Rocky Fiore is always searching the web, but it's not quite what you think. Neither artist nor biologist, Fiore has spent the past 30 years hunting for spider webs, to create a most unusual form of art - spider web art. "It's like hunting or fishing, except it's webbing." Webbing? Yes, webbing is what he calls it. The little-known art

"I've been doing it for 30 years. I have heard of a few others who do it, but I've never seen them. I think I'm the only one."

Springtime through fall, Fiore can be found snooping around the Alpine Boat Basin early in the morning, looking for webs and capturing them on glass. And not just any webs, but New Jersey's more common cyclosa conica and house aranea webs. "I like having the entire web on glass, that's what looks best. I try to capture it intact, by all means."

Watching Fiore in action is a lot like watching a doctor perform a transplant.

"First stage is to evict the spider," he said. "Then I spray the web with high-heat aluminum Krylon spray paint. It's what looks best - it sparkles like dew. There's something in the formula, I think." He then prepares a sheet of glass with a coat of clear varnish, thick enough to pick up the web, but not so thick it will run. And when everything is just right, he moves like a surgeon to carefully "capture" the spider web onto the pane of glass, with all its strands intact. He then takes the glass home, applies black paint as backing, and slaps it onto a frame. Voila, you have art!

"That was a nice catch, real clear, just like I saw it," Fiore whispers after a recent catch, impressed by his own performance.

As Fiore performs his art, he explains the spider's role. The spider starts out by "playing out the silk." Then pulling it from the body - from something called the spinneret - it extends a sticky line that floats out into the air until it makes contact with something. Then the spider pulls it tight to make a bridge. That's how it starts. And from there, the spider constructs a web. That is, until Fiore comes and takes it.

"I hip other people to the beauty of the web. Thanks to me, next time people might not want to smash a spider into the ground. If I do anything for the spiders, that's it. It's symbiotic. We do something for each other."

Fiore has more than 25 species logged. His framed webs sell at a New York boutique called Evolution. Small ones go for $25 to $50, large ones are $250 and up. But for Fiore, it's about more than just dollars and cents. "I want to get them into a museum. I think that's where they belong, particularly when you see them as a collection."

Spiders obviously are important to the web catcher. He has even gone as far as taking a few of his favorite spiders home and releasing them in his basement, hoping to catch a whole new crop of webs without having to travel. He even has caught bugs for his spiders to eat. Kind of like having a pet spider, Rocky?

"It's just a hobby. [But] it bought me a vacation to California for me and my wife. I captured some webs from Redwood Forest - I got three new species. Some go on vacation and take pictures, I take webs. To me, bringing home the webs was more important."

Article by Thomas E. Franklin
Bergen Record