Brandon Ballengée’s “Love Motel for Insects” is sure to dazzle the moths and other nighttime insects of Laramie, WY, this summer, but perhaps none so much as the human visitors to the artist/biologist’s latest installation, which will be on view June 25-Sept. 17.
Subtitled “Laramie Railroad Depot Variation and Pollinator Garden,” Ballengée’s installation is the latest in his ongoing series of public art installations intended to create interactions between humans and arthropods.
His works use ultraviolet lights on enormous sculpted canvases, often shaped like Lepidoptera, to attract nocturnal arthropods. Since 2001, Love Motels have been set up around the world: on boats in Venice, Italy; peat bogs in Ireland; moors in Scotland, shopping malls in India and outside Aztec ruins in Mexico, as well as locations across the U.S. At each venue, the Love Motel becomes the backdrop for community events, as it will in Laramie.
In Laramie, a pollinator garden complements the Love Motel. The summer installation in Laramie will culminate in an exhibition of Ballengée’s works at the University of Wyoming Art Museum.
Ballengée is a visual artist, biologist and environmental activist based in New York. He creates transdisciplinary artworks inspired by his ecological field and laboratory research.
This summer’s Love Motel for Insects is also a registered National Moth Week event. If you live in Laramie or happen to be visiting, the Love Motel should offer plenty of opportunity for some great mothing.
For more information, go online to uwyo.edu/artmuseum <http://www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum> or follow the museum on Facebook and Instagram.