Giant Silk Moths

We have a masquerade show at poethouse tonight, and as usual I am finishing up my piece at the last minute. I honestly wasn't even sure that I would be able to come up with a mask by today, but now (fingers crossed!) it looks like I am going to have a fun mask to wear and auction off tonight.

When I was brainstorming for this project I was trying to think of animals that look like they are made of silk, and an image of a Luna Moth popped into my head. I google image searched "giant moths" and was absolutely blown away by the beauty and abundance of different types of giant moths that are out there. I thought that it was rather serendipidous that the family of moths that the Luna Moth comes from is actually called giant silk moths. Thanks to Wikipedia for educating me on this fascinating family of moths: "The Cecropia Moth (Hyalophora cecropia) is North America's largest native moth. It is a member of the Saturniidae family, or giant silk moths. Females with a wingspan of 130 mm or more have been documented."

setting the dye on my moth wings

Hopefully by tonight I will be masquerading as a cecropia moth!

Under the Chuppah

This past winter, my dear friend Danielle asked me to design and paint the chuppah for her wedding. In Jewish wedding ceremonies, the couple gets married under the chuppah, a canopy that symbolizes the home they will build together. I was honored to be asked, and the weight of the task before me was tempered by the seemingly endless amount of time until her wedding.


Despite the inherent stress of weddings, this somehow ended up being a low stress project. At the time, I was unable to stop painting tree ring patterns, and as I brainstormed for Danielle's chuppah, the tree rings became the obvious centerpiece of the design. Danielle and her her husband Jon are both very connected with nature--in fact, Jon proposed to Danielle with the ring hidden inside of a walnut shell he had crafted into a tiny ring box. Many other symbolic elements played into the design, none of which I can accurately describe here without sounding overly cheesy.

The chuppah looked beautiful at the ceremony, and most importantly, the bride and groom love it. *Better images to come as soon as the professional photos are available!

Catching up with myself

Not many who know me know all of my different sides, and I sometimes feel like my artistic side is this reclusive little girl that doesn't often come out in broad daylight. This blog is an effort to shine some light on that creative little girl, and a maybe a stab at self-promotion.

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This photo is of a piece that I submitted for a juried show at PoetHouse with the theme "Memento Mori" - a latin phrase, meaning (basically) "Remember, you shall die".

The title of the entire piece (The long fall back to the center, pictured below), was inspired by Bone Poem, by Mary Oliver.

Bone Poem
by Mary Oliver

The litter under the tree
Where the owl eats--shrapnel

Of rat bones, gull debris--
Sinks into the wet leaves

Where time sits with her slow spoon,
Where we become singular, and a quickening

From light years away
Saves and maintains. O holy

Protein, O hallowed lime,
O precious clay!

Tossed under the tree
The cracked bones

Of the owl's most recent feast
Lean like shipwreck, starting

The long fall back to the center--
The seepage, the flowing,

The equity, sooner or later
In the shimmering leaves

The rat will learn to fly, the owl
Will be devoured.