Don’t call an exterminator. The bugs at Tacoma’s Museum of Glass are invited guests. Plus, they’re made from glass.
The life-size, anatomically correct works of art herald visitors to the Tacoma museum’s newest show, “Field Notes: Artists Observe Nature,” which opened Saturday.
Just some of the 300 insects made by Italian artist Vittorio Costantini were on display Saturday. The rest are arriving next week, according to MOG’s curator of education Susan Warner. They need to be delicately wrapped — even their antennae are made from glass — before they can be transported.
As adults were ooing and ahing over Costantini’s work, about a dozen children and adults were making “trash bugs” in MOG’s entry hall.
Janett Villegas brought her six-year-old daughters, Amy and Ariana Balderas, to the museum from Federal Way to watch glass blowing but took a break to make insects out of discarded items. Hair clips became bodies, plastic food container lids became wings.
The girls were absorbed in their work making butterflies but took a few moments to answer a reporter’s query: what did they think of real bugs?