bit stodgy, talking about insect sex.
SANDRA People don’t talk about that sort of thing, and so the fact that there’s a whole discipline in which that is the main focus is somewhat hysterical, because people have to do this and get out of their little social box to do this. As well as, the insects, it’s not a big deal to them, it doesn’t mean a thing to them, you know, they just don’t even care how important that quality is, they just do their thing, and the only reason it’s important is so people can make some intellectual division about one insect and another.
ANNA Towards the end of our conversation, we turned to several of Sandra’s insect watercolors. It is fascinating to hear her say that watercolors effectively capture the iridescence of a beetle’s elytra or explain that she uses thin hash marks to suggest the practice of scientific measurement, and I was thoroughly convinced by the genuineness of her art when presented with it.
sound of shuffling papers
ANNA So, Sandy has pulled out what are little squares of watercolor paper. One is- she has one piece that’s framed, and the rest are something like 4x4 squares
SANDRA 6x6- most of them are about 6x6, but that’s the format that I’ve been using because it’s small and I can finish them relatively quickly, so.
ANNA I think it keeps them kind of playful, too, the small size.
SANDRA For me it does, it’s hard to play with something that’s 30x40.
ANNA At any rate, although Sandra has called these beetles “comic-book like”, she is not interested in blowing them up and showing them as the giant insects that we find, say, in kitchy horror flicks. The images Sandra has painted do contain playful likenesses of beetles. In addition, many of them have text of varying sizes and styles incorporated, and lines, again, with a specific intention in mind.
SANDRA Most of the writing refers to some of the scientific measurement, or the quantifying and categorizing issues. You know, the little centimeter marks and some of them are really more capricious, a series of lines that simply imply that there is a measuring system that’s being used, and sometimes it’s really a graphic issue, so the text is not prominent but is used almost like faded information, so I’m playing with text as not text to make it play a more artistic role. . . . the word Coleoptera follows or lays behind some of the insects as a kind of pretty way of making them science, a scientific way of making them pretty, I’m not sure.
ANNA If Sandra does choose to continue painting beetles, there is plenty of material for many lifetimes of painting: as one of the watercolors she created points out, 1/5 of all living organisms are beetles. British evolutionary biologist and genetecist J.B.S. Haldane said “The Creator, if He exists, has ‘an inordinate fondness for beetles”. Beetles are the most speciose, or abundant, group of insects, and insects are the most speciose group of living organisms. Sandra has also experimented with sketches of dragonflies, katydids, and crickets, but none have inspired her to create finished pieces of art as much as the beetle – so far.
JAKE Thank you for listening to InsectaPod Cast episode 6, The Art of entomology. My name is Jake Mccarthy. My partner is Anna Fiedler. Our home on the web is www.insectapodcast.com. InsectaPod Cast is funded in part by the Ray and Bernice Hutson Memorial Entomology Endowment. Sandra Davison’s artwork can be viewed in person in Old Town, Lansing, at The Banyan Gallery, or online at www.pastelfish.com. Again, I'm Jake McCarthy, my partner is Anna Fiedler, and this is InsectaPod Cast. We thank you for listening.
