Man uses spider webs to create works of art

A New Jersey man spends a lot of time outdoors, collecting the central pieces for his works of art - the webs of spiders.

Emil "Rocky" Fiore, 59, mounts the webs on glass and sells them. He has been doing this for about 35 years and estimates 15,000 of these webs are now in circulation.He read about catching webs when he was a child and kept the idea in the back of his head."The web is a thing of beauty. It’s all about what they do, but there is an art or sophisticated craft to what I do," he told The Star-Ledger.Fiore takes varnish, spray paint and glass plates with him as he walks through the woods. When he finds a web he feels is suitable he breathes onto the spider so that it will leave, sprays the web with silver paint and aligns it with a piece of glass before spraying it with varnish. He sprays the reverse side black when he gets home.He will not disturb a spider which is feeding and tries not to take too many webs from one individual, although he says a spider casts an average of five webs per day.He considers himself to be a friend to spiders, as well as their ambassador to humans. He said that by showing people the beauty in the web their admiration and respect for arachnids will increase.His biggest fright during web collecting was when he unknowingly got too close to an alligator with young in Florida."It sounded like a threatening exhale, and then I saw her," he told The Star-Ledger."She was telling me I was getting too close. I was shaking, I never knew terror like that."Most of the time he loves what he does."With every catch comes an (I got cha) moment, like hooking a big one. It's a beautiful day. I'm alone in the woods, looking for gems. Yes, gems! Pearls! When I find one, I'm exhilarated. The web shimmers and dances in the sunlight with the slightest breeze. The silk refracts light casting rainbows of color at me. It is a thing of beauty and I wax ecstatic, but the capture demands all my attention," he states on his website Whirled Wide Webs.He explains the difference between what he collects and cobwebs."A cobweb is an obscure mass of silk that has no form or format or style; it’s just strands," he told the New York Times. "A spider web shows some form of architecture or style. They’re called spider webs or orbs. Both are used to ensnare prey."He added that indoors mostly cobwebs are found, and that they are designed to catch anything that crawls into them. The webs he collects are designed to catch flying insects.If he finds dead creatures in the webs they remain as part of the art.

Source :  http://www.digitaljournal.com