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Elevate: Franky Cruz

  • Franky Cruz
    Vivarium Meconium Laboratory (in situ)
    Vitrine contents: Meconium pigment from butterflies (Monarch, Gulf Fritillary, Atala, Black Swallowtail) and watercolor on paper; brass wire grid on pine stretcher bar frame; silk moth cocoons and butterfly chrysalides in glass cylinders; preserved wings and organic materials; glass and acrylic specimen containers with cork; magnifying lens with articulated stand; LED lighting (3000K) with motion sensor activation system
  • Franky Cruz
    Vivarium Meconium Laboratory (in situ)
    Vitrine contents: Meconium pigment from butterflies (Monarch, Gulf Fritillary, Atala, Black Swallowtail) and watercolor on paper; brass wire grid on pine stretcher bar frame; silk moth cocoons and butterfly chrysalides in glass cylinders; preserved wings and organic materials; glass and acrylic specimen containers with cork; magnifying lens with articulated stand; LED lighting (3000K) with motion sensor activation system
  • Franky Cruz
    Vivarium Meconium Laboratory (in situ)
    Vitrine contents: Meconium pigment from butterflies (Monarch, Gulf Fritillary, Atala, Black Swallowtail) and watercolor on paper; brass wire grid on pine stretcher bar frame; silk moth cocoons and butterfly chrysalides in glass cylinders; preserved wings and organic materials; glass and acrylic specimen containers with cork; magnifying lens with articulated stand; LED lighting (3000K) with motion sensor activation system
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About the Artist

Bentonville, On View on Hotel Guest Floors

Elevate at 21c presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the Northwest Arkansas community.

The program provides hotel guests and visitors with unique access to the work of notable regional artists, while featuring their work in the context of 21c’s contemporary art space.

This installation is site-specific, composed for the vitrine, bringing together the paintings as the finished result of the Vivarium Meconium Laboratory alongside the materials and conditions that produce them. Elements from the studio—specimens, tools, and residual matter—are arranged as a composition drawn directly from the process, offering the curious viewer insight through visual evidence rather than explanation. The objects displayed allow the viewer to witness the action of metamorphosis, now held in place and made observable.

The Vivarium Meconium Laboratory (VML) is an evolving studio-laboratory where art and science merge through the metamorphosis of butterflies. Butterflies are raised from egg to emergence, releasing meconium upon emergence—a naturally pigmented fluid produced during transformation that varies in hue across species—onto prepared surfaces to generate paintings created by life itself. The cycle culminates with their release into native ecosystems, extending the artwork into an act of regeneration. Through painting, installation, and public work, the practice explores metamorphosis as both biological process and artistic method, connecting artistic production with ecological systems. VML operates as a performative ecology—part laboratory, part habitat—proposing new relationships between art, conservation, and the living world.

“A butterfly painting machine with butterflies as its exhaust.”

Franky Cruz(b. 1984, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work merges ecology, sculpture, and painting through his ongoing project, the Vivarium Meconium Laboratory (VML). His practice explores metamorphosis as both biological process and artistic method, using butterfly life cycles to generate pigment-based works and immersive installations. His work is currently on view at the Philbrook Museum of Art, and he has realized public art projects through Miami-Dade Art in Public Places. Cruz is a current fellow at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, where he continues to develop large-scale ecological installations including the Vivarium Meconium Dome Lab.