When artist David Rogers saw a black locust tree in the forest, he knew he had found what he was looking for to create a piece of sculpture.
“It had been standing dead long enough that it had lost its limbs and bark,” he recalls, “and the shape and the posture of it reminded me of the body of a praying mantis.”
It didn’t matter that the log was 15-feet-long because Rogers doesn’t work in miniature. He turned the tree into one of the mega-bugs he makes out of natural materials. Some of them found a habitat in an exhibition at the Botanic Garden in 1998, and now the big bugs are back, but not without some heavy lifting.
Rogers had quite a bit of help when it came to installing the bugs. “The praying mantis weighs 1,200 pounds so we had to use a gigantic tractor just to lift the body, and it took a crew of 4,” he says.
The praying mantis now stands alone, as well it should. “Praying mantises are very solitary creatures so you never see groups of them hanging out together,” explains Rogers. “She’s standing by herself in a grassy open area near water, and she looks like she’s stalking something in the willow tree nearby.”
Rogers does some stalking of his own to find materials for his work. “I trespass a lot to find the dead hardwoods — the locusts, the walnuts and the cedars — that I use,” he says. “Sometimes I look at trees and I see elbows and eyebrows and legs.”
The praying mantis is not the only result of Rogers’ creative way of rearranging trees and twigs. Three 700-pound ants, two dragonflies, a ladybug, a spider in a 15-foot web and several other creatures have returned to the Botanic Garden. This time Rogers has also added a bee, a beehive and a flower to tell the story of pollination. Young visitors will be given decoder glasses so they can decipher the messages on signs that explain the important role insects play in the life of our planet. “We’re more and more disconnected from the natural world,” explains Rogers, “and the garden and these installations give people a chance to pause and take in the natural beauty of the environment of our biosphere.”
Visitors can do that on a smaller scale too, because the “Jr. Railroad” exhibit is back for the third year. Model trains travel through American landscapes, from the San Francisco Bay Bridge to the new addition of the Statue of Liberty.
Free storytelling sessions and drop-in activities inspired by both exhibits are scheduled.
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David Rogers’ Big Bugs; and Jr. Railroad: Model Trains in a Model Garden
When: Through Oct. 27
Where: Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Rd., Glencoe
Price: Bugs exhibit, free; Railroad exhibit, $2-$4; 847-835-5440
