“Insects, worms, and other small animals that carry out vital functions for life on earth have declined by 45 percent average over 35 years, threatening human, water quality and food supplies…”
– Steve Connor, “Vital invertebrates decline 45 percent, study finds,” independent.co.uk, July 2014
Proposal
The plan and idea behind this is to make an insect hotel to protect and help the ever declining bug population. As bugs are an integral part of our ecosystem, it is important that we do what we can to help raise their numbers so as to not upset our natural ecosystem. The goal of the project was to create a safe place for the insects to house themselves so they may be protected and be able increase their population. Along with making something that is both visually interesting, so as to spark interest in what the project is about.
Research of Insects
For my personal project I chose to focus on butterflies, ladybugs and bees. All three are well recognized by the community and each has an important role to help the ecosystem.
We have several types of butterflies that are native to Wisconsin. The Monarch might be the most popular and well known, but we play host to quite a few more other than the Monarch. Some that I recall seeing a lot growing up were the Black Swallowtail.
My research has shown that butterflies like to have a boxed in area, both to hide in and to stay warm. This area should be big enough to fit the full size of a butterfly and be stocked with branches and leaves for them to hang onto. A section at least six to eight inches deep should be large enough for them. To get into the area, openings between a 1/4th and ½ inch in width should exist.
Ladybugs, also known around as Ladybirds or Lady Beetles, require a slightly different in home space. Most often Ladybugs will use a space for hibernating in the winter. Instead of leaves and twigs something like pinecones are ideal as they like to hide in between the spokes of the pinecones to stay warm. They need a much smaller opeing to get in, if you are going to close off the area, and can hide in smaller spaces, but have no problem just going into an open pinecone as well.
Bees are a very important part of our ecosystem and are disappearing at an alarming rate. Not all bees live in large hives with many other bees around them. We do have solitary bees that pollinate and live on their own in small tubes or holes in wood.
Initial sketches and final preparatory drawing
I started coming up with two different ideas that my first drawings were centered around. The look of something that could be found in the forest and the look of Japanese patterns, which could have a geometric look to them. (It is not uncommon for them to have repeating hexagon designs.) My time in class has taught me that I need to think about designs that can be ‘pushed’ and can evolve when working on them. The best ideas to start with are the ones that can change and evolve with your idea as you go forward with the project. As such the fan design became the chosen idea to move forward with.
The idea of a fan in the forest seems a little farfetched to start with, and really doesn’t jump out as being associated with bugs. Yet if one thinks about it, it’s not that out of place of an idea. Traditionally, folding fans were made out of wood and silk. You get wood from the trees or bamboo within a forest and silk comes from a silk bug. Wood and bugs both belong in a forest, yet we have disassociated the fan with those roots. So it became an interesting idea to me, to put a folding fan back in the forest in a way.
First the idea was to have the front be completely open with the branch design put in to make smaller sections. As I moved forward with the idea the thought of putting a front panel on it and cutting into the panel came to be. From there the idea that if I was going to use flowers I should use ones that are from our home state of Wisconsin. In my search for ideas, I came across the fact that Wisconsin has wild growing orchids. They are endangered in themselves, and they became the flowers I decided to put on the front of the bug box. I chose three of the five Wisconsin orchids and drew them up to get an idea of what the front should look like.
I decided to use: The Eastern Prairie White Fringed Orchid (placing it on the left hand side), the Callypso Orchid (placed in the center), and the Round-leaved Orchis (drawn on the right hand side.) If you look below you can see that I took an image of the orchids and simplified them into a form of line art, which I then planned on cutting out of the front panel to allow the insects access to the inner box, which would be filled with twigs and pinecones.
Because of several factors it was decided to change the wooden layout from the cardboard mock up made. In this mock-up you can see seven sections and how they converged onto the center point. After some work with the digital lay out it was decided to move past this and make it five sections with four sections within it.
I decided to use a mixture of beets, cranberries and black cherries to make a natural stain for the wood to offset the ‘silk’ part of the fan from the wood. I covered all of this in several layers of shellac. To finish it I used a combination of stainless steel and galvanized steel components to hopefully make this piece both durable and long lasting in the outdoor environment that it will be living in from now on.