This piece, featuring needle felting and stumpwork embroidery, was created as part of a larger installation, The Museum of Monotropism. A modern cabinet of curiosities, the Museum uses my long-standing interest in the natural world to present an experience of autism that does not emphasise distress and deficit, instead foregrounding what is beautiful and rich about autistic experience.

Autistic hyperfocus is the lens through which I see the world. Life is huge and overwhelming. People are often confusing. Focusing on the structure of a carapace, the geometry of a beetle's mandible, or the tiniest details of a moth’s wing makes the world feel smaller, safer; more manageable, more beautiful.

Enlarged to more than twice its normal size and rendered in painstaking detail, the elephant hawk moth specimen is a study in hyperfocus. It invites the viewer to share in my hyperfocus, to stop for a moment and become absorbed in the wonder of the smallest thing.