By Andrew Lovdahl
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Friday, March 2, 2007, The OG, news & student awards

Adam Joseph's entry won “most frightening” in the 2007
Insect Fear art contest. (click to enlarge)

THREE SUBFRESHMEN HAVE been honored for their entries in the 2007 Insect Fear Film Festival Art Contest at the University of Illinois.

Wynee Bao placed second in the grades 6-8 division, while Adam Joseph won “most frightening” for his entry and Lily Smith's work was recognized as “most technical” (according to the judges, the piece that provides the most realistic rendering of an insect or insects).

The trio's entries were on display Saturday at Foellinger Auditorium during the festival.

The event featured screenings of “Mothra,” “Rebirth of Mothra,” and an installment of the popular anime show “Yu-Gi-Oh,” all in line with this year's theme of Japanese insect films.

Other attractions included insect collections, origami displays, a face-painting booth, and an insect “petting zoo” featuring silkworms, praying mantids, giant grasshoppers, and hissing cockroaches.

Lily Smith's entry won “most technical.”
(click to enlarge)

The Entomology Graduate Student Association, or EGSA, has been holding the festival annually since 1984, when it was founded by May Berenbaum, then an assistant professor of entomology and now head of the department. (She is also mother of Uni sophomore Hannah Leskosky.)

Uni students place high in the art contest on a consistent basis. Last year, then-subfreshman Michelle Wong placed first in the grades 6-8 category.

Any student between kindergarten and 12th grade can enter the contest, and all entries must feature insects. Lisa Evans is Uni's art teacher.

As for the film festival itself, Berenbaum gave this account of the motivations behind it:

“[I]nsects remain the one familiar and conspicuous group which is politically correct to hate. Probably for this reason, Hollywood has shown no inclination to stop producing bad insect science fiction films either; while the effects certainly are getting better, the biology is not. As long as they keep disseminating disinformation about the most misunderstood taxon on the planet, we have an obligation to counter with the truth about insects. So it's my fervent hope that the festival will continue —and if we manage to have fun in spreading the gospel, as it were, so much the better!

RELATED

— About the festival: Insect Fear Film Festival site

— 2006 Gargoyle coverage: Subbie wins Insect Fear art competition