Natural Selection

In recent years, Denver artist Lauri Lynnxe Murphy has often turned to the natural world for inspiration, collaborating with bees on honeycomb sculptures and, last summer, attempting to make music by capturing frequencies emitted by fireflies. Some of these collaborations have yielded breathtaking results, others have crashed and burned, but that’s just the unpredictable — and challenging — nature of working with nature as an artist.

Murphy’s more recent projects — spawned by an interest in what “home” really means and forged from materials like shed snake-skins and abandoned wasp nests — form the heart of Nest/Shed, an exhibition of new works that opens tonight at Mai Wyn Fine Arts. “There will be about thirty or forty drawings and an installation. People will be invited to lie in the installation, to ‘nest’ in the gallery, so to speak,” Murphy says. “The sculptures in the installation [which are sculpted from inch-thick industrial felt] are really soft and comfortable, actually.”

Murphy’s felt ‘nests’ and drawings collaged with scraps of snakeskin and brittle wasp paper go on display at a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. at Mai Wyn, 744 Santa Fe Drive, and can be seen during gallery hours through April 26; for more information, visit maiwyn.com or call 720-252-0500.

Fri., March 21, 5-9 p.m.; Wednesdays-Saturdays. Starts: March 21. Continues through April 26, 2014