
By Lydia Kacala
The Cleveland Institute of Art sees students interested in making a career through art pass through its doors every day. Some are fresh-faced and new to the school, while others are walking out for the very last time to continue putting art into the world on their own terms.
The school will showcase art from former students at its 2025 Alumni Exhibition from June 20 to Aug. 8 at its Reinberger Gallery. In the exhibit, attendees can find “Reliquary Series 5: Bald Faced Hornet,” a mixed-media piece looking at the viewers relationship to beauty, by Eli Betchick, a 2021 graduate and jeweler.
At Reinberger Gallery, Nikki Woods, CIA’s director of exhibitions and galleries, worked with Maria Seda-Reeder, who is serving as the exhibition’s visiting Roulet-Hernandez Family curator, on the exhibit. In an interview with Canvas, Woods speaks about the piece and its impact on the viewer. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Canvas: What makes this piece noteworthy?
Woods: The combination of art historical reference, stunning craftsmanship and grotesque material – real hornet carcasses – create a compelling work both visually and conceptually. You often see more “desirable” insects – such as butterflies, moths and beetles – used as subjects or inspiration for decorative motif, but here we see a less desirable insect, or pest, elevated to divine reverence. I see this work in dialogue with the Cleveland Institute of Art’s strong lineage for daring craft, and it reminds me of the work of renowned metalsmith and CIA alum William Harper, who also enjoyed the tension of objects that could be both beautiful and grotesque.
What personal response does the artwork evoke?
Woods: I’ve always been fascinated by reliquaries, which are elaborate containers that house the bodily remains – fingers, skulls, fragments of bone – or objects affiliated with important, and often religious, figures. As objects of reverence, these enclosures are beautifully decorated, encrusted with jewels and gilded in gold. Like the medieval reliquaries it references, this work evokes in me a sense of intrigue and revulsion. What does it mean to elevate the hornet to the realm of the divine? What does it say about the nature we choose to preserve and the nature we choose to eliminate because we think it is ugly or disturbing? I think the artist is asking the viewer to examine their relationship to beauty and how that reflects our perception of the world.
How do the mediums used to create the piece influence the viewer’s response?
Woods: The artist’s use of real bald-faced hornets and hornet larvae alongside delicate and fine materials such as glass, gold and silver create a gruesome and refined visceral tension. The hornet’s nest in this context becomes a suspended sculptural artifact, a kind of sarcophagus for the dead hornets that remain. There’s a tenderness to how the object is handled in the artist’s deft hand that I think fosters a sense of empathy within the viewer.
What else can you tell us about the artist?
Woods: A 2021 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, Eli Betchik is a prolific and thoughtful maker who works out of her Cleveland studio. Much of her work treads similar territory, highlighting the beauty in the otherwise overlooked or undervalued natural world, frequently incorporating found insects, arachnids and other macabre specimens and art historical references.