Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Costume designer makes a new wing for an injured monarch butterfly so it can fly again
Boing Boing: Romy McCloskey of Faden Design Studios (Instagram, website) makes stunningly gorgeous costumes for movies, television, and private commissions. She also is interested in butterflies, and so she put her talents and interests together to repair the badly damaged wing of a monarch butterfly.
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I love seeing stories like this about people who use their art work to aid the people and creatures around them. So much of the world now is so fast paced that we barely pay attention to other people let alone to the creatures and plants that surround us. I come from a city so I never really thought about animals outside of the context of the zoo and the nature museum as a small kid. But the idea that people can use their art to either bring awareness to or actually positively effect the life of creatures in nature is simply amazing to me. I think art should really attempt to better the lives of people who interact with it so why not do the same for creatures?
Romy McCloskey is clearly pretty brave and ingenious because it must be pretty terrifying to take the life of a creature into your hands if you care about the creature so much. The work that they did clearly paid off though because they got to see this injured butterfly fly again.
I love seeing these ways skills can be transferable and you can use ideas and methods of costume making especially in unique ways to make lives better. This reminds me of an idea I always had for creating prosthetics limbs using metalworking that look like intricate filigree or metalworking. I feel that the arts can be used in amazing ways, especially in terms of making people who may have disabilities or limited mobility and need to use wheelchairs, prosthetics, canes, or joint braces, among other things. I can just imagine how amazing a custom wheelchair for a kid that looks like a spaceship could be, or a prosthetic for a bride that matches her dress, or steampunk joint braces that make wearing them something cool and unique instead of something to be conscious about. It's something I'm really interested in learning to do, especially at CMU where I can do stuff like this costumer did, combining technology and helping people with skills you learn in the field.
This is entirely incredible. It just goes to show everyone in the world that people in the technical theatre industry have skills that are universally applicable. I guess it is not that the specific skills that are universally applicable, it is more that the minds of the people who work in tech theatre are trained to create, to think outside the box, and to problem solve. Most theatre technicians have worked many non-theatre jobs that require the same types of mindsets, or they work many different jobs within the theatre (ME/LD, TD/scenic designer, etc.). Working in theatre is about application and being able to bring your individual knowledge to the table in order to collaborate with and help those around you in your team. This monarch butterfly wing repair job is a perfect example of this. Of course it was a costumer who figured it out, they are always thinking about how pieces fit together and are detail oriented. It’s exciting to see theatre technicians doing jobs that everyone can appreciate.
I love seeing people apply a seemingly "specialized" skill to outside applications. When entering into the entertainment industry, we are often told that the skills we learn are not going to be "marketable" because it is inapplicable to the outside world. This article shows that, not only is success possible within our own field, but the skills and craftsmanship learned is also able to restore beauty to something as delicate as a butterfly wing. This story just warms my heart, especially after seeing how damaged the butterfly was before being repaired. After watching the video provided with the article, I thought that it was so cool that the process, though dexterous and exact, was surprisingly simple. Its great that the article included this video as it not only highlights a great story but also encourages readers to do the same if an injured butterfly is ever encountered. For a butterfly, its wings are its livelihood and it takes so little for us to repair.
This makes my heart happy. Butterflies are such strong and resilient creatures for their size. Years ago on a family vacation, I passed by a pool and saw a swallowtail butterfly drowning, so I scooped it out of the water, patted it down with a napkin and then watched it as it dried in the sun, insuring that it made it out ok. The butterfly survived and flew away a few hours later. This article reminded me of this experience. I love it when people put to use their precision skills and knowledge to help the environment. Especially in this case, since the monarch butterfly have been considered a threatened species. This species of butterflies are having a harder time feeding and migrating because certain habitats get destroyed, and their food sources are diminishing. Monarchs are currently under review to see if they should be more formally protected by the endangered species act, so it is more important than ever that the butterflies that are out there now are protected the best they can be, since legislation currently does not do much. At first I was concerned that the butterfly would be in pain from this procedure, but it turns out that butterflies do not have the nerve cell that causes them to feel pain like humans do, so the butterfly cannot feel the pain of losing a wing or the burn of a chemical adhesive. This is such a neat way to use the precision learned in the costume craft to help the environment.
When I first saw the title of this article, I had pictured the designer creating a wing from scratch using fabric of some sort and wondered how that could have possibly worked. But after reading this article, I am amazed that this designer was able to use a real wing to fix the monarch’s damaged one! The intricacy and precision needed to successfully attach the broken wing without harming the rest of the wing is a skill that I know is used almost every day in costume design and costume creation. It would be really cool to see more artists applying their skills in design and craft in this way. Perhaps designers could start to pair with engineers and veterinarians to help come up with some really innovative ways to give wheelchairs, casts, prosthetics, et cetera to injured animals! I’m also really glad that the author attached a video from the Live Monarch Foundation to help spread the information needed to fix a broken monarch wing. I’m excited to see more artists and people try to aid the natural world around them.
It is so inspiring to read stories about people who use their skills and talents to give aid our of the kindness and generosity of their hearts, with no goal of compensation. At its core, art and skills that fall into a creative category exist to better individuals and their community. It is not to create division or serious conflict. While sometimes we use it to create discomfort to edge a system towards improvement, the final goal is always to move forward and provide release. I cannot imagine the amount of care, trial, error, and research that McCloskey went through to provide the help to this butterfly. I really appreciate the thoroughness and vigor with which she approached this task, and I hope that more people follow in the footsteps of finding ways to combine their interests and skills to provide help to those around them. Not to mention, the wing looked fantastic, and she truly respected the symmetry and what that means to a butterfly’s camouflage, so she could go on to survive.
I am so inspired by this Romy McClosky, that she uses the skills she learns as a costume designer to do something so tedious and thoughtful as to fix a butterfly’s broken wing. She even recorded a video to show people how to do so if they encounter a hurt Monarch or any butterfly. Something so small seems so important to her and really communicates what a wonderful person Romy is. I also like to think that costuming contains a lot of outside skills that are developed from sewing, restitching, fitting, and mistakes. Those kinds of experiences create an onset of skills like patience, detail, and organization. I love that the article is showing that these skills that Romy has developed over her years of costuming design can be put to anything she sets her mind to, whether it is creating beautiful costume or saving the broken wing of a butterfly.
The applications of theater skills are so broad and varied that it seems I will never fail to be surprised by stories such as this one. Indeed, it is the inter sectional nature of theater as an art form that attracted me to it initially over the fine arts or more academic subjects. There is a boundless wealth of skills and knowledge to be found within theater artists, as they all come from different backgrounds and each one possesses an entirely unique set of skills and way of thinking. I am always amazed by the unique skills of my peers, and I often feel like I learn the most in theater just by talking to the other people working beside me. The collaborative artistic problem solving required in theater really challenges us as artists to learn from each other, and I believe that this collaboration is intrinsically linked to innovations such as the one found in this article.
I have never thought of giving a butterfly a prosthetic before, but this is a wild idea. I think it is pretty cool for people to have so much care and worry over creatures that are so much different than us and so much smaller. I mean like the video said the butterflies only live for a few months, so I think it is a pretty great gesture for someone to take the time out of their life to save the life of a monarch even if it will only last for a short time after the repair. I wonder if there could be a synthetic wing made so that you would not have to rely on the wings of other dead butterflies to make the repairs. Does the butterfly not hurt when you cut its wings though?? Cutting the other one to match the broken seemed like it would be painful and detrimental to the poor thing, but maybe that is just me.
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