etching, aquatint, cyanotype

Responder updated this value. Kiara Womack is a teaching artist with a BFA and BA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is also a studio monitor at Honolulu Printmakers.a

Meeting Sandra Schachat, PhD and experiencing her wondrous insect artwork and passion has led me to appreciate the smaller species often overlooked in favor of more colorful creatures like butterflies and moths. I found myself looking forward to being paired with the last species available that no other artist wanted to represent. I was hoping for a tiny, understated fly, and thankfully that’s what I got—clunio vagans, a nonbiting marine midge who loves algae.

My etching is based on zoomed-in images of one Native clunio vagans specimen in particular at the Insect Museum, photographed by graduate researcher, Spencer Pote. The withered specimen evoked sympathy in me, and I related to their vulnerable state in desiccation. I spent a couple of days sketching them and looking closely. The more time I spent learning how to render this Clunio the closer I felt to my subject—an intimacy typical in observational drawing.