Joseph Scheer (b. 1958)

Joseph Scheer is a Professor of Print Media and Co-Director/Founder of the Institute for Electronic Arts at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. Their mission is dedicated to the integration of electronic media within the fine arts disciplines through a focus on art making, research, and education. Scheer’s captivating works, which span print media, video and web-based projects, use technology to re-examine nature through interpretive collecting and visual recording. He selected this pair of Cecropia moths because Charles Burchfield featured them in several paintings. The large format prints reveal astonishing textural details and nuances of color that are not visible by the human eye without magnification. Note that the female body is larger, but her antennae are smaller than the male’s.

Scheer’s most recent work has been exhibited at The Brooklyn Museum of Art; National Museum of China, Beijing; The Field Museum in Chicago, and four major museums in Sweden. He has published two books: Night Flyers and Night Visions: The Secret Designs of Moths. His work has been written about in more than 120 books and periodicals including: National Geographic, The New York Times, ArtNews, ArtForum, Science, and Nature. In 2017 he was Fulbright-Garcia Robles Research Scholar in Sonora, Mexico. —NW