The Chrysalis Series

Moira Crone came to painting after a long career in writing and teaching. 

In two of her published novels, the protagonist is a woman painter. In 2018, after an illness, she started a studio practice. She has since participated in a dozen juried shows in New Orleans, Norfolk VA, Baton Rouge and Los Angeles. She has had one- and two- women shows at 928 Julia, Staple Goods, and The Second Story Galleries. She has shown her work at the Studio Waveland Gallery in MS, Lemieux Gallery, New Orleans, the Ogden Museum auctions exhibitions, and the New Orleans Art Center Gallery. She is represented by the Sullivan Gallery in New Orleans. Her work has been highlighted in portfolios in The Southern Review, The North Carolina Literary Review, and The Xavier Review.

She is also the author three books of short stories and four novels, including  the  dystopian novel The Not Yet, set in the future New Orleans, recently in a new edition, and finalist for the Philip K Dick Award, for science fiction paperback of the year.  It has been critically acclaimed as a text in Eco-Futurism and architecture in the US and abroad, as well as an example of contemporary New Orleans literature, decadence, and the slow apocalypse. Her stories and essays have appeared in over fifty publications among them, The New Yorker, Oxford American, Southern Review, Triquarterly, Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as five editions of the prize collection New Stories From The South.

About the Chrysalis Series

These pieces are metaphorically autobiographical.

My husband Rodger Kamenetz, a poet and writer on spirituality, as well as lover of nature, has been writing and reading about the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies for some time, and I have been inspired by his interest.  The sense in which the caterpillar retains its former memories even though it completely dissolves inside its cocoon,  is one of the most remarkable mysteries in nature.  Though so much about us changes in a lifetime, we remain ourselves.  In my seventh decade I have been considering this often, looking back. 

These works on paper are a limited series I created between June 15 2026, ad August 29, 2026.  They are based upon pictures of insects' evolution, with other notes of personal memory and reflection. The palette is consistent, but the mood in each piece is very different from the one before.  Each phase can be traced to a portion of the inner and outer transformations I have experienced, and have seen in others--friends, children, grandchildren.

The works are all on Imperial Watercolor Paper, 22 x 30", water media, with oil pastel, and some collage of injet photos of archival pictures, and vintage posters.