Terence McKenna's butterflies

The late psychedelic pioneer and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna was also an avid naturalist. His favorite specimens were his butterflies, more than two thousand of them netted in Indonesia and Columbia while McKenna was running from the law after a hashish bust forty years ago. Now, McKenna's daughter Klea has photographed the collection and created an interactive gallery and limited edition artist book with the material. BB pal Erik Davis, who knew Klea's father, had a sneak peak at the book and wrote a lovely review of it in his online journal. From Erik's post, titled "Terence McKenna's Butterflies":

Mckennnabutter
When Klea–who is now a fine art photographer earning her MFA at the California College of the Arts–first began excavating the trunk in 2007, she discovered that none of the butterfly packets had been opened. As she unfolded the the specimens, she discovered something else: the pieces of paper had their own stories to tell. She photographed about a hundred or so of the specimens, along with their paper wrappings, and turned these images into The Butterfly Hunter, an interactive gallery show and now a gorgeous limited-edition signed artist book available–along with select images from the project–at her website. A remarkable visual meditation on time, loss, and the culture of nature, The Butterfly Hunter is also a fascinating engagement–intimate yet cool–with what Klea described to me as her father's "fanatical romanticism."

Klea grew up in the swirling penumbra of Terence's peculiar shadow, and, like many children of famous and colorful folk, had to consciously define her own creative voice apart from her father's world. In its first, gallery iteration, The Butterfly Hunter did not mention her father's name, because she wanted the work to stand on its own merit. It is a mark of her courage that her book takes on Terence's legacy, and a mark of her success that she does it with such candor and care.

"Terence McKenna's Butterflies" by Erik Davis (Techgnosis.com), Klea McKenna's "The Butterfly Hunter" (kleamckenna.com)