SLIDE SHOW Ant Girls 2014!

Fungus Farm   

Viv's gorgeously painted and printed paper with one of her ant drawings screen printed and attached to pop out.

Books

This is a detail of a tunnel book by Rebecca G.
She put together the top three books using Ant Girls printed matter.

Brown Books made by Viv, then given the Ant Girls treatment.

We will have over 30 artists books in the exhibition.

Scrolls

ViV and Dee Dee at work.

                       Collages

Leafcutter ants entering the anthill.

                                  

 Over 40 collages were made by the Ant Girls.
They are culled from 2 years of meeting, talking, printing, researching, cutting and pasting.

Ant-omical Cyanotype Quilts

These were drawn Exquisite corpse-style then exposed to cyanotype fabric.
Beautifully sewn by Ant Girl Vivian Russe.

We're flying now... the Ant Girls ANT FARM exhibition opens  on April 11.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE ANT GIRLS!!!!!

Gorgeous holiday card handmade by Viv Russe!

"ANT FARM"

Opening Reception: April 11, 2014

Ant Party 5-8pm 

at The Atrium Art Gallery 

 51 Westminster Street, Lewiston, Maine.

Ant Girls working hard and giving thanks!

So much work over the past few months that I thought it best to describe our sessions in pictures instead of words...

The Queen's Eggs in process:

Ant Girls received funding for our project "Ant Farm".
Thanks to the  Maine Arts Commission's Artists in Communities Grant we will be able to install our piece in different iterations throughout the state. Handmade cards went out to all those who made this possible.
Huge thanks to Robyn Holman, curator at the USM Atrium Gallery where our show opens this coming April 2014.

Nuptial Flight revisited.

This summer  the winged males were constructed.

Nuptial Flight realized! 
A few weeks ago we took the assembled males and hung them. So much fun!

Fall

    Summer may be over BUT...
    Ant Girls are Rolling On! 
The term “Superorganism” is applied to ant colonies because the success of the species depends on its cooperative behavior, which then benefits the community. In that sense, the whole colony can be considered the organism, rather than the individual ant. When four artists decided to work collaboratively, choosing ants as their subject made all the sense in the world.

 
When leaf fragments have been cut, they are transported back to the colony to serve as a substrate on which to cultivate fungus, the food source of the colony. Leaf fragments, gripped in the ant’s mandibles, can be many times larger than the ants, looking like a large sail on a boat. Sometimes small nestmates with mandibles free,  hitchhike on the leaves to protect the carrier from parasitic flies, only adding to the load.

Thanks to all of the honorary ANT Girls who helped adding the leaves.

   Colleen burned images of ants onto a screen which she and Becky printed onto three lengths of masa paper which are now ready for the insertion of leaf pieces.  


 

Screen film detail of Viv's ant drawings/ In process scroll

Silkscreened scrolls that then got stamped at MECA'a gorgeous print shop.

Sketch of Atrium Gallery install of Ant scrolls based on AG talks.

 All for One and One for All
 Who can guess the origin of this?? HINT:  Tous pour un, un pour tous
.