Category: Artwork

Contemplating eco berms, challenging norms?

nikkirwright5 Comments

When I first started this journey, I began trialing the ‘No Mow‘ approach, leaving a portion of our small lawn un-mowed. Just to see what happened. What I witnessed was eye opening, challenging our suburban norms of why we have so many grass lawns and berms. It drew me to another form of action – planting an eco berm pathway which could connect our insect pollinators to fragments of bush, and at the same time maybe connect people who live here.

Continue reading “Contemplating eco berms, challenging norms?” →

Monarch dance

nikkirwrightLeave a comment

Earlier this year I watched as one of the first monarch butterflies circled the milkweed/swan plant below our deck. This time I grabbed a pencil and traced her flow on paper, intrigued at her mysterious path of many careful circuits. The drawing ends up a puzzling maze, as if meant to confuse. My notes read she spends minutes circling and making approaches to the plant, swooping past pumpkins, the mustard seed, the raspberries, the snowball tree, diverting attention? Perhaps checking it’s safe, scenting? It’s a dizzying energetic dance, never still. I trace the lines over and over trying to follow the complicated passage.

Continue reading “Monarch dance” →

Kinetic paths and orientation

nikkirwright3 Comments

Still stuck at home with the flu, with little energy to much neighbourhood walking, Instead I get curious about the vitality of insects, and attempt to map their kinetic energy and pollinating pathways, during moments of warmth and sun following days of grey skies and rain. For half an hour I make line drawings, trying not to look at the paper, letting my eye and hand follow the paths of bees and flies as they fly in and out of frame, feeding on flowers.

Continue reading “Kinetic paths and orientation” →

Wayfinding by Moon and Stars

nikkirwright3 Comments

I might be going balmy trying to rescue moths that have fluttered in through the kitchen door at night. It seems rather futile in the challenging swirl of the times – wars, pollution, deep fakes. What does it matter? But moths make me interested in the idea of navigation, of finding a way through. They are mostly nocturnal and orient themselves by the moon and stars. Our city lights confuse and startle this ancient ability to chart a course, and so the fragile beings batter away their short lives at our windows and streetlights that shine into the darkness – false beacons.  Some of our ancestors shared that same ability to navigate using celestial bodies, and some people still do. Others quest even further beyond moon and stars for direction and meaning. Are we all somehow drawn together through space, searching for a pathway beyond the incomprehensible?   

Continue reading “Wayfinding by Moon and Stars” →