Specimin Boxes
Lepidoptera
I transfer words onto paper or cloth or use found papers and fold these materials, through the ancient art of origami, into butterflies. As I fold, burn and sometimes iron the paper and cloth, the words metamorphose. One disappears into a fold while another appears on a wing. Relationships and meanings change.
Words have wings. They fly from my mouth. Shaped by the words that I write, read, hear and speak, I am transformed. Like the butterfly transformed, through metamorphosis. I am altered by the words which surround me. Words: newspapers, books, signs & symbols. Words. Jogging memory, giving direction, inspiring. Building, breaking. Embracing, repelling. Revealing, encasing. Healing, hurting. Collected like rocks or bits of broken shell. Specimens and archives. Museum and vision. Morphed into safekeeping. Unconsciously collected.
Across centuries and borders, butterflies, symbolizing the human soul and immortality, fly from the mouths of the sleeping and the dead. Aristotle used the Greek word psyche to mean both “butterfly” and “human soul.” Psyche now connotes the “mind.” Values, meanings, changes.
- Cat Schwenk
