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":
"Terence McKenna's Butterflies" by Erik Davis (Techgnosis.com), Klea McKenna's "The Butterfly Hunter" (kleamckenna.com)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.
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I'll definitely have to pick this up. It seems like quite a departure from McKenna's visionary and psychedelic stuff.
His daughter's struggle to find her own identity in the shadow of her father reminds me of Zena Grey, daughter of Alex Grey, another visionary.
One of the best BB posts of all time - thanks Pesco. I hesitated for a couple nano-moments, then bought a copy of the book - it looks incredible.
Beautiful, and so interesting with the papers they were kept in. Kudos to Klea McKenna. And to BB's & Erik Davis' posts on it. Takes some of the sting out of the loss of his library in that fire.
A sneak... peAk?
I loved this thank you. I still love to listen McKenna's talks and I catch most of them at matrixmasters.com. Yeah, yeah a plug but a good resource for McKenna enthusiasts.
Straight on top of my books wish list for this Xmas!
I expect McKenna caught his butterflies in "Colombia," not "Columbia." The second spelling would refer to something named after an Italian who got lost. The first is the name of a South American nation.