Tiny subjects inspire new art show

People mostly don’t even notice bugs, says Morinville photographer and painter Lesley Roy.

“Sometimes they don’t like looking at them too closely,” Roy says.

At Roy’s new show, Images of Alberta, it’s hard not to notice bugs in all their splendiferous details. Roy has focused her attention on some of the smallest beings on the planet and magnified them to monstrous dimensions, sometimes just using the macro feature on simple point and shoot cameras.

Making a 3.5-millimetre mesh-web weaver spider into something more than 20 times its normal size can be monstrous, especially since it’s in the middle of making a meal out of a vinegar fly. A graveyard of corpses from other victims litters the other webs and threads around the macabre sight.

Roy clearly enjoys making bugs bigger than life. That’s how she gets to tell her stories about the importance they play in the world at large. And that’s why her new show has relevance beyond those who appreciate art.

As the world acknowledged its human population had reached seven billion on Monday, Roy talked about where the world would be without the creepy little insects and arachnids that play their parts.

“They are 70 per cent of all living creatures. People think they’re insignificant but they play a very important role,” she said.

As an example, she talks about the leafcutter bee, a species that was first introduced in Canada in 1962 to help with pollination in the alfalfa industry. Industrial and residential development in this province, she continued, destroyed much of the bees’ habitat. Farmers had to reintroduce the bee in order to save their crops and stay in business.

“Nobody thinks much about the insects but when you start to look at them, you realize how complex they are and how beautiful they can be. It just opens up a whole new world,” she said.

Roy’s world is one of intense patience, waiting for the wee beasties to hit the right pose. She said she’s still trying to get a good shot of a dragonfly heading straight into her camera. For now though, she fills her days touring the province snapping pics of other more compliant creatures.

Her show contains many beautiful images, including a red cross stink bug with a dewdrop of water on its back. Others show insects in the middle of sexual congress but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of romance. One shot shows two flies with the male standing right on the female’s head. Another straight shot of a fruit fly shows the beautiful metallic green and azure blue colours of its otherwise grotesque eyes.

“You look at them and you realize how intricate they are,” Roy says. “They’re very detailed and actually quite beautiful.”

But bugs aren’t the only things you can expect to see at her show. Apart from her small selection of paintings — a recent addition to her portfolio — she has also put up some fine photos of Alberta sights and scenes like grain elevators and landscapes. There’s a mushroom as the subject of another image.

Her subject matter suggests she won’t have much to do when the snow finally arrives and stays. She explains that her artistic practice has a yearly cycle where she spends the winter inside organizing her photos.

She also works hard to refine her processes. Roy admits that the biggest and most sophisticated lenses would help but they aren’t necessary to do what she does. People should just get to know their cameras better, she says, but to her, the best pictures aren’t necessarily picture perfect.

“I think one of the things you learn is the essence of the photograph isn’t always to get it as sharp as can be and perfect,” she said.

“Sometimes the nicest looking photograph is one that’s a little bit out of focus.”