Lord of the Flies: How This Artist Enlists an Army of Tiny Collaborators

Los Angeles artist John Knuth uses flies as collaborators to create paintings, with over one million insects contributing to his current exhibition 'The Hot Garden' at Hollis Taggart Downtown in New York. Inspired by flyspecks he noticed on a windowsill in 2005, Knuth orders fly larvae by the thousands, letting them hatch on canvases where their regurgitation deposits pigment. The show features works priced between $700 and $20,000, and a custom enclosure at the gallery allowed visitors to see the flies working live during the opening. Knuth's fly paintings gained viral attention in 2013 after a video by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art received over 100,000 views, helping launch his career.