10/10/2026
Last night’s opening of Victoria Naftal’s Artist in Residence exhibition, complete with beetle-themed desserts by Dolly Rosen 🪲
Come see the exhibition today and meet Victoria from 11–3 during farm store hours. Victoria’s curious work is a delight for visitors of all ages, especially good for young naturalists.
We also have sourdough pickup, with a few extra loaves, and fresh lavender bundles. It promises to be a beautiful day to sit in the sunshine and enjoy the view.
Artist Statement: Smallness has no bearing on the measure of significance. Coleoptera, the order encompassing beetles, contains hundreds of thousands of species and represents roughly one quarter of all known animal species on Earth. Despite their extraordinary abundance and ecological importance, beetles often remain anonymous to us.
Each beetle represented in this work is a resident of Pennsylvania. Sculpted in miniature from clay, with wire legs wrapped in thread, these specimen recreations begin as careful observations of their living counterparts before being transformed into personified characters. As articulated, posable puppets, they are given the opportunity to step beyond the classifications we impose upon them… to introduce themselves, assume identities, and reveal imagined inner lives.
Beneath the whimsy lies the very real work these small creatures perform. Beetles are decomposers, pollinators, recyclers of nutrients, and participants in the intricate systems that sustain forests, fields, and soils. Their contributions are largely invisible, but the health of the world around us depends upon countless such lives and relationships.
