By turns wonderful and horrible, awe-inspiring and ew-inspiring, the Dennos Museum's exhibit "A Terrible Beauty: Compulsion and Repulsion” is sure to generate a buzz.
Installed this week by artist and teacher Jennifer Angus, the tapestry of insects weaves geometric patterns throughout two galleries — filling almost 200 linear feet of wall with bugs. Some traditional freestanding displays of insects will also accompany the exhibit, which opens Sunday and runs through March 4.
The breathtaking display of between 5,000-6,000 bright-hued insects from exotic locales, marching in geometric precision over brightly painted walls, is the centerpiece of Angus' vision. She bases her patterns, both in display and collecting, on Victorian era excess, when people were both fascinated and repelled by the outrageous, the grotesque.
"I do watch the reactions and one of the things that I enjoy is seeing people's wonder,” said Angus, a native of Canada who is an assistant professor of environment, textiles and design at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "We've ceased to be surprised by things — to me that's half of it, they walk in and the jaw drops.”
"I play off on the North American fear of bugs,” she added, noting that exhibiting in Asia, where many of the insects are from, would most likely elicit little notice.
Eugene Jenneman, executive director of the Dennos Museum, saw an exhibit featuring Angus' work last April at an exhibit in Toronto. Immediately captivated by both the concept and execution, he knew he had to bring Angus' innovative vision to Traverse City.
"What struck me was I think sort of surprise: this wasn't anything I would ever imagine seeing in an art exhibit,” he recalled. "It was that unique quality of the work and the use of the insects that is out of the ordinary, which is what we try to find.”
Angus, four assistants and a host of museum docent volunteers will work all week to install the exhibit, pinning one bug at a time to the meticulously measured and crafted patterns. Acquiring her media from reputable vendors in their native regions, often Asia and Central American, Angus noted how insects are an endlessly renewable resource.
Even in her exhibits, she works hard to reuse the bugs time after time, and they are pinned, unpinned, stored and shipped with care. During the installation week, some volunteers served in the bug hospital repairing as many bugs as they could for reuse.
"Insects reproduce at a tremendous rate,” noted Angus, who while not an entomologist has taught herself much about all facets of insect life. "An insect's life is for the most part fleeting compared to us.”
Angus, who has an Master of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago, segued into insects while conducting research in Thailand. Her collection numbers around 20,000 specimens and she draws on that to make each exhibit unique. She selects additions to her collection based on their exotic appeal, with tropical climates usually providing the largest and most colorful insects.
"There's not much demand for things that are black or brown,” Angus noted, adding that her favorite bug changes from show to show.
The three most common questions she fields during an exhibit of her work are: where did you get so many insects? (Many places.) Did you catch them yourself? (No.) Are these their natural colors? (Yes.)
With a flair for the dramatic and the unusual coupled with a precise mind, Angus uses her insects to engage attendees on many levels. In the Dennos exhibit, she is creating the larger, more open 'Blue Room' exhibit as the public space where the insects are shown in relation to the human world. The 'Red Room' features insects in more anthropomorphized settings illustrated with her stylized reproductions from a Victorian book entitled "Episodes of Insect Life.”
"I see my work as a series of episodic exhibits where I explore ideas further,” she said. "It is theater.”