ITHAKA EXHIBIT - OPENING FEB 21st 2015 (7-10pm) at F+ Gallery - 661 N. Poinsettia Avenue in Santa Ana, Ca 92701. Also featuring insect works by guest artists David Clyde Kersh, Erica Ellingson, Ian Morris, Nathan Paul Gibbs, Steven Kutcher, Will Thompson -and a special appearance by world-famous live insect handler Diana Terranova. All show info at below link, see you there: https://www.facebook.com/events/338590866327366/
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Aliens of AkahtiLândia (artist's statement)
I'd been living in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil for five years and was feeling it was time to move on, when
after researching a tip from an anonymous stranger in October 2010, I investigated
(and soon afterward purchased) a small brick house on an acre of jungle property
just outside of the Serra do Mar Atlantic Forest Reserve on the southern coast
of the State of São Paulo – about 300 miles south of Rio. Needless to say, it
was a move that somewhat metamorphosized my mostly urban-suburban upbringing
and adulthood.
The immediate neighborhood of
about 2000 acres, an area called
AkahtiLândia (pronounced: aah-kah-tee-land-eeah), is extremely rural. There is
a native Guarani village just down the road, where many of the local residents
literally live in mud and stick huts. There are several rivers and small
mountains, exotic birds and wild animals.
For the past four and a half
years, I've been occupied with a mutated version of the life I've known since
my early twenties: making art and music…and surfing, but this time in a neo-tropical
forest environment.
The things that have really
impressed me most about the jungle are the tiny animals; spiders, moths,
beetles, worms, etc. Visually, there's no end to the variety. The colors and
geometric forms are absolutely mind-blowing. To me, insects are living,
cutting-edge, contemporary art forms.
I spend several hours a week
just observing and photographing them. And attempting to ID them. But sometimes
that's impossible, as many of them have yet to be officially recognized by the
scientific community. It's also probable that in creatures having such short
reproductive cycles (some procreating more than thirty generations of offspring
in a single year) that subtle adaptations are constantly resulting in new
variations of existing species.
I've noted some insects with
extremely sophisticated behavioral traits. A few, believe it or not, seem to
demonstrate what appear to be real emotions.
This relatively recent
obsession of mine has fueled an entire body of work entitled, Aliens of
AkahtiLândia - integrating all three of my visual mediums; sculpture,
photographs and mixed-media paintings. The sculpture pieces, although based on
actual creatures I've seen or photographed, are modified and manipulated
versions of the real thing, while the flat mixed-media pieces are normally
truer to the actual entities that inspired them.
I call them Aliens not only
because of their seemingly unearthly eccentric multi-colored appearances and
high IQs, but also because of their extremely complex, functional and almost
indestructible body designs. Most people who believe in extraterrestrial life
think that beings from other solar systems will appear somewhat humanoid and be
more or less our size. I disagree. I find it more likely that they would be
something much smaller and more insect-like.
Imagine if some of these
creatures already present on this planet originated from other parts of the
universe. How would we even know it?
One earth insect, the
Tardigrade - aka the Water Bear, has already been proven to be capable of
surviving the vacuum of space.
And if one or more of these
minute species already here was actually more intelligent than man, how could
we even measure or determine that? (maybe they simply choose not to communicate
with us).
More importantly, would we
admit something so much smaller in stature to humankind is in fact superior to
us in many ways?
Ithaka 2015
