H U N T I N G & G A T H E R I N G
Top: Jars of honey
remind viewers of the
role of insects in the
food chain, in the art-
ist’s installation at the
Craft Alliance.
Opposite: Christopher
Relyea, Angus’s assis-
tant, installing
Locusts
and Honey
at the Craft
Alliance.
Bottom: Leilani and
Cole Arnold view
Locusts and Honey
with
their mother, Jessica,
and gallery attendant
Courtney Henson.
shipment of 4,000 frog-leg beetles, priced
tantalizingly low but heavily damaged and
filmed with mold. “My assistant was ready
to commit suicide,” Angus recalls. “They
are so slippery; wiping the mold off their
backs was a horrible job.” Over the years
Angus has developed close relationships
with dealers like Ken Thorne of London,
Ontario, who talked her through her first
efforts at preparing specimens, and Alain
van Vyve of Belgium, a self-described “fa-
natic collector and artworker of insects”
who now calls Angus whenever he gets
a large shipment of a particular bug. An in-
veterate traveler, Angus has also visited
a few of the regions where her favorite in-
sects are collected, most often by indig-
enous people intimate with the local envi-
ronment. “It’s really hard work,” Angus
explains, “and they have to know the best
way to catch each bug. Many insects are
active at night, when the forest can be
totally disorienting if you are not familiar
with it.” Ironically, the insect trade has
created additional incentive for local
people to preserve forest habitat.
Angus continues to evoke beauty and
pestilence with pinned “wallpapers,” and
her exploration of our relationship with
insects deepens with every project.
Locusts
and Honey,
for example, a new piece for the
Craft Alliance in St. Louis (through May
17), considers the pivotal role of insects
in the food chain, from pollination to the
decomposition of organic matter. The
focus of several recent installations, how-
ever, has been the nature of collecting. For
Insecta Fantasia,
at the Newark Museum’s
Ballantine House (through June 14), she has
imagined the childhood rooms of two aspir-
ing entomologists: Percy, whose collection
is precisely ordered and labeled, and Alice,
who creates richly layered fairytale settings
for her bugs. Both rooms are intensely man-
aged environments, designed to handle the
fearsome strangeness of the insect world.
Back in Wisconsin, Angus’s studio, packed
floor to ceiling with boxes of insects, is be-
ginning to convey a fearsome strangeness
all its own.+
Gimme More!
jenniferangus.com
insectnet.com
newarkmuseum.org
craftalliancc.org
apr/may09 american craft 067
