When a friend died I felt inspired to make a memorial installation of butterflies. I had just been introduced to someone with a laser cutter and asked if they could do a good price on a hundred butterflies. After this I was the artistic director of a large field in The Big Chill with a large budget and had to come up with ideas of how to fill a 10m by 100m corridor space between the stalls.

 

I needed to do something that would be light and beautiful, not imposing but fill the space, so I had over 1000 large butterflies laser cut and created a web of fishing line that covered the entire area, suspending the butterflies above everyone's heads. I also got 4000 smaller butterflies cut to give as gifts that became rings or hair ornaments. 

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In addition I combined skills with Circus Kinetica and we made 10 x 3m large metal butterflies that flapped their wings and spun around on top of poles. As much as possible we used recycled materials such as tent poles collected from abandoned tents after festivals. 

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After this project I repeated various versions of installations at festivals and venues around the country. and each time I travelled I would take 100 or so smaller ones and find places to install them. It felt like the beauty of my friend had expanded around the world. 

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