Author Archives: swarm
“An October Spirit Embiggens The Smallest Insect”
October is a great time for the staff here at the Endless Swarm. It’s the one time the rest of the world seems to pay attention to the world of the unloved invertebrate. Entomological festivals get scheduled, museums dust off … Continue reading
Posted in literature, wtf
Tagged aranea, earwig, giant, girlofindustry, J.H. Kerner-Greenwood, lacewing, The Strand
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Cyrus Tilton
As a semi-frequent attendee of the Oakland Art Murmur, an open-gallery art event that takes place every month, I have been lucky to be exposed to Cyrus Tilton’s works thanks to Vessel Gallery. Tilton’s sculptures are one of my favorite … Continue reading
Posted in art, event
Tagged Bathynomus, Cyrus Tilton, grasshopper, installation, locust, sculpture, swarm, Vessel Gallery
4 Comments
The Golden Fleece
Like the endless nature documentaries that invariably used a football field as the default unit of measurement for flea-jumping, nearly every educational book or film that mentions spiders always talked about the incredible unrealized potential of spider silk. “Pound for … Continue reading
Posted in art, fashion, JD, spider
Tagged Art Institute of Chicago, Golden Orb, Madagascar, Nicholas Godley, Paul Camboué, silk, Simon Peers, spider
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Endless Swarm, Swarm, SWARM!
http://youtu.be/4GsGcqmmRd8 Cartoon Tuesday! Found this lovely bee-filled gem from my youth. In the 80’s, Marvel put Spider-Man in cartoons again, but this time paired with two other Marvel characters, where they all lived in the classic apartment-that-with-a-switch-of-a-lever-becomes-a-computer-filled-crime-fighting-lab. Anyways, this episode … Continue reading
Moths Under My Nose
Continuing an unfortunate trend in local insect-related art shows that I have missed, here are some works from Bay Area artist Ana Labastida. Her installation “Pullulate” is just one of several works involving moths and swarms, and was recently on … Continue reading
The Hybrids of Paul Paiement
There’s something gleefully unsettling about Paul Paiement’s “Hybrid” paintings. They seem innocent enough, a straightforward pop-art treatment of entomological portraits spliced with consumer products. But Paiement’s works lack any sort of easy symmetry, and as the eye is pulled back … Continue reading
Stridulation Friday
This evening I’m making a cardboard green-bottle fly in the garage, and listening to Hank Williams: Happy Friday!
The Curse of Fear
One of my favorite kinds of literary formats in high school was (and still is) the Science Fiction Anthology. A grab-bag of styles and ideas, I never knew what to expect. Greedily pulling down every Nebula Awards, Science Fiction Hall … Continue reading
The Metal Insects of Edouard Martinet
Don’t get me wrong. I love kitschy scrap-iron insects, even goofy ones made from VW Beetles. But the scrap-metal works of Edouard Martinet are on another plane of mechanistic existence. More than abstract robo-insects, we’re looking at accurate depictions of … Continue reading
Posted in art
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Hairy Stills
Though Parisian artist Guido Mocafico has received lots of attention for his beautiful photography of snakes, I love this hairy series of his, collectively called Aranea. His site also has a wonderful collection of jellyfish portraits, and photographs done in … Continue reading
