Finding art in nature with cicada Brood XIV

On a warm May afternoon in Mount Washington, Kentucky, artist Diego Miró-Rivera and his pal Zane Giordano arrived from Austin, Texas. They drove around looking for what they call “juiced up” trees.

“Juiced up is, that on one side of the tree, you can see more than 100 cicadas on it,” Miró-Rivera explained.

Miró-Rivera makes art that’s huge and composed of thousands of cicada shells. The shells are hung on burlap canvas and arranged in dense patterns, so he needs lots of them.

Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia are prime hunting grounds right now as Brood XIV emerges from a 17-year underground rest.

Eventually, Miró-Rivera and Giordano found a “juiced up” tree in someone’s front yard and asked a man outside, working on his car, for permission to take a closer look. As one might imagi