16 Apr 2016 FILM DIARY

This post is an anomaly because it is about a sequence of photographs, rather than about video footage. The subject was one of the most amazing I have encountered during the nearly 18 years I have devoted to my artwork. On my morning walk an intriguing structure on a picket fence caught my eye. It was beautifully formed of twigs, tapered from an irregular base and approximately 10 millimetres high. I asked a couple of women passers by what they thought it might be. One of them removed it from the picket to reveal a tiny caterpillar ensconced in a silk-lined bag, which I immediately recognised as a case moth larva. She placed it on a nearby fence post. I consequently took photos of the structure tilted back by my thumb with the caterpillar partly emerged from its hiding place. When I got home I googled case moth images and found one which was appropriately titled Log Cabin Case Moth. It resembled the one I had photographed without matching its structure.  I returned to the fence post in the afternoon and took many more photos of the ‘log cabin’. Two of the photos are on the last page of the Moths album. How could a caterpillar that small build such a precise and complex structure, first selecting the material, next preparing it and finally assembling it? Glory be. I can sooner account for the deepest achievements of human genius than comprehend how the caterpillar built its log cabin.