After many days of crawling up perilously high stalks of Hollyhocks to chomp on their bitter leaves, while beautiful butterflies danced in the air above her head or daintily sipped flower nectar as she clung on tightly, afraid to fall, the caterpillar finally called out “How does one become a butterfly?”   “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar” was the reply. “You must be willing to go into the darkest depths & liquefy your very essence before the beauty of your butterfly being emerges into the light.”

I am currently working on an assemblage, “How Does One Become a Butterfly?” The head is attached to a series of metal boxes. I plan to keep it so that one will still be able to open the boxes to reveal the secrets inside. What will be the secrets inside?

I wanted the piece to have segments like a caterpillar and decided to make them out of sheet metal with embossed flowers & vines & birds & butterflies on the segments. First I made patterns out of paper to see how it would fit and how to attach them so the boxes would still come apart.

I think of caterpillars as being green so green she is:

Here she is from the front- right now she reminds me of the Virgin de Guadalupe- with her plump caterpillar legs looking like the Virgin’s rays of light:

and from the back:

next I will work on the butterfly emerging from her crown chakra.

wondering what a fabulist is? please see my previous blog.