Precious Bees

Hello everyone,

Along with all the fabulous bee paintings in the gallery this month, there are some interesting and unusual sculptures that have also been specially created for the Plight of the Bumblebee exhibition.

'Precious' is a work by Czech artist Marcela  Trsova, who you may remember by her fabulous ''Sea of Souls' installation earlier this year.  Marcela is a highly creative and imaginative artist who likes to use natural materials in her work.  'Precious' is made largely from black beeswax - unusual in this country, and created from the type of heather the bees pollinate:

'Precious', black beeswax and gold wire, by Marcela Trsova.
Each ball represents an element of the cycle of life, with the ancient symbols of the Seed, the Flower and the Fuit of Life depicted in the gold wire.

I'll let Marcela take up the story:

'The bees are an important part of food chain as without the pollination there will be no fruit, vegetables or cereals for us to eat. There are other pollinators in nature such as flies and wasps but bees remain the most important, espeacially for industrial agriculture.
In the piece I have created for the Plight of the Bumblebee exhibition I wanted to emphasize the importance of the bees in plants life cycle. To do so I used the ancient symbols of The Seed, The Flower and The Fruit of Life. They are considered to be one of the key parts of sacred geometry and have been used in many different cultures. They are also said to contain the values and the fundemental forms of space and life.

I feel the beautiful geometry of the designs is also related to the amazing organisational efficiency of the bees and geometrically perfect construction of honeycombes.
The design gets more complex as the plant cycle progresses, The Seed of Life being the simplest one. The symbols are drawn with gold plated wire and are embedded into the natural black bee wax spheres. The wax is dark because the pollen collected by the bees comes from heather moors, by using the gold wire I wanted to express the preciousness of the bees.' 

And here are the individual elements up close:

 

'The Seed of Life'

 

 'The Flower of Life', and:

'The Fruit of Life'

 Like all the artists who have created work for this exhibition,  Marcela has really thought about the issue of the declining bee population and really gone the extra mile to produce something relevant, interesting and beautiful.  There is still a week to go, so you have plenty of time to come in and view this inspirational and poignant exhibition.

Speak soon....