I luv bugs

When not collecting and documenting everything in the 300+ acres I grew up on, I was grabbing every bug in sight.  For no purpose but to get a good look at them.  Barbies were not my thang.

I had strategic methods for gathering.  The obsession was so extensive that now I can look back in my brain and pick out a distinct nifty critter for adorning a vase. I'll reference books and zee google to get the markings just right.  Sometimes I invent bugs, and will tell you a straight lie about it's history, it's genus and species, and its habitat.  I'm clever like that.

It's the little things.  Lying in the grass...it's just a lawn, but it is positively alive with millions of these beings, going about their day.  Some people get a little squeamish, and I get that.  There was a stinkbug in my hair the other day, and I just about died.  But if you've read along this far, I bet you're a bug person too.  Maybe when you were a kid, maybe now.  Maybe yesterday you saw the incredible beauty of a beetle you almost missed.  It's hard to be all grown up and not feel little again closely examining a bug.  I highly recommend it.

You'll see bees in my work, as my father kept them.  Wasps, as I was particularly adept at stepping on them with bare feet. Roaches, earwigs, stinkbugs. Butterflies because of their intrinsic beauty and spiritual nature...monarchs are sacred to me. Beetles of all kinds, as their markings are mathematically represented in Art Nouveau.  They harmonize in my designs.

And moths.  Night butterflies. My fave.

*Quote by Steven Tyler