A giant Aldabra tortoise named Addwaita died in 2006. He was thought to be the oldest documented living land animal at the time of his death. British sailors brought him from the Seychelle Islands to India in 1875. While he thrived for over 250 years, the other three that came with him died early on. Addwaita means “the one and only” in the Bengali language.
I read about the tortoise in the Houston Chronicle one morning in my studio, buried in a weekly list of nature news. Reading Addwaita’s biography/obituary, Reminded of all my friends that had died of AIDS. I remembered several years earlier being told by my doctor one visit that I needed to get all my affairs in order, that were no new drugs for me to try. But I lived long enough to be in studies for drugs that turned out to work and save mine and many lives.
So I felt a connection to this tortoise I had never met who outlived his fellow captives. He inspired me. His story made it easier to let go of survivor guilt. I had been making art about “what makes a life” and I knew I had to paint him.
Around the same time, I had been spending some weekends out in the country near Round Top. One day on the side of the small, hospital-green house, a luna moth had attached itself to dry out its wings after emerging from its cocoon. I don’t know if I had ever seen one, even in a photograph. It was beautiful: antennae like tiny beige sego palm fronds, soft velour-like wings, a white body, high key colors of lime, lilac, buttery yellow, rust. Like someone matched the colors to flavors of sherbet. And the trailing, curving tail streamers!
Researching the moth, I learned that they only live about seven days. They have one purpose, to find a mate and reproduce. They aren’t even born with a mouth or a digestive system. Just sex. Females mate with the first male that finds them. It’s that kind of drive. The moth’s singular purpose of continuing the species also broadened my thinking of “what makes a life”.
Luna moths have colorful spots on its wings that look like giant eyes, to confuse predators. I loved that another creature had eyes that saw the 3-D world and eyes that didn’t, like my seeing eye and my blind eye. So of course I had to paint the moth, too.
It was within just a few months that I had discovered both the moth and read the tortoise’s story. At some point it clicked that a long life and short life are equally interesting and valuable. Both of these creatures fascinated me…one wrinkled, ancient, slow-moving creature in a shell from an exotic locale and one dreamlike, nocturnal insect that seemed to be made of dryer lint.
That August, like every August for years, I went to visit my aunt in Taos, NM. On the side of the road north of the Pueblo was a touristy shop that I had never stopped in. Driving by one day I noticed giant, aluminum tortoises in stacks. I bought a huge one and sent it home and did so every year for a few years. I made things out of them and set them around my yard and out in round Top. It was my way of remembering Addwaita.
The next year I received a grant from the Houston Arts Alliance to visit the specimen collections of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. I was sent to a nondescript building I had driven by for many years, got off the elevator, and was greeted by a huge, taxidermy rhinoceros. A curator let me to a row of cabinets and she started pulling out drawers of luna moths. I was in heaven. I was allowed only paper, pencils and a camera and completed several studies and notes. I remember how bright the lights were once the drawer opened and at the counter where I worked. I knew those moths would rather the dark night of the woods.
Since I had my tortoise made of metal, I decide to paint the moths on metal also. Since they didn’t ingest anything, I chose lead. Maybe one of the few creatures that didn’t have to worry about being poisoned. Plus I loved the heavy lead compared to how they floated in the breeze.
Like the Aldabra tortoise, the luna moth is a giant among moths. Luna moths are rarely seen yet Addwaita had spent over 200 years in a zoo in a public enclosure. My male tortoise preferred the sunlight while the larger, female luna moth released her pheromones in the moonlight. A tortoise, carrying his home on his back, is the epitome of slow and steady while the luna moth is consumed by extreme productivity and needs no home.
One the symbol of the body – the other a symbol of the soul and finding the light. Both seem to represent something precious and not easily come upon.