By Marilyn Bauer
Cincinnati Enquirer

If you're like me, you'd rather look at cicada art than be bombarded by 5 billion of the insects.

The cicada zeitgeist has found its way into the minds of some regional artists, and the result is now on view at the Dayton Art Institute.

Amy Kollar Anderson's "Swarm" is a magical-realist look at a typhoon of the two-inch creatures. Kollar Anderson's bugs have black eyes, nice noses, fat squat bodies with translucent wings and ugly black bug legs.

The cicadas are swarming directly off the picture plane and presumably onto the unsuspecting viewer.

Nathan Bennett and Brian Pitman have taken the cicada back to the womb, so to speak, with their resin and plastic goo-pod. I see the cicada larvae under the earth, but the artists' statement says their themes are "gender, schematizations of the body and the seven deadly sins."

Swarm: 2002 by Amy Kollar Anderson

This is a buggy show you may want to catch. You should be safe from the real buggers inside the museum ... but you never know.

The Dayton Art Institute, 458 Belmonte Park North. Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. every day. Thursdays until 8 p.m. Admission is free. Information: (937) 223-5277 or www.daytonartinstitute.org. The exhibit will be up through May 30.

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