by Jon Gorga
When could you ever handle live insects and look at original comics art at the same time? Last Thursday night, when the Society of Illustrators celebrated the opening reception for an exhibit featuring art from Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis: A Natural History!
Kuper’s name is already well-known to those of you who follow underground comics or who read MAD Magazine (he took over the creation of the “Spy vs. Spy” comic strip in 1997). His latest is graphic nonfiction that started as a massive special installation called “INterSECTS” at the New York Public Library main branch in 2022 and is now a book you can hold in your hand! It’s been available from W. W. Norton since the middle of the month but, for a limited time, its original pages are also on display at the SOI Building on the Upper East Side.
From the very start, you can see that the curators and Kuper made fairly good use of the small space afforded to the exhibit. Squeezing artwork, insect facts, and stickers into nearly every nook and cranny of the second floor hallway at the Society of Illustrators.
Even the staircase leading to the exhibit doubles as a display for the long migration journey of the North American Monarch butterfly and the last stages of the famous caterpillar-to-butterfly lifecycle is on the facing wall for you to catch on the way back down the stairs, as you leave!
Telling the story of some of the smallest inhabitants of Earth and the scientists that study them, Kuper’s masterfully playful work is on display in examples of his most detailed, traditional, and smooth art to date.
Beyond the delightful stickers of butterflies and other tiny creatures adorning the walls (and ceiling!), the black and white pen and ink originals from Insectopolis are certainly the highlight of the exhibit.
The originals are nicely complimented by oversized color prints and original color print guides while, for the scientifically curious, there’s a sprinkling of QR codes linked to commentary by experts about these delicately small subjects rendered as delicately by Kuper’s pencil.
Live sketch by Ellen Stedfeld (@EllesaurArts).
There was jazz music from The Illustrator’s Jazz Band, as usual, upstairs at The 128 Bar but the highlight of the night was undoubtedly entomologist Lou Sorkin who brought some of his collection of LIVE bugs, spiders and caterpillars. He was doing live arthropod handling for the guests all evening – and a few guests also got in on the handling. As Kuper himself put it while signing for guests, he was “upstaged by a guy with live insects and loved it!”
The bugs and the music will be gone, but the exhibit is still there to be seen on the second floor of the Society of Illustrators Building at 128 E. 63rd Street until the 20th of September.
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