Burdensome Thoughts End Up in the Art

“If you could be any animal, what would you be?”
“An insect!”
“Nobody wants to be an insect.”

That bit of conversation actually happened, and I stand by my choice of insect over any animal. But that might surprise people who knew me when I was a child. Growing up, I had visceral reactions to insects. If a June bug buzzed across the driveway I would squeal and stamp my feet in a fit of repulsion. I would be imagining the tickle of their legs or wings on my skin. So much has changed. Now I am curious about all sorts of bugs and consider them with…is it reverence?

Sometimes I think if I could rewind and live my life anew, I would be an entomologist. I daydream about working for The Xerces Society. Instead of contemplative wonder about the lives of bugs, I would be out in the fields with them, doing good. But not so. I make art, and from silk, even.

When I think of insects, I navigate to lives full of purpose. Bees pollinate flowers, flies and dung beetles facilitate decay. One insect feeds off another in a delicately balanced ecosystem of which I feel at odds.

I was asked recently how I can feel proud to support The Xerces Society when my use of silk feeds a demand from an industry that harvests and kills silkworms for their luminous thread? Had I thought about that? Yes. Then I quickly tune it out.

Humans can be a cruel species, and I am human.

I’m fully aware that being a part of the human race, from which many despicable deeds arise, is no excuse for my own actions, choices, and behavior. I must be honest with myself: when it comes to the treatment of silkworms, I flip-flop between softheartedness and defeatism. Guilty: out of sight, out of mind. I feel trapped: the essence of my work revolves around the beauty of silk. Nothing else will do.

Impact is inescapable.

Years ago, I stopped making art. I saw only the waste involved in my artmaking and it froze my creative spirit. I was lost for nearly two years. What moved me to return was this realization: I am obligated to participate. I had to accept that the base act of living—of my being alive on this planet–has an irreversible impact. Causing trash is unavoidable. Affecting others is inevitable. This was a threshold I had to move through in order to qualify my career as an artist.

Insects first appeared in my art at this juncture. Having dropped out of grad school, I returned to create gigantic butterfly costumes out of silk velvet. This expressed the weight of my being. I wish everyone could have taken a turn inside those heavy, voluminous wings.

I didn’t identify as a lover of insects until I lived with a nest of paper wasps on my porch. Alongside reports of dire insect decline, I began to scrutinize my imaginative and distanced appreciation of them. Over a long, dry summer, daily interaction fostered solidarity.

Sometimes I wonder if my only gift to this world is my art. But no, I think it’s more likely there is no gift at all, that I am no more or less crucial to the earth than a single spider or butterfly or beetle. That makes more sense to me.

Now I torment myself:

What of the silkworms I condemn to a horrifying death by purchasing silk fabric? Nature is cruel, and I am a part of it. The spider kills the fly. I am obligated to participate.

This past year I was compelled to take photographs of dead insects that I encountered. In each dead wasp or butterfly or beetle, I saw an individual who had lived a substantial life. Their survival stories might include long flights, soft landings on dandelion petals, and foraging through towering blades of grass. What led them to die there, where I found them? And what of all those I did not find? (What of the boiling silkworms?)

Dead insects are reflections of my own imminent demise.

Their small, delicate bodies degrade with seeming ease…and human disregard. “Think of them as dirt,” my father once told me as I expressed distress about cleaning dead moths from a light cover. Fair enough. I shall think of myself as dirt, too.

These circling, burdensome thoughts end up in my art. The whole mix of it: the curiosity and admiration, the dreams of living without detrimental effects, the guilt of one’s choices, the perseverance to continue, the self-degradation, and the longing for understanding. Farewell, little cricket. You did good to try.