In Defense of Creepy Crawlies

Giant bugs always get a bad rap. From the unwieldy, pop-eyed ants of Them! to the billboard-sized tarantula of Earth vs. the Spider ("It must eat you to live!"), creepy crawlies of the enormous variety are typecast as disemboweling, prickly monsters. Luckily, Creativity Explored has launched a PR campaign for big bugs of all sorts. The gallery, which features the work of adults with developmental disabilities, is staging a sculptural exhibition called "INsects INsectos," featuring artists' renderings of larger-than-life papier-mâché ants, beetles, dragonflies, wasps, and locusts. Artists Nubia Ortega and Abel Pineda draw on their memories of childhoods spent in El Salvador and Mexico respectively, crafting oversized wood bees and migrating Monarch butterflies. Pineda theorizes that bugs appear frequently in Latin American art because our neighbors to the South are more likely to appreciate insects instead of smashing them. Attending this show may be good therapy for those who wield the slipper too quickly -- these bugs are strange, whimsical, brightly colored, and have snapped nary a teenager in half. (Note to fussy entomologists: we’re well aware that spiders are arachnids, not insects.)
June 26-Aug. 6, 2008