Leafcutter's debut — Catherine Chalmers

Pictures at an Exhibition, Pigment print, 24"x92"

What a summer! I have been working on “The Leafcutters” project since 2007, the year I shot “We Rule” on Jean Pigozzi’s island in Panama, and this summer I tested the waters with a small gallery show in Sun Valley Idaho with the work I’ve completed so far. The exhibition featured two videos, eight photographs including the ninety-inch long “Antworks Parade,” plus six pencil drawings of ants carrying letters. The experience was similar to what the theatre world calls a New Haven moment – to preview a show out-of-town, to test the actors, the sets, the dialogue, and to make adjustments all out of the gaze of big city critics.

Thank you Robin Reiners at Gallery DeNovo for giving me this opportunity and thank you Sun Valley for your rousing reception of my project’s debut. It’s been precarious to work under wraps for these past five years holding back finished work in order to exhibit this multi-media, multi-chapter ant extravaganza all at once.

The art establishment might not have been there but a member of the science aristocracy, Mr. E.O. Wilson, the world’s reining ant specialist and one of greatest biological theorists since Darwin, was in Sun Valley this summer. He spoke about his new book The Social Conquest of Earth at the Writer’s Conference. For years his work has inspired mine and it was an honor to finally meet him and say thank you.