Tom’s birthday treat was a trip to the Piedra Herrada butterfly sanctuary outside of Mexico City. I was expecting something similar to the Wye Valley Butetrfly Zoo, but was instead blown away by the little known natural phenomenon we beheld.

After breathlessly scaling a deeply dusty uphill trail through a pine forest, we came upon a majestic sight - millions and millions of monarch butterflies. The air was thick with the sound and sight of gently fluttering butterflies and the floor littered with the confetti of their dead relatives. These butterflies, apparently named after William III because their chrysalis is shaped like a crown, are not native to Mexico, but had travelled for two months over two thousand miles from their homes in the United States and Canada to winter in Mexico’s warmer climes. They started arriving in mid-November and will stay until the beginning of March when the mating period is over and the weather warm enough to return home.

The monarch is an enigmatic butterfly. Scientists are still debating why it is only every fifth generation of butterfly that makes this epic trek to Mexico (and back home again), and how they know to return to the same spot each time. A pre-historic Sat Nav perhaps? For the monarchs have a taste for high altitude (2,800m) oyamel fir trees, and are rather particular about the ones they choose, with each migratory generation returning to the exact same trees, over a sixty square mile area, year after year.

This spectacle is steeped in mystery and myth. Some believe it to be a fertility rite calling to the four corners of the earth to bring rain and sun; others link it to the pre-Hispanic calendar.

Monarch butterflies and voladores: Two groups of flyers travelling in slow motion, both gracefully practicing mystifying rituals. I do not understand why either man or butterfly does what they do, but their courage and might make for great entertainment. Next time you visit Mexico, make sure you look up!

I recently sat down to talk with Ellen Kochansky, an Artful Home artist who has always worked in the realm of Slow. For 25 years, Ellen made quilts, working in and around abandoned textile mills in South Carolina.  Her quilts always made reference to previous lives, as Ellen has had a fascination with re-use.  She uses the term “composting” freely, and holds a fascination for the re-use of materials, machines, and objects , giving them a new life.  The quilt below, “Counterpane” was “a farewell to the collage technique  I did for years, which became obsolete when the couching embroidery machine I used at a local factory was sold when the factory went under. The scrap from a decade of hangings became the compost for the last of the series.”The quilt is located in the White House Collection in Washington, DC.  http://www.ekochansky.com/Large-art/history%20art/counterpane.jpg 1992.

Ellen likes to use the term “spoiled rotten” when speaking of her current work, feeling that the excesses of our pre-recession lifestyles can be allowed to rot, or compost, in ways which bring about new life.  She is intent on creating from that which is in the wastestream, and understanding how we all fit into that wastestream.  Much of her work is like that shown recently  in her show “Embedded Energy” at the 701 Center for Contemporary Arts in Columbia, SC, an old mill town where the mill is long gone.  Ellen interviewed past residents and their families, gathered bales of debris from the neighborhood, and collected “rotting” examples of memories, including bridal gowns, letters, and clothes lines.  These came to new life in the show, with this compost harvested between transparent waves of fabric, tied into bales, or displayed reverentially. (Thank you Susan Lenz for your blog posting)
http://artbysusanlenz.blogspot.com/2009/02/embedded-energy-by-ellen-kochansky.html

She is now working on collective projects with a focus on community.  One community in particular was for a hospital which is trying to focus more on patient-centered care, on Slow involvement with patients rather than simply machine-focused data care.  For the Mercy Hospital in Charlotte, NC , Ellen sorted through materials which the  hospital threw away.  All who work in the hospital, from surgeons to janitors, were asked to make individual promises of commitment to patients on a strip of trash, which was then rolled up into a bead.  Hundreds of beads will be included in layers of a giant book-based quilt , showing the intentions of commitment, to be  displayed in the hospital entrance. Volunteers, patients, and hospital professionals have all gotten involved.  To quote Ellen, the project was about
“how do you do what you do,  rather than just what is  the technical stuff that you do?”

Ellen believes that  letting go is an energy field. “ If you compost it (an object, and idea), you protect it.  If you try to protect it, or try to insulate it from harm, you don’t spread it.  It is an active, violent process to let go.  Wrench yourself from your own consumption. “ As Ellen and I talked, we eventually looped back to the world of art and design.  Her opinion, and I don’t disagree, is that in recent decades, in the arts we have, “been spoiled rotten.  We were able to be superfluous, because people had the money to buy what they didn’t need.”  Her approach to re-examining and re-purposing that which is about to be tossed, her version of composting, provides a Slow lens on the world of consumption and art.

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