Friday, May 29, 2009

No Mouths!

found this doing research today, from the illinois audubon society webpage: "The giant silkworm moths are not so lucky. They will live only a few days—just long enough to find mates and lay eggs. For nature has provided these nocturnal beauties no means of feeding; the adult moths have no mouthparts."

wow and wow. the first on the no mouth part. the second on how well it fits the tangent my research had taken on which had to do with the role of chinese women in feudalistic/confucius china!

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Signs of our time (2)


So far, just a few moths have popped up in Wicker Park. I wonder what the neighbors think. Did they even notice them?

If everything goes the way I want, I'll be making more moths...




Signs of our time (1)


I learned that the bombyx mori had been sooooo artificially selected that the species is entirely dependent on human - they can't fly much and they can't survive in the wild. So that gave me an idea: if moths suddenly pop up randomly in places like walls and signposts, in the city to boot, where I haven't seen a mulberry tree - would it be like some sort of omen? Raining frogs or locust swarms like? Omens are freaky but they're kinda cool, too, since the people warned have time to change their behavior...

Silk had always been controversial, even in history. The Roman senate issued a decree condeming it as immoral and decadent - cuz the material is so thin you can see right through them. Now, while some laud it for its sustainability - even more so than bamboo fibres as you don't need to cut down the mulberry tree, others think it cruel to kill the worms for their coccoons... (and one of my dear friends think it's plain yucky, to wear worm spit on your body!) Anyway!

Back to the omen: What would people think about the "signs"? Will our interaction with Mother Nature, to coexist or to control her, be auspicious? The opposit? What's our prognosis? These are some of the things I thought about when I made the moths.






390




In 2 days (about 10 hours total), I made 390 clay moths -- basically the low average of what a silk-worm could make. I was gonna say it's almost like being a moth, laying eggs with the sheer physical exhaustion, then I wonder if moths have labor pains. Hope not! Oy vay!

Bombyx Mori in progess



After the drawings, which documented the life of a silkworm, I decided expand on the series and take it to other levels and mediums. First step: make moths; and as with all my other work, in mass multiples. To help streamline the process, I made 7 models using polymer clay, then I made molds of them - to use with paper clay. I like that they're biodegradable. It seemed fitting as silk is one of the more sustainable fibres.

During research, I found out some people gather silk by first "firing" the cocoons and the pupae in sufficient heat to kill. Drying the moths in the oven reminded me of the images I saw...

Longing


This is actually sort of a sketch for a sculptural piece.

When I was researching the background of the Chinese people and silk, I came across a couple of stories regarding the worm's supposed origin. The one about a cocoon falling into the Yellow Emperor's wife's teacup and gave her inspiration much like the apple for Newton almost seemed plausible, even reasonable. The other version, I prefer. It shows more facets of human emotions and illustrates human behavior.

So, once upon a time, there lived a magical horse. He was a magnificent horse and white in color. While he couldn't talk, he understood human speech, and he could fly. The horse had an owner, and the owner had a daughter. One day, the owner went away on business and never came back. The daughter was worried, and she was sad. In his way, the horse tried to console her; he too worried about his owner. Quite unexpectedly, the daughter made the horse a promise: if he were to find her father, she'd marry him. Upon hearing that, the horse flew off. He looked and looked and looked, through all four corners of the earth. Finally, he found the father; and he flew home carrying the man on his back. When the daughter saw her father safe and sound, she was happy and grateful, and she told her father the promise she made to the horse and her intention to follow through. The father was furious. He killed the horse and tanned his skin, and he arranged for the daughter to marry properly. On the day of the wedding, he gave the horse's hide to the daughter as a present. When suddenly, the hide flew and wrapped itself around the daughter and took her into a mulberry tree, where she became a silkworm, and she spent her days spinning silk, in longing, and as remembrance of the horse's sacrifice.

Yeah, okay, I took some creative liberties and added little bits, here and there. There's also another variation to this story, which I don't like at all... In this story, everything remained the same as the other one, except the daughter was only joking, she had no intention to wed the horse. In fact, she was using the horse's feelings for her; and when the father returned, she encouraged him to slaughter the horse. The horse's revenge was to turn her into a silkworm, where she spent her days spinning silk as punishment.

Taken



The drawings are respectively titled:
- It takes 110 moths to make a tie
- It takes many to make a shirt
- Even more to make a saree

On the one hand, I know if we don't covet silk, there probably won't be any more silkworms - at least the mulberry variety, which is completely domesticated. Plus, people eat the pupae, as snacks, as inexpensive protein so the moths are not wasted in any way. Still, I can't help wondering about our vanity, and at what cost?

Kegos


The Japanese call them kego, literally hairy babies. They did look like little black hairs moving about. Thousands of them, literally. They ate and ate and ate. We tried really hard to keep them fed, but in the span of a few days, they were all dead...

Almost Time



None of the silkworm growing sites that I've come across contained the step where one dips the eggs in hot water, but that's what my grandmother did, probably to hasten the hatching. As the eggs matured, they turned clear and became little gray rings that reminded me of the Chinese full-stop. The worms must have been consuming the yolk or something as they developed. It was weird to see them moving around through the translucent "shell" during the last couple of days before they hatched.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A moth lays 500 eggs and then she dies


One morning (this was days after the cocoons were done), I awoke to find moths on the wall, on the door of the dresser and on my desk. Their tails were stuck together, and my grandmother just told me not to try to pull them apart. (They were, ahem, mating, now I know.) I went about my morning routine, and when I went back to my room, some had already fallen (the males) and the rest were busy laying eggs on white A4 paper that my grandmother had prepared for them. Lemon yellow little dots, there were so many, many of them. Apparently, a moth lays an average of 300 to 500 eggs. It seemed, as soon as they were done with their task - completed the cycle of life - they expire.

3900 feet



1300 yards - That was supposed to be the amount of silk a worm generated for its cocoon. Each of the drawings contained only a fraction of that in lengths of the lines I drew, and my hand was tired when I finished.

Silk from at least 8 silkworm is gathered and twisted together to make a single thread for weaving. One thread; 8 worms, for just one strand...

Lucky Ones


One day, the worms I had stopped eating. I thought they were dying; I thought the way they "stood" and reached up was some sort of death dance - looking for the next step, next life. My grandmother took empty toilet paper rolls and enclosed each worm separately. Soon they started moving their heads in figure 8's. After a while, they had generated enough silk that the white fibers were visible. They were cocooning themselves. The whole process took several days before they were completely finished.

Supposedly, on the farm, after the the cocoons were done, the particularly large ones would be picked out. Those would be allowed to complete their life cycles. Meanwhile, the others would in time go in a vat of boiling water.

The ones I had were lucky. They all got to live out their lives, except for one - it just died inside.

Ten worms























Hawkers sold silkworms on the streets in Hong Kong when I was young. The worms though were so malnourished and improperly raised. They were small and thin and would die in a few days max. The ones my grandmother smuggled out, they were fat and long and almost four times the size of the ones I had before. They were kept in a cookie tin and fed mulberry leaves picked along my way to school.

Birth of the Series


It all began around the table on Lunar New Years when my mom and her cousin reminisced their common ancestral roots. The stories reminded me of the ten silkworms my maternal grandmother smuggled out of China for me one year.

Silk-farming supposedly dates back to the Yellow Emperor, the first emperor of China . Neolithic loom fragments from 4000BCE were found in Zhejiang . Ancient Greeks and Romans called Chinese “Seres” – the silk people. Silk-making knowledge was fiercely guarded; its disclosure punishable by death. Violent acts were committed and wars waged to seize the secret.


My great-grandfather had been a silk farmer in Shunde (順德), China. My great-aunt would talk about how the wages her father was paying her was so low that she hired someone to cover her post, while she went to another factory to work - weaving silk cloths. My mom's cousin who grew up on the family farm remembered picking pupae and dead worms from the vat of boiling water with long chopsticks - that was her job when she was just a child. The pupae was fried up as food, while the worms were fed to the fish (my great-grandfather was also a fish farmer).

Then the Communists came into power, and the farm was confiscated. My relatives who remained in Shunde continued to breed silkworms, gather silk and weave clothes, but as workers employed by the government in what used to be the family business.
All properties belonged to the People, and conversion to private use was a crime - which was why my grandmother smuggled the worms in her undergarments. She was determined that I was to learn how a worm became silk.

As I built these art pieces - in repetitive, almost meditative process, I am free to think, to remember, to contemplate.
The “Bombyx Mori” series reflects the life and contribution of the silkworm, and considers humankind’s interactions and endeavors with Mother Nature. It also investigates the allegorical ties of sericulture and my people’s history / culture.