"As a Bee Sees a Butterfly" Kite by Michael Thompson

Chicago-based artist Michael Thompson creates unique kites crafted from split bamboo frames covered with stretched muslin and a collage of vintage Asian ephemera—including fragments of fabric, scrolls, drawings, and books collected during his travels.

In this kite entitled "As a Bee Sees a Butterfly," Thompson creates chaotic harmony from colored rice paper, fragments of painted scrolls, and scraps of printed silks. The layered collage is united by a wash of indigo and turquoise pigments that seem to spill out from the center of the kite. Crashing waves and painterly brush strokes add to the careful disorder, while silk printed with an abstract dot pattern creates a sense of ebb and flow, gathering and dispersing with pulsating movement.

Thompson has earned an international reputation for his kite works, an engrossing project initiated by the artist more than a decade ago.

Split bamboo, muslin, cotton, silk, rice paper, pigments.