'Find your niche': Local artist uses molted cicada exoskeletons for art

It’s summertime in Chapel Hill. The school year has ended and the buzz of student activity has died down, but in its place is the distinct whirring of newly-uprooted cicadas. This familiar thrum is accompanied by a littering of the insect’s exoskeletons across town. 

For many, these sheddings serve no purpose, but as the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Betsy Vaden is a Chapel Hill artist who sees creative potential in nature’s leftovers. Whether she’s adding a mane to a giraffe’s neck or creating a beehive updo, Vaden uses cicada shells to give her sculptures life — and hair.

Cicada sheddings have always interested Vaden, she said. After taking a workshop where she learned how to dip objects into casting slip, which is a liquified clay, inspiration struck. Vaden was creating a bust — a sculpture of a person’s head, shoulders and chest — at the time, and she knew just what to add.

“These cicadas were big enough to look kind of like curls,” Vaden said. 

Vaden first gathered the sheddings before dipping them one-by-one into casting slip. She then arranged them into locks of hair on the bust, placed it in a kiln — an oven sufficient for hardening and drying pottery — and covered it in glaze to give it a pop of color. When all was said and done, the cicada exoskeletons took on a completely different look.

“Once they become hair, I don’t think they’re creepy anymore,” she said. 

Growing up near cow pastures in Charlotte, Vaden spent her childhood exploring the outdoors. She said she finds joy and inspiration in the smaller aspects of nature — including insects — and wants her work with cicadas to compel others to do the same. 

“Hopefully it helps people learn that nature is beautiful in all of its forms, and that it's to be appreciated and recognized,” Vaden said.  

Like cicadas, recurring subjects of Vaden’s artwork are organisms that are, to her, under-appreciated. For example, one of her first porcelain clay sculptures depicts a family of brightly-colored slugs, titled Nesting Slugs. 

“I’m no expert on slugs, but I thought, okay, I’m gonna elevate this slug,” Vaden said.

Vaden taught art to students in Boston and Raleigh. Following a period where she stayed home to raise her three kids, Vaden moved to Chapel Hill with her husband in 1994, where she connected with fellow artists interested in ceramics to form the Red Clay Co-op in 1998. 

“It was a wonderful group and it was a wonderful introduction to being an artist in Chapel Hill,” Marilyn Palsha, a former member of the co-op, said. 

The co-op rents a studio space at The Clay Centre in Carrboro. Barbara Higgins, a founding member of the co-op, built The Clay Centre in 2002. The space features a series of studios, a glaze-mixing room and a kiln for artists to heat their clay creations. 

“It was something I had thought about for a long, long time — wanting to have a place where different artists could work and could get together when they wanted to,” Higgins said. 

For the first two weekends in November, the group transforms the studio into a gallery for the annual Orange County Artists Guild Studio Tour. As a member of the Orange County Artist Guide since 2003, Vaden said that the tour offers her a chance to sell her artwork and share her creative endeavors with the community.

“You do hear responses from people, you can engage with people, you can relay to them what your sculpture actually means,” she said. 

Sometimes, that meaning is pulled from a song or story. One of her pieces, titled A Good Outcome, depicts an intertwining pair of trees. It is a reference to Baucis and Philemon, an old, married couple from Greek mythology. Vaden sold the piece to a woman as an anniversary gift.

In addition to telling stories through her work, Vaden is crafting her own narrative as an artist. She said that she wants to allow herself the freedom to create sculptures and feel less pressure to craft functional pottery, like bowls and cups. 

Whether you’re painting on canvas, sewing patches onto denim or incorporating cicadas into sculptures, Vaden said that everyone should pursue their hobbies. 

“I think there’s creativity in everybody," she said. "You just have to find your niche."

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