“Agnes”
the cicada
Scientific
name: Tibicen pruinosa
Geographic location: Overland Park, KS. USA
Artist: Jessa Huebing-Reitinger
Medium: Oil on linen 36” x 66” 2003
Performance venue: The Kansas City Zoo, Kansas City, MO. USA
“Agnes”
is known as the Dog Day cicada and emerges as an adult annually.
This species spends anywhere from two to five years underground
and some will emerge every summer when the star Sirius is
prominent in the night sky. Sirius is the brightest star in
the Big Dog (Canis Major) constellation. Male cicadas make
a lot of noise up in the trees by contracting and relaxing
specific muscles. These muscles lie behind two stiff membranes
called tymbals on the underside of the abdomen, and can vibrate
up to 400 times a second. This sound has been measured up
to 120 decibels at close range, enough to drown out the sound
of a running lawn mower.
Jessa
and James found “Agnes” in their own back yard
in Overland Park, Kansas in the fall of 2003. Her portrait
took three weeks from start to finish and is one of the looser
paintings in the collection.
