A Delicate Display Of Color And Form Takes Wing At The Library

By Jan Howard

Butterflies are a beautiful and a joyful part of summer when they are flitting around your yard and among your flowers or hanging suspended on a blossom of a butterfly bush.

They can also be a year-round joy when part of a decorative collage or other decorative item that can be part of your home environment. But these decorative art works can be expensive.

Jim Mangold of Newtown and Sarasota, Fla., a lifelong lover of butterflies, discovered this when admiring collages in retail stores or on the web.

“They are expensive,” he said this week. Some decorative collages with 40 butterflies can cost as much as $2,450 on the Internet, he pointed out.

When he realized he couldn’t afford to buy the art retail, “I decided to do it myself,” he said.

Mr Mangold, who retired in 1989 after 40 years service as an executive with the Pepsi-Cola Company, began working with butterflies in 1997 at the age of 71.

Three years later he has launched his first exhibit of butterfly art. Twenty-eight collages by Mr Mangold, encompassing about 2,000 butterflies from around the world, are on display on the second floor of C.H. Booth Library in Newtown.

Mr Mangold said he has never sold any of his collages. However, he said, laughing, “If I don’t, I will either have to stop making them or get a bigger house.”

Mr Mangold has been a resident of Newtown for 22 years. He and his wife, Mary, now live part of each year in Sarasota, Fla. They have seven children and 16 grandchildren. Mr Mangold, the youngest of 12 siblings, is a graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Penn.

He learned his craft through research in the Sarasota, Fla. library, he said. “I read up on mounting butterflies and tracked down sources and supplies on the Internet.

“I started small. I wanted to see if I could do something artistic. I made a sunflower with butterflies.”

He said he also talked with suppliers and then “taught myself how to do it.”

Through his research on the Internet, Mr Mangold said he found that “No one is doing designs like I’m doing.”

His interest in the art form has led him to encourage his brother, Bill, who lives in Bradenton, Fla., near Sarasota, to join him in working with butterflies. In November, they will jointly exhibit their decorative works in an arts and crafts show in Bradenton Municipal Auditorium. Mr Mangold said he has not as yet decided how he will price his artwork. One of his collages in the library exhibit has over 100 butterflies in its design.

He purchases the butterflies from importers, such as in Canada and Ohio. The butterflies are from all over the world.

While he said you might pay thousands of dollars for a rare butterfly, the most he has ever paid was $35. Most butterflies cost from $1 to $8, he noted. “I have some hundreds of dollars invested in some species alone, but it would be less expensive than buying them in stores.”

 Mr Mangold works on designs for his collages three or four days a week, taking time out for a game of golf twice a week. He also plays tennis.

 He loves working with butterflies. “I’ve always loved anything to do with nature and animals,” he said. The walls of his Florida condo are covered with photographs of animals and butterflies, he noted. “I’ve had many animals as pets,” including at one time a 16-foot Burmese python.

His home in Newtown is full of butterflies in likely places, such as frames and in artificial flower arrangements. But they are also in less likely places. A large fish tank that sustained a leak and could no longer be a home for fish has gained new life as a focal point for brightly colored butterflies and flowers. Pieces of driftwood from nearby Lake Lillinonah offer attractive settings for additional colorful butterflies. 

Mr Mangold is also a gardener, and refers to his plants in his greenery-filled sunroom as his own “rain forest,” complete with waterfall. A man of many talents, he also designed and built his home.

 Mr Mangold has set aside a room in the lower level of his home where he designs and works on his collages. In this room, on shelves above his worktable, are boxes and boxes of different colored butterflies, organized alphabetically by species, as well as supplies for the acrylic cases he fashions to house his collages.

The acrylic comes in sheets, which he then has cut to the size he wants for a particular collage. The parts of the case are then glued together.

Before he puts his collage together, he plots out the design on paper, using templates of the actual size of the butterflies. He then puts dots on the design as to where the butterflies will be placed. Once the design is finalized, he glues posts in the display case on which to mount the butterflies.

Butterflies are shipped in boxes, with each individual butterfly enclosed in a glassine envelope with their wings folded. Mr Mangold freezes them for at least 48 days before using them.

 When he is ready to work with the butterflies, he must first put them between wet paper towels for 24 hours to soften the bodies so the wings can be opened. “Once they are soft, I can mount and spread them how I want. Then they have to sit for another 24 hours to dry out and get hard,” he said.

There are over 20,000 known species of butterflies with more being discovered every year, Mr Mangold said.

The butterflies in the library display are from South America, Central America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Pacific islands, such as New Zealand, New Guinea and Java. Some of the specimens are actually moths.

“Many governments are training the natives in the rain forests to raise butterflies instead of slashing and burning the rain forests,” he said.

Most of these butterflies were raised on butterfly farms, Mr Mangold said. “They are raised to be sold. They live only 14 to 30 days normally.”

When the butterflies die, they are collected and sold. Mr Mangold said all the butterflies in his artworks have been collected in accordance with conservation and governmental regulations.

 The sale of butterflies provides an important source of income for people living in marginal conditions, he noted. In many areas the collection of wild butterflies is limited to one or two percent of the butterfly population. Some species, such as in one of his exhibits, “Bird Wings,” require CITES permits (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). All such permits have been received for the butterflies in the library display.

The collages in the library exhibit have interesting titles that inspire the imagination, such as “Hitchhiker,” a blue swarm of butterflies with one yellow one in the center, and “Melting Pot,” featuring all different colors and types of butterflies. The display remains at the library through September 15.