Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm Greg Hartin. Welcome to another edition of the Know the news podcast. Thanks for joining us on this episode. As we take a look at what's coming up this weekend in your northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and in the River Valley Democrat Gazette, there's an extraordinary exhibit called Exquisite Creatures at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. It's really unlike anything you've ever seen, at least I'd major. That features editor April Wallace explores the exhibit in an in depth interview with artist Christopher Marley in Sunday's WhatsApp section. I got a chance earlier to visit with Marley for a few minutes as he was traveling and ask him to describe his exhibit and his art for the benefit of people who haven't seen his work yet.
Mr. Marley, thanks so much for joining us today.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: So your exhibit is up at Crystal Bridges. And for people like me, I have not had the chance to see it yet. I've seen some photographs that are just intriguing to me, but tell people just a little bit about what it is that you do that they will see at the museum up there.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Boy. It's always tricky for me to describe with just words exactly what I do. It always sounds a little strange, but I work with organisms from all over the world. I really kind of specialize in obscure organisms that people oftentimes don't even know exist, and I preserve them, and then I create artwork utilizing their preserved bodies.
In the exhibit at Crystal Bridges, I think the exhibit is a little over 10,000. There are, I think, around 450 pieces there and many thousands and thousands of specimens. So you'll see a lot of rare and obscure arthropods, a lot of reptiles and birds and really bizarre deep sea creatures, everything but mammals. And those organisms are utilized to tell visual stories, usually focusing on the design elements and the aesthetics of organisms as opposed to, say, their life history or their mannerisms, as you might find out about in a natural history or science museum.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it does seem a bit peculiar to kind of put these displays, these pieces of art, in an environment like a crystal bridges museum of art, because for me, I've seen these sorts of exhibits at museums.
Treating them more or less as artifacts, those sorts of things, using them as art or displaying them as art is just intriguing to me.
What in the world ever led you to the point where you thought, man, I could do this, I could put these creatures in some sort of display that people can recognize as an artistic display?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: It's a good question.
I really was an artist from my earliest memories, I studied graphic design. I was always drawing and painting, and my subject matter of choice was always monsters and the fantastical creatures that I would invent in my own mind. And when I started traveling, I kind of fell into the fashion world at a young age and ended up living and working in about 40 countries all over the world.
I was exposed to organisms that I had no idea existed. And, boy, once my appetite was wetted with regards to biodiversity, I just became enamored of discovery and that feeling of awe when you see something for the first time, especially with the Internet now and phones, and we think we've seen it all. But I guarantee that when you go to this exhibit, you will see organisms you did not know exist in the world.
To me, my passion for monsters and fantastical creatures really just kind of morphed into a real desire to discover.
And my background was, like I said, graphic design and fashion, kind of high fashion. And so I had a real, kind of an architectural, minimalist aesthetic anyway. And I started putting things together just for myself, because these were things that I collected, particularly insects in the beginning from different countries, and really wanted to display them in a way that maximize the wonder of their aesthetics, personally, for myself. And it just became something that people loved and encouraged me to continue on. And it slowly grew over 25 years into a pretty massive collection.
And I think, I really believe that there has been some environmental and really beneficial effects of being able to focus on the aesthetics of these organisms. When people fall in love with the beauty of nature, the relationship changes.
We kind of develop something where it's almost like a personal ministry, a stewardship with those things that we fall in love with. And my objective has been to help people to see, oftentimes, these less loved creatures in a way that really magnifies our appreciation for their beauty. And when we love them, we'll conserve them. We'll have a different relationship with them than we would if we were simply learning about them in kind of a cold, unattached way.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. When I saw the photographs, I'm not taking anything away from you, but I'm also thinking that this is an exhibition by Christopher Marley and God or Mother Nature.
It is a work of more than one artist, really, I couldn't agree more.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: And you couldn't take anything from me. With regards to the presentation. I mean, I'm organizing, I'm presenting.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Actually.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: We'Ve pioneered some new ways of preserving things that have never been well preserved, so I'll take a little credit for that. But I couldn't agree more. These are already perfectly designed organisms that really just need more light shed on them.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Sorry, go ahead.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Well, there is an element that's important for people to notice as well. When you come into the exhibit, the first thing, before you even enter in is an intro film. It's about four minutes long. I always encourage people to watch it because it does answer some of the important questions that people have immediately. I don't want anyone feeling like they're conflicted. All of the insects that I work with are more than sustainably harvested. There is a real environmental advantage to collecting insects out of a healthy environment because you are giving people, natives and indigenous peoples who live in the areas of these endangered ecosystems a way to make a living off of a standing, healthy forest, as opposed to having to develop that habitat for farming or ranching or logging. And so by giving them that economic alternative, we're actually helping conserve habitat, which is the only real threat to insect populations is habitat depletion. And then everything else. All of the vertebrates in the exhibit are reclaimed organisms, meaning they died of natural or incidental causes in captivity. Almost always in captivity. Sometimes it's fishermen's by catch, sometimes it's roadkill. I mean, there's all kinds of different methods that I have of obtaining these organisms, but there isn't any kind of ecological conflict with what I'm doing as well. So there's some things that are good for people to understand before they go in. And then when they experience the exhibit, my hope is that there will just be really an outpouring of love and appreciation for these perfectly designed organisms.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of felt in looking at the information that crystal Bridges has on their website, plus some of the photographs that our photographers took, that this is a display that is just teeming with life, but it's also tinged by death. And it's really just an Od kind of mixture of those things.
And, and, and clearly you've given some thought to kind of how, how you want people to process that.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean. I mean, you know, death is an invariable part of life.
And it's really one of the things that makes life so meaningful and so precious is knowing that, at least in this sphere, it doesn't go on forever. And so my hope has been to be able to take these organisms that lived out their lives and utilize them to continue to inspire and to delight and to help people to feel that sense of awe and connection that is really hard to capture in two dimensions. Like I said, with modern technology, we feel like, we've kind of seen it all where we can get pretty jaded. We're exposed constantly to wonders in two dimensions. But seeing the real thing, the colors that exist, the iridescence that exists, the textures, the biodiversity, it really piques. Kind of a primordial and deep seated emotion that we're in danger of losing to some degree as our world's become more and more two dimensional.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: So do you remember when you first realized this was kind of an expression of art?
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I do, actually.
Yeah. So I was trying to kind of combine these worlds that I was so passionate about. I was a reptile fanatic my whole life growing up. And so that was kind of what drove me out into the jungles and forests and different countries I worked in. I was always looking for reptiles.
And when I discovered insects, really quite accidentally, as I'm trying to avoid them and go after the reptiles in these different environments, they just became, I mean, almost therapeutically, because I was not a big fan of insects. They kind of became something that I looked at as kind of, I'd say industrial design marvels. They just fascinated me. And so as I began to collect insects in different countries, I was a terrible tourist. I never took pictures. I mean, I didn't even have a camera in my 1st 20 countries I lived in, and I didn't have a picture to show for it. All I had were these crazy bugs that I would bring back from different countries. And so to me, I just really wanted to present them in my own home, kind of show off some of my budies. I was living in Los Angeles as a representation of the places I lived and worked. And just working with them as a medium of art, as opposed to just something to show off, was just soul feeding for me, and I just couldn't stop. So it very slowly grew into my career. I never imagined that I'd be able to do this, something that was so organically passionate about for a living.
But, yeah, that's how it grew.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: That's amazing.
Tell me, I know we just got a minute or two, but tell me a little bit of just how you expect.
I look at these, and I think there are some people who might not go see this because maybe they're a little squeamish.
Maybe the idea of bugs or snakes is something that just immediately makes them freak out a little bit. Sure. But to me, kind of moving this from some sort of scientific museum to an art museum creates new opportunity there.
What do you want to communicate to people that maybe feel like, oh, snakes and spiders and bugs, and I don't want to see that.
Do you feel like you can convince them that it's worth seed?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Well, I would say give it a shot, because my objective has been exactly that, to convince the uninitiated or the squeamish that there is beauty to find in these organisms.
And the reason I've been able to do that, I believe, is because of my own experience. I felt the exact same way about insects before I started. I felt like I do. I wanted to do everything I could to avoid them. And so, because that was my background, that was where I came from, my presentation. I wanted it to be as antiseptic and as architectural and as geometric as I possibly can, to try and remove a lot of the organic from the organism and just be able to focus on the aesthetics of the organism. I've kind of had this vision from the very beginning of designing artwork for God's living room. Right.
Just in imagining what God might have in his living room for his artwork. And I imagine they'd be his prototypes of when he created this organism or that organism, and before they were animated, just this beautiful representation of the original artifact.
And that's, oftentimes what people feel, even those who are not huge fans of certain types of organisms, what they feel is awe and wonder. And, odly enough, there's a lot of tears in the exhibit. It's quite an emotional experience. So I do hope people will give it a shot.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Well, just based on what I've seen of it, I can tell you that it is unexpected.
You really shouldn't base a decision on whether to go see it based on anything that you've seen in the past.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: I agree. No preconceived notions need apply.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it is beautifully done. And just really, even if you're not a person who wants to necessarily be out in nature, I think it drives home that so much of the beauty of nature.
I appreciate the fact that crystal Bridges brought it here and that you brought it here, and just look forward myself to getting a chance to get up there to see the whole exhibit. But I really do appreciate you joining us today. Any last words?
[00:16:42] Speaker B: No. Just know that those are the people that I created it for. The people that don't already have this great connection to nature, that feel like nature is a little confusing, and it's disparate, and it's weird and it's overwhelming. This is the exhibit for you. This is why I created it, so that people could find a place where everything is beautiful, everything is organized, everything is approachable and safe, and I hope that just those people will see it. And tell me about your experience. I'd love to hear about it.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I guess you're not going to step across a log in crystal bridges and find a live snake.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: That's right, you will not. Not in my exhibit anyway.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: So all is safe. So, hey, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us. Absolutely.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: I wish you well in your future pursuits, and maybe we'll talk again someday.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Sounds great. Thanks so much.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: All right. Thank you. Be sure to check out April Wallace's great story and the photographs of Christopher Marley's exquisite creatures exhibit in Sunday's WhatsApp section. I'll have more about what's coming up in this weekend's editions right after this message.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit nwanline.com nwapodcast to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and rivervalleddemocratgazette.com, or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: What'S up? Will also bring us details on the upcoming performances of Aladdin at the Walton Arts center.
It'll also include an interview and accompanying podcast with singer songwriter James McMurtry, who has an upcoming performance scheduled at Georgia's Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville.
A five questions interview will feature Paul Haas, music director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, in advance of its season finale owed to Joy Beethoven's 9th. And in the profile section Sunday, April will feature Robin Atkinson, who is the founder and CEO of Interform, a nonprofit group focused on creative expression and inclusion in the news. This weekend's editions will include some great coverage of northwest Arkansas and the River Valley. Al Gaspeny will explore the differences of thought in Bentonville about the school district's plan to provide affordable housing options as a way to attract new teachers and staff, and the trouble that that plan has run into.
Stacy Robin takes a look at a climate action plan in development by the city of Fayetteville that in draft form calls for about 80 different action items and could designate certain lands in Fayetteville as ecologically valuable.
Lydia Fletcher's story tells us how Arkansas ranks number two in the nation for having the least number of veterinarians and what the future will look like for animal care in northwest Arkansas and across the state.
Thomas Cicente covers discussion in Benton county about changes that would make it easier for property owners and builders who are seeking to develop property.
Tom Sissam will tell us about Washington County Judge Patrick Deakin's desire to put a planning and zoning ordinance in place for the unincorporated areas of the county. Campbell Roper takes a look at investment in downtown Rogers properties and its impact on people's ability to live and work there.
And then the River Valley Democrat Gazette Monica Brick tells readers about a new specialized traffic unit at the Fort Smith Police Department and will introduce us to the next associate vice chancellor of enrollment management at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. So be sure to pick up editions of the northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the River Valley Democrat Gazette this weekend. Check it out on our website, nwaonline.com. Just be sure to check out all the good information this weekend. As always, we appreciate your readership. And you're listening to the know the news podcast. It will be back next week with a new edition. And until the next time I get to visit with you, I'm Greg Hartin. Thanks for joining us.
