Wednesday 30 January 2008

Insect Lab

Insect Lab:

Insect Lab is an artist studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and electronic components. Offering specimens that come in many shapes, sizes and colors; each insect is individually adorned, each is one of a kind and unique.

Borrowing from both science fiction and science fact, Insect Lab's customized insects are a celebration of natural and manmade function. Specimens are presented in custom black shadow boxes or glass dome display, allowing for presentation anywhere.

How did insect lab begin?
One day I found a dead intact beetle. I then located an old wristwatch, thinking of how the beetle also operated and looked like a little mechanical device and so decided to combine the two. After some time dissecting the beetle and outfitting it with watch parts and gears, I had a convincing little cybernetic sculpture. I soon made many more with other found insects and have been exploring and developing the theme ever since.

Artist Bio: I'm a multi-disciplinary artist who makes highly detailed sculptures, models, collages and drawings. Through diverse materials and methodologies, I explore themes of science, nature, fantasy, history and autobiography; highlighting illogical and acute correspondences between the real and unreal.

For the past 8 years, alongside my other body of work, I have enjoyed developing the work presented here as Insect Lab. Insects have always fascinated me and so does human technology, or maybe its more the need for humans to create and use technology that is more intriguing. Either way, the interest for me, and it is slightly a romantic interest, is combining two elements that are very opposite, yet compliment each other conceptually and visually.

Libby Graduated with a degree in Sculpture from RISD in 1999 and has since attended the Vermont Studio Center, been artist-in-residence at the University of Maine at Orono. He has been in many solo and group exhibits, in Maine, throughout the US and Canada and is in collections worldwide. He has future shows in Boston, Philadelphia and San Diego and in Februsry 2008 his work from Insect Lab will be featured on the cover of Tachyon Publications "New Weird" anthology, a collection of contemporary science fiction writing.

2 comments:

DarknLight said...

quote original, looks cool!

Terra Glitch said...

@Darknlight, yeah it's pretty cool ain't it? ;P Now imagine if they actually crawled around looking like that!