“Animal Architects: Influences on Human Creativity” features works inspired by nests, cocoons, and insect colonies.MOLLY SHARLACHA silkworm larva swathes itself into a cocoon by secreting a single strand of silk, two miles long. Bald-faced hornets scrape and chew cellulose from sticks to build an elaborate paper colony, while a solitary female organ-pipe wasp braids balls of mud into a tubular nest to nourish her young.
A new exhibit draws parallels between these activities and the work of artists who fashion wood, clay, or fibers into expressive forms. “Animal Architects: Influences on Human Creativity,” which opened at the Arts Council of Princeton, New Jersey, this month (November 7), features works by five local artists.
The show’s curator, artist Donna Payton, views her work as a vehicle to “comment on” found objects, whether manmade or natural; she is an avid observer of the plants and animals outside her studio, which sits on four wooded acres adjacent to a wildlife preserve. Payton is also a fan of animal behavior writings by the husband-and-wife team James Gould and Carol Grant Gould. James is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at Princeton University; Carol is a ...
