An interactive project with honey bees. I have always been fascinated by pollinators and in particular honey bees which lead me to become involved in a number of art projects that allow nature to interact with my work directly altering it. In this project I created seven small art works that were inserted into bees hives allowing 50,000 bees to interact with them over several weeks. The honey bees built comb over parts of the art or removed parts of the paper collage surfaces to create intriguing shapes. The project was magically informative and I learned a lot about the life of bees and how they live in harmonious communities where the individual supports the whole hive. We can learn much from them about how to live in more balanced and sustainable ways on this earth. I love this quote: “The bee's life is like a magic well: the more you draw from it, the more it fills with water,” said Karl Von Frisch, a Nobel-prize winning scientist, credited for discovering the waggle dance, a choreographed language bees use to "point" to the location of pollen and nectar. The life of the honeybee has captivated people across the centuries, and in recent years it’s been hard to ignore their plight, dying in their unexplained millions across the world. It’s a well know fact that, without bees, the natural cycle of life might well fall apart, and indeed Albert Einstein once reportedly said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left”. This project was funded in thanks to an Artist Trust GAP grant this year.
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‘WINGED MIGRATIONS ’ is a mixed media art installation I have been working on using found and up-cycled paper, and handmade paint. The imagery explores color and pattern inspired by butterfly wing patterns as seen under a microscope. The installation is intended to be uplifting and to bring us back to an awareness of our connection with nature, its beauty, its ability to adapt, transform and for rebirth that is also a part of the natural cycles of destruction and recreation. The process of creating this work comes from my fascination with this adaptability of nature to transform external influences including using what it has found in creative ways.
The project is a development of my interest in pollinators and their plight due to habitat loss and the impact the use pesticides has upon them. My work is intended to be a vehicle for stimulating conversations about the impact human habitation can have upon the earth and asking us to look for ways to live on earth that are regenerative and more sustainable including creating from repurposed materials. My installation will be on display in a shopfront on John Street on the corner of John Street and Boren Ave N in the South Lake Union area for three months from August 14th 2017, as part of the Shunpike storefronts program. A big thank you to Shunpike for funding my project. |
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August 2017
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