Endangered bugs commemorated on new sculpture

In an unusual link between wildlife and art, twenty invertebrates on the endangered species list have been commemorated on a new crystal glass sculpture. Part of the proceeds will be used to support invertebrate conservation.

The result of a collaboration between Buglife and a cystal glass engraver, the piece - entitled simply 'Endangered' - was shortlisted for the 2007 Glass Sellers Award, and now some of the proceeds from its sale will be ploughed back into invertebrate conservation.

The Iron Blue mayfly - one of the species featured on the piece

The idea for the piece came when engraver Lesley Pyke, looking for ideas, got in touch with Buglife. According to Buglife's Jamie Roberts: 'We felt that this collaboration was an excellent way to highlight the threat faced by these rare bugs. All of the species - like the crystal glass itself - are delicate and need to be carefully protected if they are to be enjoyed by future generations.'
The species featured include the Cliff tiger beetle, the Wormwood Moonshiner, the Norfolk Hawker dragonfly and the Shrill carder bumblebee. All are included on the Government's recent list of Priority Species for conservation action, meaning that they are endangered and declining.

Delicate: 'Endangered' showing the Ladybird spider

Creating such an intricate piece was a serious undertaking. According to engraver Lesley Pyke, there were a number of challenges in engraving so many species onto a fragile piece of crystal glass:
"The Cullet was in danger of being destroyed in a remote glass factory in Northern France, and I was offered the opportunity to save it. I did not know whether it would shatter during engraving - if it wasn't properly looked after it could have become extinct, just like the rare bugs it features."
For information on purchasing this unique piece of art click here.

 

 

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Bill Fontana's New Sculpture

Though this review is indeed running in the Visual Arts section—visual being the keyword here—there's not actually much to see in the latest show at Seattle's favorite contemporary art space, Western Bridge (a space where I once interned). Rather, Bill Fontana, a living legend in the field of sound art, has installed a sculpture that has, almost literally, no visual components.
This is not unusual for the artist, who has, since the 1970s, been making art that we hear but don't see as a means by which to explore how live-ambient noise can be both musical and sculptural. Whether recording cars crossing a wooden bridge or the cacophony of a rain forest affected by a solar eclipse, his early projects displaced sounds from their indigenous environments and foregrounded them in new situations, causing his audience to recognize the beauty inherent in background noises we usually tune out.
Fontana's latest piece at Western Bridge, Objective Sound, is similar in that it does profoundly call attention to the musicality of the sounds our city makes, but the piece is also a shift for the artist. Rather than displacing natural sounds and playing them outside their original settings, Fontana embellishes the industrial soundtrack that surrounds the gallery and then amplifies it back inside the renovated warehouse.
His impressive system captures the ambient SoDo noise in real time and then filters it through objects he found at a nearby surplus store. Microphones hover over an iron buoy and I-beams that add their own timbre to the outdoor sounds. The eerie tone of the combination is then mixed against a 37-minute soundtrack Fontana composed, and piped through loudspeakers placed in each of the Bridge's rooms.
With few visual distractions, puddles of noise collect in the empty gallery spaces. The low hum of industry—police sirens, train whistles, the endless drone of truck engines—competes with remnants of the Duwamish Waterway: Birds, wind, and, on occasion, raindrops trickle into our ears. Yet Objective Sound will also heighten all of your sensory perceptions. Once Fontana has got your ears' attention, there's something of a biological domino effect that occurs: Your eyes focus, your noses smell. As we listen to the groan of the world around us, soft light creeps across walls where paintings once hung and intimate galleries become cavernous, deserted spaces. The concrete underfoot becomes a raw reminder of the building's industrial days.
All of which is to say that Fontana has orchestrated an experience that is at once calming and startling, and one that creates an aesthetic experience out of what might otherwise be annoyances of modern life. Which is exactly why I urge you to go to the Bridge, park your car just outside the front door, set off your car alarm, and then head on in with the alarm still blaring. Erik Fredericksen, the Bridge's director, made me do just that, and let me tell you, never will something that is normally so irritating sound so damn good. Fontana certainly got me to recognize the beauty in that particular racket.
visualarts@seattleweekly.com