The Plague

Plagues and infestations are just under the surface here in Bellevue in August--mosquitoes on trail hikes and giant spiders in the bathroom and basement... the worst are the tiny fruit flies everywhere in the kitchen and the larger ones in the windows.

At Bellevue Arts Museum this week we saw origami on the second floor, an installation called "The Plague" by Sipho Mabona

"The Plague" by Sipho Mabona

Which reminded me of "Infestation" from Yorkshire Sculpture Park by Anna Collette Hunt last spring:

And then the Mill Creek Earthworks Park in Kent by landscape architect Herbert Bayer, which is really about the good kind of infestation (worms)  that we encourage in our gardens:

And Tanner Springs Park, in downtown Portland.
Ancient railroad ties are interspersed with painted glass depicting indigenous animal forms, including insects, by the German landscape architect Herbert Dreiseitl.  The park removed an industrial cover in the Pearl District and reconnected it with pre-industrial wetlands which ran through the area.

The New York Times described it as "a sort of cross between an Italian piazza and a weedy urban wetland with lots of benches perched beside gently running streams":

So, four ways to look at insects in eight months.  Meanwhile I'm trying to live with all the bugs around me that flourish in the month of August.