The butterflies above are not the same kind. Could you tell?

For the most part, birds can’t either. The insect on the left is the pipevine swallowtail. It begins eating poisonous plants as a caterpillar, and by the time it reaches adulthood its body is inundated with toxicity. It is not a good meal for birds, and its bright orange row of spots indicates this. The butterfly on the right is a black swallowtail morph, a variation on the species that came out of the same geographic area as the pipevine. It is not toxic, and if you look closely, it has two rows of spots. This is a Batesian mimic, an animal that mimics a dangerous animal to avoid predation. For the most part, it works.

Throughout nature, we see animals whose patterning tells us what and who they are, but we also see animals who are liars. I think about humans and the different ways we ornament ourselves to show our toxicity, and the different ways we fake it.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have animals in nature with incredible mating patterns and dances. In the insect world, many males are eaten if they fail to impress. I think about the many ways we sexually ornament ourselves, and can be psychologically devoured by the other. My work with patterns isolates and recontextualizes these indicators, seeing how they operate on their own. I also seek to celebrate the incredible diversity of beauty in the world today, at the beginning of mass extinction.