Bugs are crawling up the wall at the CU Museum of Natural History, and this is a good thing.  Under the direction of Mary Powell, the art teacher at University Hill Elementary School in Boulder, CO, fourth grade students created the colorful works for the exhibit, Insects Inspire, now on display at the museum.  Each young entomologist/artist spent one week learning about real insects before sketching their imaginative designs.  Interns and elder-artists from the CU-Boulder’s Children, Youth & Environments Center for Research and Design lent a hand in the classroom.   The students then formed their ideas in clay and glaze which were, in turn, fired by Ms. Powell.  They also designed the nature-inspired backgrounds for each insect and they worked with their writing teachers to develop artist statements in both Spanish and English.  The shapes of these colorful and whimsical bugs range from dragonfly-like to semi-spherical.  Charles Counter, the museum’s exhibit coordinator, supervised the installation.  This fun exhibit will run through the summer of 2011 and was funded in part by the CU-Boulder Outreach Committee. Visit http://cumuseum.colorado.edu for museum visitor information.