Installation: Swannatopia Presents Bug Mall | December 11 and 31, 2022

Swannatopia’s Bug Mall explores the ways we relate to our built environment, each other, and ourselves through the lens of contemplative socioentomology.  Bug Mall is a brainchild of Glowspace Arts and Katrina Ohstrom (aka Terrestrial Projecting). Drawing inspiration from utopian experiments both attempted and imagined, cooperative and adaptive behaviors observed across life forms, holiday light shows and the shopping mall itself, the multimedia installation will include a parking lot, butterfly experience, monorail, movie theater, fountain, escalator, elevator, funeral parlor, vending machine, arcade, high school art show, seed bank, volcano, claw machine, Zig Zag’s Roller Disco, Swannatopia Department Store, Wormhole!, a wormhole, chapel, food court, claw machine, carousel, and more. Check out Swannatopia’s work on their instagram page!

The ground-level, wheelchair-accessible exhibition begins with an opening reception on Sunday, December 11 at from 11-7, which will peak at 5:17pm with a “Sunset Surprise” feast for the senses.  Bug Mall will be viewable by appointment through December 30.

The window displays will be on view from the sidewalk through December 30.

Wear a mask indoors!

Bug Costumes Encouraged!

Swannatopia Presents: Bug Mall- A Light And Sound Extravaganza is the experimental art collective’s largest and most immersive installation to date. Both a physical studio and an interdisciplinary collaboration, Swannatopia members make use of light, sound, water, glass, porcelain, terra cotta, live plants, projections, reflections, textiles, movement, video, screenprinting, performance, etc to create experiential habitats and far out happenings as well as facilitate the free exchange of knowledge, experience,  tools and materials.

To this end, Swannatopia Experimental Art Club was launched in May of this year.  My Terra Squirma invited members to build their own living sculpture out of terracotta, found materials, stained glass and live plants. This 8-week-long session culminated in a group art show, with a “Plantwave” device on site to assist in translating the plants biorhythms and relationships into a sonic form,  sherbet floats at sunset and live music. The second installment,  Light Into Cloud And Still Talking was centered around the concept of illuminated sculptures, and culminated in a group lamp show called Museum of Chandelier, which included many bright, beautiful and edible lamps. Several works from Swannatopia Experimental Art Club participants are featured in the Bug Mall installation.

Enrollment for the next session of the Swannatopia Experimental Art Club is now open and our popular informational brochures will be available at the Bug Mall.

A visitor review of “The Swannatopia Dolphin Experience”, Marigold Daze. June 2021

“When I arrived in Swannatopia, I was not sure from which direction I came. Unheralded, I was unsure if the sun was rising or setting. I was harried and hounded by the quotidian beasts; grist ground down for profit by the Mean Machine.

At first, I was surprised to find the Dolphins spoke my language. But their invitation calmed my mind and soon I joined them, swimming as they shared with me their wisdom. They hipped me to the manifold ways in which the universe’s beings and matter express agency and evolve towards their dearest intellectual, biological, and existential imperatives. Consciousness was unhomogenized, and funky for all, equally in our own wild ways.

Spangled in penumbral light refracting through the timeless ocean between the terrestrial and sidereal, plant and animal were one, good dog and hot dog danced together in joy, tides of sound ebbed and flowed over all moods, and Freedom was the thing as our Dolphin guides sang to us from beyond the reef. We floated weightlessly and swam, leashless, towards our fondest wishes bathed in the warm, jazzy welcome of fellowship that vined among branches of the evolutionary tree. All of us changing, bathed in light, baptized in sound, and dressed in shimmering hues, are reborn, limber and hale, from the benevolent womb of Swannatopia.

As I departed these delights to return to the world beyond, our Dolphin hosts shared their blessings and goodbyes. I now swim on land and through time knowing I can return to Swannatopia if I should choose. Until then, I will plant its seeds and tend to them in the world outside as I drift near and far. I – an Evangelist – am ready to share the fruits of wild community and dazzled senses as they ripen on this planet and beyond.

We are invited, welcome, and secure in Swannatopia: forever a zone of tender abundance, psychic rest, and brand new colors and tones, visible to all beings and audible to all minds.”