By Elizabeth Gracen:
Recently, I found myself with a lovely day off from filming a new documentary feature film that I’ve been working on in my home state of Arkansas. I had just finished an incredible weekend in Fayetteville for the NWA Pride event hosted by NWA Equality, Inc., and I was happy but exhausted from spending a little too much time in the excessive heat and humidity with some 40,000 Pride attendees. A Sunday afternoon off, all to myself, meant I finally had the chance to take a breather and visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Founded by arts patron and philanthropist Alice Walton, Crystal Bridges nestles in the woods just outside Bentonville, Arkansas, population 57,868. A public non-profit charitable organization, the museum opened to the public in 2011 with free admission and has now welcomed more than 5 million visitors. Designed by Moshe Safdie as a series of pavilions constructed around spring-fed ponds, the galleries, gathering hall, library, and meeting/classroom spaces provide a modern indoor light-filled experience along with five miles of sculptures and trails on the 120-acre property in the park woods of northwest Arkansas. The impressive permanent collection contains works by a greatest hits of immediately familiar artists (Georgia O’Keefe, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, John James Audubon, and many, many others) alongside less-recognizable but historically significant artists highlighted by the collection’s five centuries of American art.
After a brief stop for a more-than-satisfying lunch at the museum’s Eleven Café and Bar, I ventured forth into the special exhibit. Little did I know I was about to rediscover the work of artist and naturalist Christopher Marley.
I first became aware of the wondrous work of Christopher Marley over ten years ago at a place called Gold Bug in Pasadena, CA, a “family-owned and operated retail/gallery space that values community and nurtures artists, free spirits, and nature lovers.”
I was there to find a special gift for one of those “guy who has everything”–type of friends, and I quickly realized that I had come to the right place. In what I can only describe as the most eclectic gift store I have ever been in, I soon found myself transfixed, staring at a wall full of exotic, rarified insects encased in shadowbox frames. Cliché to say that I felt childlike wonder as I looked at them, but that is the closest I can come to describing the mysterious allure elicited by the over-sized creatures. I have certainly never felt an affinity with bugs, but this was something completely different. These were beyond beautiful.
Crystal Bridges' Exquisite Creatures exhibition featured room after room of Marley's extraordinary work. The first gallery contained delicate butterflies and insects. I found myself thinking about how clever the artist was to incorporate the vivid colors of nature, using the insect’s natural body color to create classical kaleidoscopic designs, but by the time I stepped into the next gallery, I realized that I was in for much more of a visual adventure than I had anticipated as each room unfolded with a jaw-dropping 400 pieces of the artist’s work from the past two decades.
From insects the exhibit moves to aquatic life, then birds, reptiles, flora and fauna, minerals, more aquatic life, giant bugs, and snakes and snakes and snakes (I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of my mother’s shocked recoil at such a thing). Overwhelming in its presentation from the simple “insect in a shadow box” I had experienced long before, the exhibit’s unique perspective and willful determination focuses the viewer into contemplation of the vast variety in nature. Marley’s medium of using natural artifacts for expression of design and spirit provides a connectedness to the beauty, mystery, and awe of all creation.
“The 'Exquisite Creatures' exhibit is a dialogue of art, nature and science,” he says. “It's a little bit of that magical space between those three different elements of the human experience and what happens when we have an involvement in the natural world and it's combined with creativity and there's learning and their science involved.” — Christopher Marley, as quoted in Steven Tonthat's "Christopher Marley Turns ‘Exquisite Creatures’ Into Art," Oregon Public Broadcasting
"Crystals, insects, birds. Animal, vegetable, mineral. What is the through line? What is the humming energy that permeates the entire natural world and makes each element, each organism, however divergent, however obscure, equally enthralling when viewed in the light of design." — Christopher Marley, Biophilia: Christopher Marley's Art of Nature
"I understand there are phobias, and I admit that a healthy fear of something that can kill you is reasonable. But how can anyone see the lithe elegance of a serpent and not wonder at The Designer's purpose in creating a living line?" — Christopher Marley, Biophilia: Christopher Marley's Art of Nature
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"In my experience, the most effective way to help open our collective arms and welcome even the most maligned creatures into our embrace is to heighten our appreciation for their aesthetics. This is one of the most valuable purposes my work serves." — Christopher Marley, Biophilia: Christopher Marley's Art of Nature
"As a designer, I am driven toward efficient and precise visual results, but as an artist, my objective is to inspire people to see natural artifacts with fresh eyes." — Christopher Marley, Biophilia: Christopher Marley's Art of Nature
In the opening talk for the exhibit’s launch, Marley discusses his early passion for reptiles and his later return to that passion through art and his dedication to the preservation of exotic species through environmentally responsible collection from a seemingly worldwide network of likeminded people who provide the raw materials for his art. His excitement is palpable, his skills as a designer, conservator, and taxidermist on full display in the exhibit as he punctuates the works with the natural repetition of color and design present across all species, further connecting us to the wide net of creation, forcing us to consider the “oneness” of all beings.
Wildly graphic, with bold color, scale, and juxtaposition, the exhibit gives us the abundance of nature and asks much more of us in return, pulling the very idea of existence and death into full consideration.
“As an artist, Marley offers a perspective on nature that’s more corporeal than conceptual. It manifests itself in clean lines and axes—orbiting specimens that have passed from life to deities of art. . . . It’s all part of a marvelous display, one that silences any notion that the natural vessel is worthless after death.” — Audubon
Recently, I checked out Marley’s book, Biophelia: Christopher Marley's Art of Nature, from the local library to read more about his work. The book’s title means “love of life,” and is Marley’s “tribute to living things and the joy that they bring, in the form of exquisite works of art.” The book features some of the exhibit's pieces and has afforded me the opportunity to assimilate the visual feast in a slower, even more appreciative manner. I highly encourage you to visit the exhibit if you get the opportunity as it travels the world (next stop is the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland), but if you don’t get the chance, the book is a terrific introduction to his work.
Exquisite Creations stays with me, and I am grateful for the thought-provoking, lasting effect it continues to resonate in my life.
Elizabeth Gracen is the owner of Flapper Press & Flapper Films.
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