Artist Statement Notes: Catching Fireflies

Note: this post came from journal notes I’m making as I rewrite my artist statement, a task that is part of my DIY artist residency. 

In Wisconsin, days get very short as we approach the winter solstice. Holiday lights go up early as we all look for ways to find more light. 

While journaling some thoughts on my art my mind went to the opposite time of year, just past the summer solstice when heat and humidity are high. As kids growing up in Illinois we’d take bell canning jars, with rough holes punched in the metal lids, outside once the sun had set on a long, summer day and catch fireflies. We were chasing their magical light, which blinked and twinkled in a language we didn’t understand. We wanted to capture some of that magic, to contain it, to get a closer look. We kept it only for a short time, letting the fireflies go back into the night. Recalling those nights, however, makes me wonder about our human compulsion to capture and contain wilderness. 

I can picture it vividly in my mind, chasing fireflies after dark, around the big, blue spruce trees in my grandparents backyard. This memory came up as I was journaling about what insects, a subject I keep returning to, represent in my art. Winged insects, with their lightness, ability to fly, and rapid movement are intermediaries between material and immaterial worlds. Transitional spaces. Connection to that which we cannot see. 

In some ways, I think my works of art are like those jars of fireflies, my way of capturing and sorting the mystique of wilderness and its connection to something my human self knows we’ve lost, longs to know better, and vaguely remembers in moments of quiet.