Ever heard of Red Car Syndrome? Basically, the idea is that you've never noticed how many red cars are on the road until you bought one. Suddenly, you're seeing them everywhere.
I'm having the same experience with butterflies.
It started back on December 30, 2020 when Liz Craft of the Happier podcast mentioned on episode 306 that her word for 2021 was butterfly. She hoped that once the vaccine was distributed, she could become a social butterfly.
For the last few years, I've made word of the year jewelry and keychains, so I always perk up when someone shares their special word. I don't remember ever hearing someone use a noun for their word; typically, the words are adjectives and verbs like kind and empower.
I made some copper butterfly earrings shortly after listening to that episode, darkening some copper teardrops to match the same dark copper shade of some butterfly charms.
Honestly, I thought I was done with that bit of inspiration. That's how it works, right? You see or hear or taste or smell or touch something that drives you to your studio to create. And you do. Then you move onto the next thing.
Around the time I listened to that episode, I noticed that the book I'd checked out from the library (A Glorious Freedom by Lisa Congdon) was covered with butterflies. Well, that just had to be a coincidence. Don't designers put butterflies on book covers all the time?
One of my few concrete goals for 2021 is to improve the lighting in the kitchen and my home office. I spent January looking at lights and this butterfly chandelier popped up in my Pinterest feed. (It's from Pottery Barn Kids. Don't laugh. I've found that sometimes the kids section of furniture stores is more to my taste than the stuffy adult sections.) I didn't think a single 60-watt bulb would be enough overhead light so I scrolled passed it. (I didn't realize until later that I was in the middle of a butterfly ballet.)
Later I saw an organizing quiz pop up on social media: Are you a bee, ladybug, cricket, or butterfly? (Guess which one I turned out to be?)
Then in late January an artist friend Erin Prais-Hintz announced she was offering a beautiful mosaic butterfly class via Zoom in April. Her class description mentions metamorphosis and that made me pause.
Butterflies have long been symbols of transformation and change. It's not exactly a revelation to think that we're all hoping that 2021 will not be a repeat of the endless slog that was 2020. In fact, lots of us probably felt that 2020 was the year of cocoon: cozy clothes, lots of time on the sofa with a blanket or dog (or both!), hot cups of tea, trays of warm cookies fresh from the oven. A butterfly should naturally follow a year like that.
Still, I couldn't help wonder if there was something else? Something that I in particular should be noticing? Had I'd used butterflies in my own work? Every artist has her go-to themes that she returns to again and again. (The Emily Dickinson poem "Hope is the thing with feathers" is one of mine.)
In contrast, butterflies rarely make an appearance in my work. Did that make them more significant? Maybe. Interestingly, the two most recent jewelry designs I found were both published in magazines in 2017. Looking back through journal entries of that time, I can see that year was a time of growth and change, as I juggled multiple freelance jobs and tried to reconcile how to live joyfully (or at least not in a state of perpetual anxiety) in a world that felt increasingly hostile.
I found a Southwest Serenity jewelry set that appeared in Beadwork in October/November 2017 with a red butterfly bead. That made me feel a bit wistful as I'd been inspired by the Southwest which I haven't been to in more than a year.
I also came across a bracelet that was published in 2017 in the now defunct Jewelry Affaire. I named the piece Butterfly Courage, partly as an admonishment to myself to try new things in jewelry making (like extra metal large butterflies!) and partly as a reference to butterflies in extraordinary circumstances. I'd written: "While listening to Dr. Elizabeth Crone, a professor who studies population ecology, on the 'You're The Expert' podcast, I learned that some butterflies live in areas owned by the U.S. military where their environment is continually disrupted. I loved imagining the contrast between a delicate butterfly and harsh conditions and knowing that the butterfly would not only survive, but thrive."
So maybe this kaleidoscope of butterflies in the last month wasn't just a message from the future, but also a message from the past. It's good to remember that however new and strange your path my seem, you might have been here before.
Photo credit for Monarch butterfly at the top of this blog post: Patti Black on Unsplash.