Biophilia

West beyond the downtown waterfront and placid-blue Elliott Bay, Bainbridge island welcomed the setting sun yet earlier on this November day. Alaskan Way hummed as commuters headed home, and the sidewalk was sparse of pedestrians, unlike in summer when throngs of tourists populate this pocket of Seattle.

We breezily found a parking spot alongside the building that held Christopher Marley’s Exquisite Creatures exhibit. Black posters overlaid with larger than life photos offered a glimpse of inside. I hoped this exterior display, part functional to block daylight, would serve to attract curiosity and beckon people inside. I wished for everyone to see.

We’d seen Marley’s exhibit a year ago at OMSI in Portland. Back then I’d not yet seen anything like it, and I allowed my awe the permission of full expression. It was nothing new for my husband and kids to see me cry in the midst of so much beauty.

As introduction to the exhibit, a video tells a short story about Marley’s work, his method, and a little about himself, pleasingly complete with photos of his younger self as a model. He would have made it just fine as a model if he hadn’t continued on to discover his deeper love.

Thankfully the naturalist in him grew, and the beautiful biophile emerged like his butterflies to create art that would invite us to experience the natural world in a way so enchanting as to allow us momentary amnesia of our stressful lives so that we may bear witness.

After the video, a serene docent parted tall black curtains to welcome us inside. As the exterior hinted, the interior is a leisure maze of black walls displaying hundreds of small miracles. The lighting is gentle, the music calming. The effect is of immersion within a dark lifeless universe where but here in this one spot we’re in the company of those different from us, but no less alive.

Beetles, butterflies, tortoises, sharks, sea stars, lizards, geckos, orchids, crabs, fishes, octopuses, urchins, songbirds, parrots, snakes, and more insects than I can name. My species evolved here, their species evolved here, and we’re all reliant on the ecosystems of our shared floating rock.

Describing the animals on display I don’t think does them or the exhibit justice. I suppose it would be like trying to describe any piece of great art. Each person must experience the art for themself because their experience encompasses all of who they are. They will feel their own feelings and derive their own meaning.

What I experience when I take time with each fragile, intricate creature is first awe, then history. Through the framed glass I see more than their still bodies, I see the span of their lives. Born from egg, often alone upon birth, as juveniles figuring out the world, in their last moment as food for another animal, or simply aged back into the earth. They each represent all those who came before them, the trillions whose hard-earned evolution allowed their descendants to continue on to today where I can marvel at the impossibility of our existence together.

I yearn to experience this with others, to have them remark, Isn’t it amazing that we get to live alongside all this miraculous beauty?

Biophilia , my favorite word, translates to love of life. The sentiment of loving all life is a sort of big bang theory for me, originating from a cell in my heart and exploding out to the rest of the wild world. It connects me to the tiniest beetle at the far reaches of the planet where I will never go.

I thank Mr. Marley for sharing his vision, and of course recommend a visit to Exquisite Creatures if you ever have the chance.