Sophomore Storm finds ‘Butterflies and Friends’ a great fit for expression

The annual “Butterflies and Friends on Parade,” art exhibit and auction provided a near perfect venue for UW-Green Bay student Ethan Storm.

The “Friends” exhibit is a fundraiser in which local artists are chosen to create original butterflies, frogs, turtles and other favorites, into beautiful display pieces that end up being auctioned for The Einstein Project — a non-profit agency providing support for K-12 science education.

Frogs just happen to be one of the favorite subjects of the sophomore art major.

“I became interested when I attended the auction the previous year,” said Storm. “I was excited to see that frogs, as I do a good deal of work with frogs, were included as an option in Butterflies and Friends and I felt that I was capable of creating a piece. I felt that it would be good to help The Einstein Project, whose work helps benefit science classes in schools, and it would help me in learning to do sculpture as well as helping me to be better known as an artist.”

After applying and submitting design drawings and previous examples of his work, Storm was one of the selected artists. His goal was to develop his frog to be a unique but accurate representation of a particular species.

“I chose the Malaysian Leaf Frog, whose natural camouflage, including horns and ridges is unusual and fascinating,” he explained. “I chose to add the base of leaves to make it more naturalistic and provide a sense of environment.”

Suffice to say, it took awhile to complete. In fact, Storm sacrificed his Spring Break 2010 to meet the required deadlines.

“The process of building using two part epoxy, using body filler, cutting out pieces, and fiberglassing took my spring break to complete, since I needed to alter the forms drastically to make it accurate,” he said. “I still needed to keep working on it though, since I needed to prime and paint the piece.”

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Storm’s frog ended up generating $850 for The Einstein Project in its public auction Tuesday, September 28 at the KI Convention Center, Downtown Green Bay.

And the notoriety Storm was hoping for seems to be working. The Green Bay Press-Gazette made mention of his work (see article). And who know just how far this feature will travel.

The Wausau native has career ambitions in the field of art conservation.