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Halloween is last Day for Big Bugs
Exhibit by Elizabeth
Eidlitz Unlike most pests-- midnight mosquitoes in the bedroom, ants on a summer picnic, or flies at the kitchen screen —there are thirteen spectacular bugs that will stay in Metrowest until the end of October.
Dinosaur-sized insects, each a natural wood sculpture, constitute the BIG BUGS exhibit which has invaded New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods of Framingham, a living museum in the middle of the suburbs. The creatures are positioned around a mile-long circular path, amid 1500 varieties of native plants.
A ladybug, 7 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 3 feet high is made from black walnut and willow. It weighs 150 pounds and looks to Nicola Caltado, retail director, “as serene and benevolent as a Buddha.”
Further along the path, a Daddy Longlegs, 17 feet wide; three gigantic red cedar ants, each weighing 725 pounds; a 1200-pound praying mantis, 20-feet long; a red cedar spider, four feet long in its fifty pound willow web; a black locust damselfly, 10 feet by 6 feet by 3 feet; a fifty-pound bee with a 159 pound flower, and a 200 pound assassin bug of black walnut and red cedar.
“I liked the dragonfly best,” said Morgan Harnois, 9, “because he was on a pond with real turtles.” She’s holding up a replica she made in the weekend craft activity,-- a stick with "copters" (maple tree pods) and googley eyes.
Her father admired the use of recycled plastic for floating islands in Lily Pond. Her mother found the “simple and relaxing” exhibit well worth their Sunday drive from Meriden, Connecticut.
Big Bugs are the creations of David Rogers. At thirteen, the self-taught artist from long Island NY, made oversized sculpture from scrap material and salvaged car parts. Subsequently, he turned to natural materials: hardwoods, bark, vines, plate fungi and varieties of tree saplings for his rustic works, whose different shapes, colors and textures provide character, definition, and a sense of motion.
Though magnified thousands of times, Big Bugs are anatomically correct. Rogers’ collection has toured arboreta and botanical gardens in the U.S. since the mid ‘90s, raising awareness of these creatures, which outnumber us one million to one, and celebrating their part in the Web of Life.
“Many live in communal groups working as one for the common good of all. Their ranks include engineers, soldiers, weightlifters, weavers, hunters, stalkers, gatherers, and even royalty,” Rogers explains. “ This remarkable group of “hidden gardeners,” plays a vital role in pollinating flowers, dispersing wildflower seed, controlling other insect pests, recycling dead matter and aerating soil.
The interactive exhibit offers hands-on encounters with live insects, crafts activities related to the featured Bug of the Weekend, and a chance to test your jumping abilities at the black locust grasshopper jump.
Activity Bags, filled with sketchpad and crayons, magnifying glass, insect field guide, binoculars, bug bingo, and a dry eraser, are on loan daily at the Visitors Center. (To insure their return, adults must leave car keys as collateral.)
A grant from the Middlesex Savings Bank Charitable Foundation not only funds the bags and translates maps into foreign languages; it also brings every 2nd grader in Framingham to the exhibit.
There are natural phenomena --like Northern lights, Halley’s comet, migrations of Monarch butterflies, and Perseid meteor showers, which no one should miss.
Add to these, this Big Bugs exhibit. The last day is October 30.
For more information see <www.newenglandWILD.org> Or call 508-877-7630. |
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The Hopkinton News TM online only at HopNews.com ©2008 HopNews.com All Rights Reserved. 508-435-5534
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Nearby,
there's a butterfly, made of black walnut, black locust, and plate
fungi, with a wingspread greater than five feet. 
Because
of their large scale, “you can’t help but notice them. The whole event
isn't just 'come to the garden and see the bugs.' I'm really trying to
reach out to people here,” says Rogers, who aims to increase awareness
of these beneficial insects and to promote their conservation.