Pheromone: The Insect Artwork of Christopher Marley

Description:

This book presents the compositions of Christopher Marley: assemblages of real insect bodies that display brilliant colour and otherworldly form. The colours are entirely natural, and to render the reproductions as accurately as possible some have been reproduced with fifth-colour metallic inks and highlighted with spot varnish. Accompanying the broad sample of Marley’s work is a series of essays by the artist: 'Design of Insects', 'Insects in Design', 'History', 'Colour', 'The Coleoptera Mosaics: An Exercise in Colour', 'Repetition', 'Structure', 'Texture', 'Variations', 'Botanicals', 'Size', and 'Environmental Effects'.

Christopher Marley was born in Covina, California, and grew up near Salem, Oregon. At 19 years old, he began his travels while serving as a missionary for two years in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Upon his return, he balanced studying design at Brigham Young University with extended sabbaticals to work both on and off camera for scores of fashion brands such as Donna Karan, Gucci, and Giorgio Armani. Over more than a decade, his assignments to dozens of countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas spawned a passionate drive to share the unending variety of surprising natural artifacts with an unsuspecting public through his artwork. In addition to insects, his mediums of design include fossils, minerals, botanicals, bones, and sea life. His work has been featured in numerous magazines and is sold through hundreds of galleries, stores, and showrooms in the United States and abroad.