Upcoming Exhibitions for Fall 2025

Lady Bug: An Installation by Jennifer Angus

August 26 - December 5, 2025

Don Russell Clayton Gallery

detail photograph of a butterfly on a blue background

Image credit: Blue, cyanotype, insects and botanical foliage, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 2024.

Created explicitly for the Don Russell Clayton Gallery, the large-scale installation Lady Bug celebrates pioneering women in entomology— the Madame Dragonfly, Moth Queen, and Termite Lady sound like superheroes of the DC comic book universe, but they are the pseudonyms of women entomologists Cynthia Longfield (1896-1991), Alice Balfour (1850-1936) and Margaret Collins (1922–1996). Other than clean air and water, insects which are the primary material of Angus’ installations, are ground zero for human survival on our planet. Her works often explore issues related to the environment and the vital role insects play within it, encouraging individuals to raise awareness, advocate on issues, and build momentum toward collective change.  
 
Drawing upon her background in textile design, the artist places insects upon walls in patterns that mimic textiles and wallpaper. This strategy lulls the viewer into complacency, for at a distance, the designs suggest an interior, perhaps even a domestic space. However, upon discovering that the ornate patterns are formed of insects, viewers’ feelings typically fluctuate between incredulity, amazement, and occasionally terror.  Herein lies the power of the work as the observer is confronted with considering insects in a new light.   

  • Jennifer Angus is a professor in the Design Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin -Madison where she teaches textile design, specifically, everything to do with the dyeing and printing of cloth, including natural dyes.  She is an artist described by Art Daily as “one of the top contemporary installation artists in the country.” Jennifer creates some of the most provocative work most people have ever seen in an art museum setting. She composes patterns using hundreds of insects, placing them in arrangements that suggest wallpaper and textiles. Angus was one of nine leading contemporary artists selected for the landmark exhibition Wonder at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in 2015.

    Jennifer has been the recipient of numerous awards including Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Wisconsin Arts Board grants.  More recently she received the inaugural Forward Art Prize, an unrestricted award for outstanding women artists of Wisconsin.  At the University of Wisconsin-Madison she has received annual grants from the Graduate School, as well as the Vilas Associate Award, the Emily Mead Baldwin-Bascom Professorship in the Creative Arts, the Romnes Fellowship, the UW Arts Institute Creative Arts Award, Rothermel Bascom Professorship,  the Kellett Mid-Career Faculty Researcher Award and most recently the Edna Wiechers Arts in Wisconsin Award. In 2013, Albert Whitman and Company, Chicago, published her first novel, In Search of Goliathus Hercules.

    At the University of Wisconsin – Madison she is the faculty leader of the Global Artisans Initiative which launched an interdisciplinary outreach program that connects students with artisans who have requested assistance with microenterprise development.  The program leverages the relationships that University of Wisconsin has built over many years at global health field course sites in Ecuador, India, Kenya Mexico, Nepal and Vietnam to create a product design and marketplace system to support the economic wellbeing of local artisans.

  • We have more information at our fingertips than ever before, and yet the centuries-old tradition of ignoring or destroying knowledge continues. Climate change and colony collapse (the death of millions of honeybees) are devastating facts of contemporary life, and all are areas in which individuals, one by one, can make a difference. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. There is much to be gained by studying and appreciating insects, noting that collective transformational changes are possible for one small individual at a time. 
      
    None of the insects I use are endangered and they are reused from exhibition to exhibition, some more than 20 years old. Collecting insects is ecologically sound if done in a thoughtful manner. Many insects are now being farmed with the express purpose of marketing to collectors. When I am able to, I use these types. 

 

The Naturalist

August 26 - December 5, 2025

Malinda Jolley Mortin Gallery

two prints next to each other

Image credit: The Naturalist (diptych),  2024. Handmade pigmented cotton paper, 12 karat gold (left) and 22 karat gold (right). 

This exhibition features several distinct bodies of work exploring humanity’s intimate relationship with the natural world. More specifically, Wright’s works are a personal celebration and inquiry into her relationship with nature, the passing of time, and the value of human touch. Functioning as visual expressive elements, poetic texts play a central role and allow reflection on issues surrounding beauty, self, and belonging. Moving from the UK to the US in 1999, the artist states that she inhabits a space where identity and relationship to place are shaped by the push and pull of belonging and not belonging.