Strange Kin

Jennifer Angus is best known for her large-scale installations featuring hundreds of insects. She invites viewers to marvel at—and develop a deep respect for—these humble yet essential creatures, which are vital to the health of our planet and our own survival.

Angus’s work not only celebrates the intricate beauty of insects and the natural world but also encourages us to reflect on our own backyards and ask: how can we protect and restore what sustains us all? Through her mesmerizing installations, she calls us to action—for the sake of the insects, and for our shared future.

Angus is a professor in the Design Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches textile design.

Catherine Chalmers’s work is at the intersection of art, science and nature. Chalmers aims to give form to the richness, as well as the brutality and indifference that often characterize our relationship with nature. Chalmers does extensive research for each of her long-term, projects and a direct engagement with the natural world is central to her process. Though she works across media – from engineering and painting to photography, video, sculpture, and drawing – her artistic practice has focused on one central issue: how to confront and challenge an anthropocentric point of view.

Chalmers holds a BS in Engineering from Stanford University and an MFA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She has been featured on PBS, CNN, NPR, and the BBC.

Kate Kato uses discarded paper, wire and thread, to capture the delicate detail and beauty found in nature. Influenced by plants and insects, Kato creates intricate, life-sized sculptures of specimens using paper cutting, carving, wire work, and embroidery techniques, that she then carefully arranges into collections. Her use of discarded paper for her creations encourages viewers to look closer and consider the small and hidden details that may normally be overlooked. Kato leaves aspects of the original materials visible – a bit of type or handwriting – so the sculptures look real and not real at the same time, inviting you to question the creatures you see and the worlds or experiences she has documented.

Kato currently lives and works just outside the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, UK and has exhibited work nationally and internationally. Kato completed her BA in Graphic Design at the University of the West of England where she focused on book making and print, exploring ideas of narrative and working intensively with paper.

For several years, Ruth Marsh has been creating a series of artworks which focus specifically on bee disappearance and decrepitude. Solicited through an ongoing public call, hundreds of found, dead bees are sent through the mail to them from individuals across Canada. Once received, the bees are taxidermically preserved and meticulously repaired using discarded technology. The newly refurbished bees are then revived, frame-by-frame, through the process of stop motion animation. Approaching this work from a perspective which is part cyber-punk mad-scientist and part devoted, repair technician, their work mindfully employs techniques which mirror bee life itself.

Marsh is based out of the southern region of Ontario, Canada. Since graduating from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, their practice has spanned painting, drawing, taxidermy, video, performance, installation, stop-motion animation, virtual reality and video game development.