[inquisitive piano and gentle brass]
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- Jennifer Angus: My first reaction when I visited House on the Rock was,
"This is crazy!"
This place is full of wonder.
I do draw inspiration.
I try not to come too often because if I came too often,
then I think it would cease to be magical.
Interestingly enough, people say virtually the same thing to me
about my exhibitions.
They say, "Oh, this is so magical."
My name is Jennifer Angus, and I'm an artist and professor
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
[piano music]
Well, I'll begin by answering the most common questions
I get asked.
"Are the insects real?"
Yes, indeed, they are.
"Is this their natural color?"
Because it's amazing, the range of colors
from pinks to blues
to the shiny greens
and it is their natural color.
I always say, "I'm crazy,
but I'm not crazy enough to paint them all, too."
The very first installation I did with insects
was in a downtown Toronto storefront gallery.
And when I had completed
putting my pattern in insects upon the wall,
I, of course, was hanging around the gallery
and people were putting their face up to the glass
and I could hear people saying, "Well, I see they've
put up a new wallpaper, but I don't see the art."
And they walked in and walked up to the wall,
and then, literally, I watched them take a step back
as they realized that that pattern, that wallpaper
is made of insects.
I really feel like I channel that Victorian aesthetic of,
"There is no such thing as too much."
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I think that I probably have about 20,000 insects.
So, when the insects come to me,
they're not necessarily ready to go onto the wall.
They are on a piece of cardboard.
They are curled up with their legs tucked in or their wings in
and then, there's a piece of cellophane
and it's stapled all around the edges.
Before I can even think about putting the insects on the wall,
they have to be spread.
And the first step is to relax them,
which essentially means to rehydrate them.
It's a humidity chamber, which sounds very fancy.
It's actually a Tupperware container
with some water in the bottom,
a piece of foam, and the insects float on the foam.
I put the lid on.
And depending on the size of the insect,
it will take two, three, perhaps four days until they soften up.
Once that happens, I can take them out.
I can move their wings or their legs
and pin them into position.
And then, they dry for another two to three days,
and they will stay that way.
I often say that cicadas are the meat and potatoes
of my exhibitions because they are so hardy.
They really stand up to the wear and tear,
and they're also quite large.
The biggest one has an eight-inch wingspan.
Most of the insects that I use are tropical species.
When at all possible, I use farmed species,
and people are also surprised to hear that,
but there are development projects
in Papua New Guinea, in Madagascar, in Malaysia,
in which people are raising insects
sometimes for food, but also for collectors.
Insects, like many animals these days, are threatened
by urban and suburban sprawl, by climate change.
And what is absolutely heartbreaking
is to hear the stories
of the Amazon rainforest being cut down--
the very lungs of our planet.
So, for anyone who walks into the exhibition
and feels upset
how many hundred insects died for this exhibition,
I would say, "You feel upset?
So, do I."
This is what I'm doing to start a conversation
or be part of the conversation.
I first came to insects because of their beauty.
But as I continue to work with insects,
I'm just so impressed with them.
E.O. Wilson, the famous biologist who studied ants,
said, "They're the little things that make the world run."
So, for me, and many artists I know,
we walk around museums
and we simply stop by the work that moves us.
The first thing I'm looking for is that feeling of wonder--
that 'wow' moment.
One of the things I want to do
is create a space in which people can escape.
I've really tried hard to make these spaces
that are somewhat magical.
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[shimmery music]
[inspirational vocalizing]