A Case for Butterflies

After tucking her daughters into bed and watching the windows darken along her quiet, palmetto-lined street on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, Dawn Nakamura sits at her dining room table, front door open to the night. Humming cicadas and the occasional foghorn from the nearby harbor drift in and out of her consciousness, but Nakamura’s focus lies on the meticulous task at hand: configuring preserved butterflies and moths into three-dimensional, soul-stirring still-life displays beneath glass domes. “I think of them like flower arrangements,”