Oversize insect sculptures land at Botanica for summer exhibition

The inspiration behind Alex Heveri’s artistic works might be small and delicate in nature, but in real life, her glass-and-steel sculptures of insects and pollinators leave a big impression.

Realistic in detail, the oversize sculptures — some of which tower up to 12 feet high and weigh several hundred pounds — are part of Heveri’s mission to spread entomophilia, the love of insects, she said.

In the past five years, she’s created more than 100 sculptures, most of which comprise her three traveling sculpture collections. One of those exhibitions, “Glass in Flight 2,” was recently installed on the 20-acre Botanica campus in Wichita, where it will be on display until July 30. The exhibition is included in the price of admission.

The 26 sculptures in “Glass in Flight 2” depict pollinators, including bees, butterflies and hummingbirds, and predators such as praying mantis and flying ants.

“If my exhibit can foster a deeper understanding of insects, birds and other animals and how we all co-exist, then the time and hard work I dedicated to the making of Glass in Flight 2 will have been worthwhile,” Heveri said in an artist’s statement on the Botanica website.

A full-time criminal defense attorney who just weeks ago was presenting an oral argument to the Arizona Supreme Court, the Tucson-based Heveri spends her time outside the courtroom manipulating faceted glass called dalle de verre (French for “a slab of glass”) and shaping and welding steel into the larger-than-life sculptures.

She handles the entire process from conceiving to assembling the sculptures herself.

“For me, it’s go big or go home,” Heveri said, as she stood next to her 5-foot-tall sculpture of a blue mountain swallowtail butterfly installed next to Botanica’s terrace garden. During installation, part of a nearby wooden bridge buckled under the weight of the sculpture and the forklift moving it.

“Can you believe this exists in nature? It’s so cool,” Heveri said as she approached her sculpture of the chorinea sylphina butterfly, which is found in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The butterfly has clear wings bordered in black with red highlights on its lower wings.

Each of Heveri’s traveling collections includes an arch sculpture. She was particularly pleased that Botanica had the perfect location for the “Glass in Flight 2” monarch butterfly arch sculpture: right next to a patch of milkweed and other plants that comprise a monarch waystation.

While she revels in the beauty of both the natural inspirations and her finished pieces, getting to that point ‘isn’t necessarily happy,” Heveri said, as she described the “hard, heavy and hot” conditions that go into creating each piece, such as the melting and shaping the hard-to-source 8-by-12-by-1-inch glass slabs and welding the steel.

A specialty glass art technique known for its sparkle and brilliance in sunlight, dalle de verre is made by just one U.S. manufacturer, Kokomo Opalescent Glass in Indiana, Heveri said. According to the company’s website, no two dalles are alike since they are hand-crafted one at a time.

Heveri said she went to law school because she thought she could only have one career and was told it would be too hard to make a living as an artist. She discovered sculpture when she was an undergraduate at Arizona State University. Not long after getting her law degree more than 30 years ago, she returned to making art.

When it came to the inspiration of her sculptures, Heveri said she spent “every single day of my second and third grades looking for insects, snakes and tortoises. … When I wasn’t looking for lizards and other small animals, I was looking at the stained-glass windows in my Catholic school.”

‘Glass in Flight 2’ exhibition at Botanica

What: an exhibition of 26 oversize glass-and-steel sculptures of insects and pollinators created by Arizona artist Alex Heveri

Where: Botanica, 701 Amidon

When: now through Wednesday, July 30. Botanica hours are 9 a.m.-8 p.m. daily; members have early access from 7:30-9 a.m. Closed for major holidays.

Admission: $12 for ages 13 and older; $10 for ages 3-12 and 65 and older, and veterans; free for children 2 and younger and Botanica members.

More info: 316-264-0448 or botanica.org