Ant Girls 5/13 Sex, Leaves and Print shops

5/13 Update:

In preparation for the USM Atrium Gallery Exhibition "Ant Farm" in April 2014 , the latest meetings of the AG minds have broken down our production time month by month. Each month we gather to discuss, research, and print one aspect of the Leafcutter ant's life cycle.
In April we made lots and lots of leaves.
May was focused on the printing and engineering of "The Nuptial Flight" a.k.a. mating mid-air!!.
 We, Ant Girls currently have no studio/home base(our former space is going through renovations,) to create our USM installation....so we've been Shop-hopping!
Thank you to both Peregrine Press and MECA's Printmaking Dept. for the temporary use of space.
We practiced good shop etiquette by leaving both spaces cleaner than when we arrived!
Check out Rebecca testing our leaf installation at her place. WoW!!!

Leaves leaves and more leaves at Peregrine Press.

The nuptial flight of  Leafcutter Ants is made up of  winged sexual male and female ants taking to the skies to consummate their biological role in the cycle of life. The females are stronger in flight, naturally, handling the mid-air sex better than most males and the landing to hopefully become an egg-laying queen while the males, post-coitus, die.
Both sexes shed their wings. The successful queens eat the discarded protein-filled wings.

[Wingless queens of the leafcutter ant genus Acromyrmex that remain sterile and cannot found their own colony alter their behavior completely and, in contrast to fertile queens, help to defend their mother colony.

It was previously assumed that ant queens who lose their wings before their nuptial flight and remain unfertilized simply die. Some of them are also eaten by their sisters, allowing the energy stored in their bodies to be made useful for the colony. However, leafcutter ants feed on a fungus that they grow in their colonies and that provides them with plant nutrients. "We suspect that they have lost the ability to digest meat and recycle their queens," says Nehring. "There is thus an evolutionary advantage to keeping the sterile queens alive and making them useful for the colony in another way." They hardly have to feed at all, because they live from reserves and digest their own wing muscles like the fertilized queens.] Text courtesy of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Below: Rebecca Goodale shows how to create a volumetric paper form which we will be using to create the nuptial swarm.

p.s. Have you seen the "Green Porno" movies with Isabelle Rossellini?
see also below ...thanks to Rebecca for sharing the bee video in particular!

Ant Girls in action at MECA's Printmaking Department.

                                Oh Isabella!

April 2014 Ant Girls Exhibition "Ant Farm" @ USM Lewiston-Auburn College Atrium Art Gallery hosted by Robyn Holman

Sketch of installation possibilities... C. Kinsella

 Diagram of Atrium Gallery space, R. Goodale       Ant Glasses modeled by me, C. Kinsella       
                         

Ant Girls visit USM Lewiston-Auburn Campus Gallery & meet with Robyn Holman.

                          

Robyn Holman-in the blue, is an honorary Ant Girl! 

Thank you for supporting our idea!

Dorothy Shwartz's Ant with Chine Colle

                                          

Collages from Work Session 3 - March/April 2013

Chop Mark of ANT GIRLS INC. incorporating all of our intials,

Vivien Russe/Dorothy Shwartz/Rebecca Goodale/Colleen Kinsella

Did you know that ants can predict EARTHQUAKES?http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/456762/20130413/ants-detect-earthquakes-radiation-animal-predictions-disasters.htm

New work Sessions - March 2013

      Leafcutter Ants Fungus Garden and the books inspired from these industrious workers...

Silkscreen on cut paper Leafcutter ant 

Rebecca Goodale talking to us about the books she made from our collaborative prints.

Below are books assembled by Rebecca from work by the Ant Girls. 

Gorgeous cover and book about the fungus garden By R. Goodale made from Ant Girl prints & drawings.

                                            Viv and Rebecca sorting out our install.

                                            Dee Dee sharing research from E.O Wilson.

Ants in Process - Collaborative prints May 2012 -present

  With the challenges presented to all of us in this twenty-first century, artists, so often on the forefront of experimentation, are reexamining the role of artist in society. For so long, the importance of artist as individual has dominated the visual arts.  Now other ways of working are being considered including the long and widespread tradition of collaboration. Our group of four women artists with a background primarily in printmaking, but also painting and the book arts, has decided to work cooperatively on a project about ants. Our group is diverse in age and experience.

     Ants, which make up 15-25% of all terrestrial animal biomass, have been extensively studied, especially recently by the two biologists Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson. They have applied the term Superorganism to ant colonies, seeing that the success of the species depends on   its cooperative behavior. With ants, it is more meaningful to consider that colony as the organism, rather than the individual ant.  While usually considered a nuisance from a human point of view, a closer look by biologists has allowed us to see a fascinating, vibrant and successful society with much to teach our own species. What the ants have been doing for so long is parallel to our group’s goals, so it was easy to choose them as our subject.  -Vivien Russe, Ant Girl
                          

                                           

                                             

                                             Dorothy Schwartz's ant woodblock

                                                 


                                       Ant Girls   Work Session 2 - Ideas