Current Mantis Set Up

Unsurprisingly I get a lot of questions about my mantis set up, particularly how many I have at any given point. It changes depending on what I am raising and what has hatched but the basics stay the same. There’s a hatching container, communal nymph tank, individual adolescents and adults, and a breeding/laying tank that can double as a communal adult tank.

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Total mantises currently: probably around 100

From left to right:

Glass tank with greenery, Breeding/Communal: Currently this is housing some 30-40 adolescent Chinese mantises. The tank just in frame to the left is an aquatic tank kept for personal enjoyment. It’s in transition again so I won’t picture it.

Mid-sized glass tank: No mantises in this one actually. It currently houses a young female bull frog I saved from my window well at the end of fall. By the time I could take it somewhere to let it go it was too cold. Not a fan of her. She is 100% not friendly to any kind of tank mate. She also flips out constantly which wrecks any sort of plants or decorative set ups.

Small glass tank with white sand/Communal: This one was housing 10 Arizona Unicorn Mantises. They just started getting old enough that cannibalism could be an issue so I took out 8 of them to put in in isolation tanks. While this species is supposed to be communal I do not want to risk it as I would like to breed them continuously.

Mid-sized colored top plastics/Adolescent single tanks: 8 of these are the previously mentioned unicorns. The top green lidded tank is the hatchery. The hatchery actually has a few nymph Carolina mantises in it. They hatched this morning and haven’t been moved over to their nymph communal yet. Over the past week or so a few ooths have been sending waves of babies out.

Large-sized green lidded tanks/Adult isolation: The three green lidded tanks contain 2 adult female Chinese mantises and one adult male. The two females have been bred so they are back into isolation. Chinese mantises are highly cannibalistic so they have to be kept separate.

Small-sized blue lidded tanks/Near adult isolation: These are housing some older adolescent Chinese mantises. They have to be separated relatively early because they are highly cannibalistic.

Wood topped tank/Adolescent communal: This is currently housing maybe 30 or so Carolina nymphs.

Small glass tank/Nymph communal: This one is housing about 30 or so nymph Chinese mantises. Once they get a wee bit older they’ll get tossed in the first tank to battle it out till they can graduate to individual tanks.

Also of note are the two white buckets. Left bucket is a fly breeder and the right bucket breeds fruit flies.

The black space heater under the Arizona tanks is help keep their temperature up. They are a desert species and do better in the mid 80s. Ideally I’d have the mantises in a small room which would be kept in the 80s but I don’t have the space.

Process Photos - playing with making bas-reliefs

processed scanogram

pinning

initial laser engraving pass

painting

several engraving passes and clean up

Something that has been missing from the mantis work is some sort of narrative or history. I’ve struggled with effective ways of communicating one. In the past I’ve flirted with the idea using of text, video vignettes, and illustrative stills. However all would be ultimately lacking by using story telling methods to usual for subject matter which could lead to the wrong kind of associations.

Bas-reliefs have long appealed to me as solution and would allow me to further reference works of literature that I want to rely on (particularly At The Mountains of Madness). However my sculpting skill is remedial at best. While I could try to rely on mimicry of Clark Ashton Smith’s simple and primitive sculptures which reference his and HP Lovecraft’s work it is stylistically dull and clumsy. After some thought and exploration it occurred to me I could use CNC or laser etching to create the necessary reliefs from drawings. Again though came the hurdle of ability of drawing and rendering. After further work I came up with the solution of generating reliefs from photographs.

To create the relief I posed the mantis flat and allowed it to set in that position. Then I applied a matte light gray paint to remove tonal variation not related to luminosity. Then (and this is the part I’m proud of figuring out) I scanned it. Depth maps for CNC and laser etching are light/dark based. The darker the area the deeper it engraves. A scanogram of gray a subject will automatically generate a depth map for me. With some post processing a suitable depth map is created (top image). The initial engraving results are quite promising. There is some needed refinement and then a much needed stylistic development but this medium should allow me to effectively communicat a needed narrative without breaking the underlying feel of artifacts that the work is supposed to evoke.

Upcoming Shows

Getting pretty tapped out on energy and new work with the number of shows I’ve had this year. That said here’s what the current schedule looks like:

CURRENT - September, Lost In Introductions, Trap Gallery, Kansas City MO

Dan is super chill and easy to have shows with.

Upcoming

October, Bemis Charity Auction, Bemis Center for the Arts, Omaha NE

doing the auction again

November, Omaha Bug Symposium, OutrSpaces, Omaha NE

This will be at the new location for Outrspaces and will feature a very large pile of mantis work. There will be a few new pieces but it will mostly be stuff from MOAH.

October 11-December 6 2019, Etymology solo show at Fred Simmon Gallery

Originally thought this was in 2018. Huge relief to have more time on it. Teaching his been ulra busy. Will feature mostly semi-abstract and planetoids from the Etymology series.

July 2019, Introductions, solo show at Lauritzen Gardens

This will feature the portraits from the 2014 Gaze of the Mantis show that was at Gallery72 and then 5-10 additional portraits. I might add the busts to it as well.