Title: Leavings
Description: "I first became interested in the Japanese beetle in 2012 during a particularly hot and dry summer in Iowa City. Perhaps it was the result of the season or of my having moved to a new home ripe with some of the beetle's preferred foods, but I became overwhelmed by its pervasive, relentless assault on my garden. As the summer wore on, I began finding leaf remains gathering at the bases of trees and blowing in the wind as if it were fall. Their presence was out of place; out of season. But when I began to look more closely, what struck me was the beauty of form that the beetle had inadvertently left behind. Starved of oxygen and drained of color, these leaf skeletons would soon crumble and return to the earth. But, for a moment, they existed between realms, and reflected a loss that spoke of the complexity of the natural world. Somehow, it seems, even an act of destruction can leave something beautiful in its wake."--Artist's statement from colophon.

The work features the repeated image of a hand-drawn leafy branch printed on hand-dyed paper that becomes progressively paler with each iteration as the leaves on the branch themselves fill with more and more laser cut holes replicating the pattern of damage from Japanese beetles feeding.
Subjects: Japanese beetle, In art, Host plants, Artists' books, Specimens