Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a stainless steel, life sized fairy sculpture. I’m continually pushing what can be achieved with wire and I’m always looking for gravity defying illusions. I’ve wanted to make a life-sized fairy for sometime and I think butterflies and fairies are a good combination. Its possible that you’ve seen photos of this fairy with a much greater number of butterflies holding her hair up and lifted by a vortex of butterflies. I’ve reworked her. I felt that I’d got a bit carried away with adding as many butterflies as possible and it resulted in a fairy sculpture that was a little too busy and had a slight resemblance to Medusa.

Back story:

The inspiration for this fictional backstory is my followers comments following a question I asked on social media “what do butterflies mean to you?”

Some myths surrounding butterflies and the majority of comments suggest that seeing a butterfly is a sort of visitation from the souls of relatives or friends who have passed on. Lepidoptera is of fairy blood and thats not quite how it works.    

We all see butterflies from time to time, but pay no attention to them. It’s the odd ones that are out of context, the ones that find themselves in the house, or land on us, that gain our focus and attention. These are the interesting ones.

The easiest reference to Lepidoptera was in hieroglyphics in the tombs of ancient Egypt. The Egyptians believed in other realms outside of human existence which includes but not exclusively the afterlife. Lepidoptera was known to them as “The Messenger” who always appeared in the form of a butterfly. Its hard to explain how the message is / was actually conveyed. No words or information is ever exchanged. The very presences of the out of context butterfly triggers an automatic understanding of the message and its meaning. Its almost as if the message was pre-planted in our brains awaiting the trigger to release it.

This may indeed be how souls that have passed on let you know you are still connected, or it may be how the fairies let you know they are watching over you and steering events in the direction of your hearts desires. What we can be sure of is that a visit from Lepidoptera is always good news. But you knew that already!