Chicago art takes flight in the form of butterflies at suburban museum
CHICAGO (CBS) — For weeks, artists have worked hard inside studio spaces in Chicago's Austin neighborhood.
They all started with the same blank canvas: A giant butterfly sculpture. It's a citywide project involving local artists and a nature museum.
In nature, metamorphosis starts with a caterpillar. But in the studio, creatives do all the work.
Artists like Jovonna Jackson, Salvador Andrade and Negwes White.
"Somebody called me an aspiring artist, and I started cracking up. I was like, 'I've been an artist this whole time! What do you mean I'm aspiring? People just didn't know I had skills,'" White said.
All of their skills are on display at Chilab Studio, where art blends with nature, as part of an upcoming exhibition by the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.
32:59 "I think there's 30 artists."
"We're leveraging what people know us for and using that as a gateway to talk about our deeper conservation stories," said Erin Amico, President and CEO of the Peggy Notebaert Museum.
The butterfly sculptures are inspired by two butterflies native to Illinois.
"One is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly. The other is the regal fritillary," Amico said.
The artists weave their own story and style into the six-foot wide wings.
"And I use plastics in my work because I am very interested in labor practices," Andrade said.
Twenty-nine butterflies will be unveiled at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum on April 25 before taking flight this summer all over Chicago.
"So this piece is going to end up on Michigan Ave.," White said.
"We were one of the selected people that got Magnificent Mile," Jackson said.
Transformation can happen in nature or a studio; the process is as beautiful as a butterfly.
Fifteen of the 29 butterflies will be featured in Chicago parks. The rest will be on Michigan Ave.
