The Icarus Diaries

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

09: Hullabaloo

Polyommatus Icarus is known colloquially as the common blue butterfly. Its adult lifespan lasts, on average, two to three weeks. 

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

08: Featherweight

Recently I have been thinking of Icarus as a kind of footsoldier, out scavenging in an open field. Acquiring his arsenal. Gathering materials, and weighing his options. (Weighing his fate.)

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

07: Meltdown

I have been thinking about wax as a medium for simulation, about how I might use it to morph or maneuver the skin into some kind of altered state. Tissue stripped away, facial integrity diluted. A face that dissolves.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

06: Every Man His Own Balloon

I’ve been thinking about halos. And the halo effect (which is its own kind of myth). The simplicity of that geometric form, a simple curvature above the head. The perfection of it. The divinity of it.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

05: Waxing

I am finding Icarus references everywhere. He’s a symbol for so much: adventure and aspiration, peril and mishap, the embodiment of recklessness, the fragility of youth. I’m still stuck on the youth part.

Ellen McGirt|Interviews

The face, reconsidered