I find a perverse pleasure with the fact that my own work demonstrates controversy. Controversy is the point at which the illustrator becomes the artist – instead of taking work at face value, it is analyzed.

I was asked to design the cover for my highschool’s graduation show last year. Then I stayed iconic to my generation, choosing to edit an image of a 5th generation iPod and putting on the cover. It went over well, but was severely lacking in originality and relevance to the school. This was not art – it was a design, made to look as aesthetically pleasing as possible and not offend anybody.

This year, I was asked to do the same thing. I now felt that mere design was not satisfying enough (the next evolution of the cover would have been an iPhone, which means nothing), so I created this image.

My class is the butterfly, pinned down like butterflies often are in museums and science classrooms around the world. There are several things I wanted to accomplish with this image. I wanted to comment on the Aristotelian focus on classifying everything to better understand the universe. I feel it’s important to make distinctions and categorize for scientific advancement, and nothing could be closer to the heart of my school’s IB program. In addition, I glorified my class by giving it the gift of metamorphosis. The pin, which I figured might arouse some feelings, connects with the past nature of our highschool years, a life which I predict will quickly fade into its own dusty museum piece.

I ran the design past my program coordinator to make sure the image was not offending to the program, and she enthusiastically gave it the green light, saying that the butterfly was beautiful in a much more sophisticated way than she had seen before and that censoring the image would go against her own artistic integrity.

But, when presented to a counsel of parents, the image was caught in a crossfire I had not expected – people were upset about the representation of other classes, the pin reminded them of torture, and the classification was seen as irrelevant. Some of the parents enjoyed the image, though, and so did some of my classmates.

I am not interested in drawing people apart over symbols – indeed the contrary would be much more satisfying. What I like is the power that my work had to draw such passionate arguments and heated response. People were actually offended by it, which simply illustrates the power of art.