and species diversity that thirty years of
ecological restoration have produced.
Minckley, whose dry humor and enthusiasm for nature’s manifold forms are
infectious, has been studying pollen specialization in native bees for decades. (He
once took my family on a tour of a diverse
biological collection housed in his university’s basement, the narwhal-tusk cane
and taxidermied armadillo making my
four-year-old squeal with delight.) Green
was fascinated by Minckley’s research on
these remarkable yet unobtrusive native
bees, so she contacted him. In turn,
Minckley was inspired by Green’s years
of installation work focused on the biodi-versity of Cholla Bay, Mexico, an area just
south of the US-Mexico border threatened with habitat destruction. A collaboration was born.
The practice of portraiture has always
had more to do with artful composition
than with simple reproduction. The process is meant to be laborious. After all, a
portrait’s primary job is to memorialize: to
fix within both time and space an impression of an individual, living being. How
vital to be reminded in this way of another
species’ existence, to see homage being
paid not just with brushstrokes but attention to scientific detail. Green recounts
some of Minckley’s stories about collecting individual bees as she paints and I
can’t help but be struck by the melancholy
thought that the portraits may outlast the
species they represent. If the revolutionary surrealist André Breton was right that
“in order to change ways of being, we
must first change ways of seeing,” these
portraits are a compelling example of just
how immediate and moving a change of
perception can really be. A
Katherine Larson is the author of Radial
Symmetry and the winner of the Yale
Younger Poets Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She lives in Tucson, Arizona,
with her family.
Cao Xiaoyang, Gu Mountain: Waterfall Cascade, 2016,
charcoal on paper, 198 x 108 cm.
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