If you are in Johnson City, Texas during August, 2019, please go visit the A Smith Gallery . Besides a room set up with my “What Did Butterflies Remember?” installation you will enjoy the work of other photographic artists supported by Gallery Directors, Amanda Smith and Kevin Tulley.

In “What did Butterflies Remember?”, I have used transformations of butterflies to
explore the severity of what we all may be facing….a world where what is left
is a carapace of our respective beings.

We
associate butterflies with felicity and delicate beauty. I borrowed precisely
this kind of image from my husband’s tropical butterfly photography
collection. His generosity provided the
source images for my psychological ruminations of what non-existence could mean.

While
researching the role of the butterfly in folk lore and mythology I came across
stories of butterflies said to be able to pass between the world of the living
and the world of the dead. They were
attributed with being the souls of, or carrying the souls of, the human dead.
For me, the next obvious question was, “Do butterflies themselves have souls?”
We do, so why not other creatures? From
that point on it became clear to me that this work is not only about what the
butterfly’s soul will remember, but my own as well, as we experience our
ultimate metamorphosis.

Jeannie Hutchins

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Solo Installation at A Smith Gallery, “What Did Butterflies Remember”