Christopher Marley

"I haven't always loved bugs....

"Though I spent most of my childhood catching snakes, raising lizards and dreaming of Komodo Dragons, I was terrified of anything with more than four legs. My phobia became stifling when I began traveling at 19 years old. After two tumultuous years in South America, I spent several years in and out of Southeast Asia and Africa with little improvement.

Then one fateful night in a Bangkok artisan market I stumbled upon a group of handicapped people selling what appeared to be small marsupials crammed into cheap frames. Upon closer examination I realized they were bugs! I was overcome with horror, nausea and -- what's this? A surging fascination.

"As a young artist, my subject matter had always been fantastical and macabre but I had never had the opportunity to examine insects in a less than life threatening environment. Now, I was enthralled with the size, colors, ridiculous shapes and perfect mechanics of creatures that I was seeing up close and harmless for the first time."