Art and Entomology | 2019
In Spring of 2019, Spring Creek Project hosted a pair of events about entomology and art. The first was a panel discussion with artists and scientists and the second was the world premiere of two short butterfly research films unearthed from the Smithsonian Archive. Spring Creek Project presented the events in partnership with the OSU Department of Integrative Biology and the OSU Arthropod Collection.
Art and Entomology Panel Discussion
Our lives are intimately connected with insects — from the moment of silent awe as a butterfly lands on a flower, to the food on our dinner tables, to the decomposition of our bodies. As scientists warn of collapsing insect communities around the world, how will we respond? The panel discussion “Art and Entomology: Insects in a Changing World” hosted at OSU the afternoon of April 24, 2019, featured researchers and artists in conversation to celebrate the lives, and imagine the future, of insects. Panelists included:
- Lisa Schonberg, composer, percussionist, field recordist, writer, naturalist, environmental artist and teacher. She is the author of “The DIY Guide to Drums,” “The Hylaeus Project: A Documentation of the Endangered Native Bees of Hawaii” and “Fieldguided,” a series of books on insects and their habitats.
- Kristina Dutton, violinist and composer. Among her many recent projects, she co-founded and co-curated “Call and Response,” an experimental arts and lecture series that combined a presentation by a specialist in any field followed by musical response by some of the Bay Area’s most innovative musicians.
- Chris Marshall, curator and collections manager of the Oregon State Arthropod Collection. In addition to his interests in the systematics and taxonomy of scarab beetles and their close relatives, Marshall works with regional, national and international colleagues involved in major projects to better share and disseminate biodiversity data based on museum specimens.
- Craig Goodworth, an Oregon-based artist working in installation and poetry. He has received fellowships in art and writing, including a Fulbright to the Slovak Republic in 2015. Along with exhibiting his artworks nationally and internationally, including an OSU exhibit called “Blood & Honey,” he’s engaged in various collaborations and residencies relating art to science and religion.
Unearthed: Butterfly Research Films
On the evening of April 24, 2019, Spring Creek Project hosted “Unearthed: Composers Kristina Dutton & Lisa Schonberg Premiere Original Scores for Smithsonian Archive Butterfly Research Films” at the Darkside Cinema in Corvallis, Oregon. The event included screenings of two short films as well as an artist talk by Dutton and Schonberg.
“Rearing Anartia” and “Sulfur Butterflies” are 8-16 mm films documenting the work of lepidopterist Bob Silberglied in the seventies. Silberglied's untimely vanishing in a plane crash left behind an undiscovered body of work, including these two research movies. Fifty years later, Dutton and Schonberg digitized the films held in the Smithsonian Institution's archives and added original musical scores. These films are an early testimony of how creative scientists intended to communicate their passion for the study of nature to broad audiences. The artists were honored to help in this task as they premiered the scores for these films.
“Rearing Anartia” features Silberglied and entomologist Annette Aiello's field research at the Barro Colorado Island field station in Panama, as they investigate the factors involved in maintaining two distinct species.
Watch the video on YouTube here.
“Sulfur Butterflies” features Silberglied and Chip Taylor conducting research in southwest Arizona in alfalfa fields that contained incredible densities of butterflies at that time, allowing them to study in depth how females recognize the males of their own species based on ultraviolet coloration.