David Versluis | Roy R. Behrens: a collaborative series of Iowa Insect Montages

The Iowa Insect Digital Montage Series preface by Roy R. Behrens:

David Versluis and I decided to try something. He has a collection of Iowa bugs (dead ones) of which he made exquisite scans at high resolution. He began to send me the scan files, one at a time by e-mail, with the challenge that I should respond to them by beginning to build a digital montage, using Adobe Photoshop. I could do whatever I liked. Then I would pass that back to him, in response to which he’d make a move—and pass it back to me again (as if we were playing chess). And so on, usually with five or six back-and-forth turns, until we mutually came to suspect that the work was finished. So that’s how we proceeded.

Beetle I Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Beetle II Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Cicada Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Yellow Jacket Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Dragonflies with Cicada Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Scarab Beetles Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Hoverflies Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches


Leaf Beetle Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Ladybird Beetle Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 


Cicada Husk Digital Montage (2012) © David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens
40 x 60 inches 

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typographer and architect juxtaposed: a version of ‘typotekt’

Antonius Kurvers (Dutch, 1889-1940)
Poster
Tentoonstelling van Nederlandsche
Gemeentewerken (Exhibition of Dutch Municipal Works [Utrecht]), 1926
Color lithograph; Van Leer, Printer

Gerrit Rietveld (Dutch, 1888-1964)
Sideboard, 1959 (designed 1919)
Beechwood, pigment
Gerard A. van de Groenekan, Maker (Dutch, 1904-1994)
 
From the Modernism Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Art

‘Typotekt’ is a shortening of the words typographer and architect and was a name used by Piet Zwart to describe himself as a graphic designer. 

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Henry Moore: bones that are still alive

Henry Moore (British, 1898–1986)
Working Model for Divided Oval: Butterfly
Bronze, 1967; cast 1982
Collection of the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
photography by versluis ©2015

The model for Divided Oval feels like it’s from a sculptor who was also a bone and joint specialist. Dr. Calvin Seerveld has mentioned that, “You sense that Moore means to pare things down to the essential bone, but the bones are still sinewy and alive, not skeletal!”(1)

The following text is from Henry Moore Works in Public:

Moore’s own words, although not specifically relating to the Butterfly, reflect upon the alliance between tension and enigma…

My sculpture has a force, is a strength, is a life, a vitality from inside it, so that you have a sense that the form is pressing from inside trying to burst or trying to give off the strength from inside itself, rather than having something which is just shaped from outside and stopped. It’s as though you have something trying to make itself come to a shape from inside itself…

I think it should not be obvious exactly what a work of art is on the very first view. If it is obvious then, one tends to look at something, recognize it and then turn away, knowing what it is.’

1. Seerveld, Calvin G. Rainbows for the Fallen World. Toronto: Toronto Tuppence Press, 2005. 231. Print.

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