Touched By The Tears of a Butterfly

"Mike MacDonald's video installation Touched By The Tears of a Butterfly is the fourth in a series of installations this artist has produced over the past ten years. As with the other three, this work is a simple and direct presentation in the passive defense of ecologies. Unlike the other three, this installation utilizes a single video image thus transforming the grid which marked the earlier work as well as employing external elements in its realization. Touched By The Tears of a Butterfly consists of seven rocking chairs each a different colour and placed before a silk scrim that flutters in the breeze of an air ionizer. The viewer is invited to sit in one of the chairs to watch the fourteen minute video of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis and preparing to fly. Following are images of different butterflies feeding. ... " Excerpt from QUIET WARNINGS OF OUR PERIL - MIKE MACDONALD by Glenn Alteen, March 1996