“Every single one was a challenge,” she says of the 15 sculptures that comprise Aleocharinae: An Entomologist and an Artist—a collaborative show between Baker-Johnson, who owns Whitehorse glass-blowing facility, Lumel Studios, and Benoit Godin, a Yukon entomologist who has studied rove beetles for almost 20 years.
The show, on at the Yukon Arts Centre until May 23, consists of massive blown-glass sculptures of beetle genitalia, Godin’s preserved beetle specimens, and additional painted works by Baker-Johnson, who says she didn’t even know the bugs existed until she met Godin in 2016.
At the time, Godin was taking a glass-blowing course at Lumel. When the lessons ended, they had a little extra time, so Godin asked Baker-Johnson if she could make palm-sized representations of beetle genitalia if Godin drew them for her.
Glass, for the most part, doesn’t want to move in the ways that genitalia would form naturally. It doesn’t want to bend naturally, ever, so how do you get it to do that?”
Godin mailed the resulting charms to fellow entomologists as Christmas presents. When each of them was able to identify the precise beetle based on the glass sculpture, Godin started thinking bigger.
He’d been staring through microscopes at rove beetles for years at that point and had always been amazed by the intricacy of their genitals—the only way to accurately identify them.
“The female has a vessel that stores the sperm that has all sorts of weird shapes and tubes that coil and loop and take different forms,” says Godin. “They’re aesthetically beautiful, but the question was how do you convey that large enough for people to see?”
Glass, it seemed to him, was the perfect medium. And Lumel seemed the ideal studio to pull it off—Baker-Johnson had skills, boundless energy, and a commitment to using recycled glass in her work. To both of them, the use of recycled glass mirrored the way rove beetles thrive in the rotting layer of leaves that trees discard at the end of their lives.
It was still a few years before Godin approached Baker-Johnson about collaborating, but when he did, she immediately said yes, even though she knew nothing about the bugs at the time and wasn’t even certain the project would be possible at the scale they’d discussed.
“Glass, for the most part, doesn’t want to move in the ways that genitalia would form naturally,” says Baker-Johnson. “It doesn’t want to bend naturally, ever, so how do you get it to do that?”
The answer was wishful thinking, a lot of gentle coaxing, and even more upper body strength. During the glass-blowing process, each 15-pound piece-in-the-making weighs 45 pounds as it’s heated, cooled, re-heated and crafted.
Baker-Johnson says the three-year effort required the support of every Lumel staffer she has, whether they were taking turns at the glory hole (no pun intended—this is the actual industry term for the hole where the glass-blowing of genitals took place), bringing each other water, or just offering encouragement.
Godin says that, for him, the experience blended artistic and scientific process in a way he thinks taught both himself and Baker-Johnson something new.
He initially brought sketches to Baker-Johnson, who then asked questions that led to Godin making 3D sculptures from plasticine for her reference. From there, Godin says he learned which elements could be realistically created versus what would have to be representational. For her part, Baker-Johnson (who kept one of Godin’s reference textbooks) learned to love the little bug.
Godin hopes she’s not the only one. He says it was great to see the number of people who came out to the March 6 opening. Partly, this was because he wants viewers to appreciate the genitalia for their aesthetic qualities, but he also wants people to look at the world differently.
When he started doing rove beetle work, hardly anyone knew about the bugs, which prey on maggots and other insects, maintaining ecological balance in their habitats.
“There is life everywhere, all around [you], everywhere you are. There is so much to discover,” says Godin. “You don’t have a name for it, you don’t see it. Once you have names, then you can start appreciating them for what they are and the service that they provide to the forest.”
The exhibit is open Monday-Friday, 10am-5pm and during evening performances.
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